How to Create an Instagram Marketing Strategy to Promote Your Business
This guide offers a simple Instagram marketing strategy to help you with brand promotion. Check it out for tips to increase awareness, leads, and conversions.
Consider the many features Instagram has - from Instagram Shopping, Instagram Stories, advanced analytics, Reels, IGTV, etc. And all of these can help creators and businesses promote their products and services while driving conversions.
But it may be hard to effectively promote your business if you don’t have a plan or an Instagram marketing strategy. But how should you create an Instagram marketing strategy?
This guide will teach you how to create an Instagram marketing strategy that effectively helps you promote your business.
Let's get started.
1. Optimize your Profile
The first part of your Instagram marketing strategy involves ensuring that you've optimized your business profile for search. This means having your business name, profile tag, and URL easy to find and recognizable.
What's more?
Ensure your bio makes a great impression and includes keywords you want your brand known for. It should also showcase your personality, summarize what you do, and how that adds value.
2. Define Goals
In this case, consider what your overall business goals are, then determine how an Instagram marketing strategy can help you achieve them.
For example, you can use Instagram to create brand awareness, drive traffic to your site, generate leads, or boost conversions. Then, use those goals to identify social media KPIs that will help you track your progress towards your goals.
3. Conduct Research
Conduct an audience and competitor analysis that informs your Instagram marketing strategy. Audience analysis helps you define who they are, what they need, and whether you effectively reach them.
Competitor analysis helps you discover:
- Which tactics competitors include in their Instagram marketing strategies.
- Whether there's a gap, your brand can fill.
- How big a community they have.
- The type(s) of content they post.
- Level of activeness on Instagram.
- Instagram features they leverage.
- Which of their content hits or misses the mark.
- Engagement rates they get.
But why do you need to conduct this research?
It helps you identify opportunities you can use in your Instagram marketing strategy to beat your competitors and communicate better with your target audience.
4. Outline a Content Strategy
Your Instagram marketing strategy should clearly define what content to post based on your audience and competitor research. This can include:
- Behind-the-scenes footage
- Educational posts
- Instructional content
- Motivational posts
- Product teasers
- Entertaining posts
- User-generated content
Next, define what kind of captions you will use with your posts (short or long) and how to make them entertaining and engaging. They should also help you attract audience attention and get them to read the whole story. And for those who want to promote content in front of bigger audiences?
Leverage ads.
Instagram offers various types to choose from, including video, single images, Carousels, Stories, etc. You can also either create ads or boost existing content and target users based on their demographics, interests, location, or behavior. But how can you maximize ad delivery in your Instagram marketing strategy?
Have an objective when setting ads up and set a start to finish date that enables you to control spending. Most importantly, have an ad expert help you track your performance and optimize it based on insights.
5. Run Collaborations
For this Instagram marketing strategy, you let other people, including other brands, influencers, and affiliates, promote your brand. This way, your target audience hears about your products or services from people they consider experts and friends. It also introduces your brand to a whole new audience interested in what you offer.
But how can you ensure the success of your affiliate and influencer campaigns?
Work with influencers and affiliates who are relevant to your brand. They should have similar audiences, engaged followers, and the ability to give your brand more visibility. Influencer platforms like trendHERO can help you in verifying and filtering influencer profiles based on your brand category. You can then collaborate by offering discount codes or running giveaways, competitions, takeovers, etc.
What about other brands? How can you work with them and ensure they enrich your Instagram marketing strategy?
Ensure they complement but not compete with your brand and have an active Instagram account. Then collaborate on competitions and giveaways that mutually benefit both brands.
6. Leverage Instagram Features
To effectively promote your brand, consider using these business features in your Instagram marketing strategy:
- Live Rooms to run Q&As, host tutorials, etc.
- Cross-app messaging to increase communication opportunities
- Professional dashboard to track performance
- Filters, text, and stickers to create engaging and appealing content
- Instagram guides to recommend or offer tips to your audience
- Instagram Keyword Search to find phrases your audience uses
- Instagram Reels, Stories, Live Stream, and IGTV to inform, entertain, and engage
- Live Shopping to showcase product characteristics or encourage purchase
- Instagram Shop to ease product discovery and purchase
- Small Business Stickers to connect with current and new customers
- Product launch stickers to create buzz around upcoming products
- Instagram checkout for buyers to easily complete purchases
7. Manage Your Instagram Community
Your Instagram marketing strategy should include a plan to engage your followers on the platform.
But how can you do so?
- Use hashtags to reach and create niche communities that ease interactions.
- Use listening tools to track conversations around your brand.
- Follow and share content from those who follow your account.
- Reply to comments and DMs
- Encourage users to use a branded hashtag or your account name when posting or commenting about your brand or asking questions.
8. Use Instagram Tools
Want to improve your Instagram marketing strategy and make promotion easy?
Leverage Instagram tools that help you with:
- Audience analysis
- Competitor tracking
- Creating engaging posts
- Content performance tracking
- Account management
- Hashtag generation
- Scheduling and publishing posts
- Account growth
- Conversion tracking
- Photo and video editing
Some of these tools include Hootsuite, Buffer, Boomerang, Adobe Lightroom, Ads Manager, etc.
9. Review and Optimize Account
Tracking your performance and using the insights to discover what works and what you can improve is a crucial step in your Instagram marketing strategy. Tracking also helps you understand your audience, their active times, and the content they engage with the most.
Most importantly, it helps you realize opportunities to improve your Instagram marketing strategy.
Final Thoughts on Building a Working Instagram Marketing Strategy
Despite the high competition, implementing an Instagram marketing strategy can help your brand stand out, connect with current customers, and reach new ones.
Do you need help creating your Instagram marketing strategy? Comment below, and we can share tactics and tips you can leverage to promote your business on the platform.