Instagram marketing plays an essential role in digital marketing as more and more people turn to Instagram. Brands on Instagram desire to advertise their products and services to increase brand awareness.
Instagram offers powerful tools to help you boost your business with free, easy-to-use options. With many features for feeds and Stories that make it easy to find content based on one’s interests, Instagram marketing has become a new way to target new customers.
This blog will guide you through your Instagram marketing journey, starting from the definition of Instagram marketing to tips and strategies you need as an Instagram marketer.
What is Instagram marketing?
With more than 2 billion users, Instagram has a great potential for finding new customers. Instagram marketing is a way for your business to create a closer connection with potential customers. This way, you can grow your audience, increase brand awareness and loyalty, and generate more leads and sales.
Brands on Instagram use this platform to connect with new audiences and engage existing customers through posts, stories, giveaways, and other methods of communication on Instagram. The more followers you have, the more likely your content is to be seen by people. And you can closely connect with them and understand their needs.
Read Also: Instagram Giveaway Examples and Ideas
Why use Instagram for marketing?
Marketing on Instagram is definitely one thing you should consider in your marketing strategy, especially if you use Instagram for a small business.
With its emphasis on visual content, Instagram provides a unique opportunity to highlight your product with pictures and posts. With the ease of use of the app, the ability to share stories and Reels in addition to posts, and its features for both creators and brands, Instagram is the perfect fit for social media marketers.
In 2019, there were almost 815 million users who accessed Instagram every month. In 2024, over 1.4 Billion monthly users, and it is anticipated to reach nearly 1.44 billion users in 2025,
And one of the most important points about Instagram marketing is its alignment with the younger generation. Around 60% of Instagram users fall between the 18 to 34 age group, and this demographic is notably more attracted to online shopping. It’s all the more reason for you to use Instagram for marketing, especially if you are selling something that appeals to younger generations.
There are many young influencers on the platform known as Gen Z influencers that are perfect for influencer marketing on Instagram. After finishin this article, you’ll learn how to negociate and make deal with influencers. However, if you don’t have the time to read the whole thing, here is a quick giveaway:
Ainfluencer is a free DIY influencer marketing platform that helps you to find and connect with influencers based on their location, gender, niche, age, language, the number of followers and engagement rate, etc. Here is how Ainfluencer can help you:
How to market on Instagram + Examples
Here are some powerful Instagram marketing tips that you can use to your benefit and make the most of the popular platform for all that it’s worth.
1. Create an Instagram Business Account
Marketing with an Instagram business account instead of a personal account comes with a lot of benefits. With a business account, you can use:
- Instagram Insights and built-in analytics tool.
- Automated replies to DMs.
- Add links to Instagram stories.
- Instagram Ads.
- Instagram shopping.
Instagram advertising is one of the best features of business accounts. By having an Instagram advertising strategy, you can make significant changes to your business.
2. Collaborate with influencers
Influencer marketing didn’t start with Instagram, but it became widely popular through it. The number of people buying products from influencers on Instagram is growing day by day. So, you shouldn’t underestimate the power of influencer marketing on Instagram.
Influencers can make a huge difference on the platform and attract a lot of eyes to your brand. But how can you find the perfect influencers for your Instagram marketing campaigns?
How to find influencers?
Influencer marketplaces are the easiest way to find relevant influencers in your niche. You can compare influencers based on their age, engagement rate, quality score, number of followers, location, language, etc.
Ainfluencer is one of these marketplaces focused on Instagram and TikTok. Ainfluencer helps brands and influencers find and collaborate with each other. There are more than 500,00 influencers in different niches who are ready to collaborate. And the best part is that Ainfluencer is 100% free.
You just need to sign up on Ainfluencer for free and use its AI-powered search to find the influencers that are right for you. Everything is simple and easy on the platform. And if you encounter any issues during your journey on Ainfluencer, the customer service team is ready to help.
Check out this video to see how Ainfluencer works:
3. Encourage more User generated content
User-generated content or UGC is an important part of an Instagram marketing strategy. UGC is defined as any kind of media that is created by the users, not the company. This includes photos, videos, reviews, comments, or blog posts. Campaigns that use UGC result in 29% more conversions compared to the campaigns that overlook it.
Brands believe that UGC helps them to create a better connection with their customers and statistics prove it. Moreover, reviews and comments from actual users are considered much more reliable compared to the information generated by the brand itself.
GoPro mostly takes advantage of influencer generated content as the main part of its Instagram marketing strategy and to fuel its Instagram feed.
4. Branded hashtag
Millions of photos are shared on Instagram every day. Fortunately, hashtags can help your posts to reach the target audience.
Hashtags should be an important part of your Instagram marketing strategy if you want your content to be discovered by potential customers and appear in the hashtag feeds. Using relevant, targeted hashtags on your posts can help you get more views, likes, comments, followers, and consequently more engagement rates and profit.
Instagram allows you to use up to 30 hashtags for posts and 10 hashtags for stories. If you want to make the most out of Instagram hashtags for marketing, try a hashtag generator for your IG.
5. Use Instagram marketing services
Businesses of all sizes are using Instagram marketing services to build buzz and draw in fresh followers. These services enhance the efficiency of your Instagram marketing campaigns, ultimately leading to attracting more customers, especially for small businesses in their early stages.
One of the most popular free Instagram marketing tools is AiGrow, which allows you to generate organic Instagram followers, measure your engagement rate, and recieve real-time analytics.
In addition to AiGrow, you can explore other innovative Instagram marketing tools like I-Famous and Velesty to further enhance your social media strategy.
I-Famous is a powerful Instagram growth tool that uses AI technology to optimize your growth strategy based on your specific niche, followers, and competitors. With a focus on organic, sustainable growth, I-Famous ensures a steady increase in engagement from real users. As a result, users won’t have to worry about triggering Instagram’s algorithm and getting shadowbanned. Their user-friendly interface allows users to track progress effortlessly.
Velesty is another reliable service for authentic Instagram growth, prioritizing genuine methods to attract new followers. By analyzing profile details and engaging users from your area, Velesty ensures real interaction without the use of bots or fake accounts. This tool respects user privacy and doesn’t request Instagram authentication data, ensuring account security. Velesty offers different pricing options based on desired results and retention guarantees. With its user-friendly website and easy-to-use calculator, Velesty is a great option for users opting for Instagram growth.
6. Set Up Instagram Shopping
Instagram Shopping lets you integrate your product catalog with your Instagram profile. This way you can present your products directly to Instagram users through posts, stories, and the Shop tab on your profile. But, remember that to use Instagram Shopping you need to switch you account to Bussiness account.
7. Find the Best Times to Post
The reason you should post consistently and at the optimal times is that your post gets to be seen by more users and followers which can result in increased Instagram engagement.
If you post at the right time and your content immediately appears on your followers’ feeds, it increases your chance of going viral. But you can’t always be ready to post at the right times. Instead, you can learn the best time to post on Instagram and schedule your content for auto-publication.
Remember, the best time to post is highly related to your country and the location of your target audience. With a little research, you can collect the necessary information about this important Instagram marketing factor.
8. Use Instagram Stories
Instagram Stories are a very in-depth and in-the-moment way to express your brand and what are brand-new information about your products and services. Stories may receive much more engagement compared to posts are they are simpler to make.
With this feature, users can share photos and videos with their followers chronologically for 24 hours before disappearing.
There are many fun features available that make the Stories more interesting for Instagram marketing, including filters, drawings, captions, hashtags, location information, instant replies, etc.
9. Make the most of Stories highlights
Instagram Story highlights are really useful features. You can now save your Instagram Stories on your profile and go back and watch them again any time you want.
It gives you a feed of all of your most recent story highlights. This way, if someone misses one or two of your stories, they will be able to get caught up by watching them later.
10. Go Live
You can directly communicate with your followers through Instagram Live. Real-time intraction is one of the best strategies for Instagram marketing.
Unlike other social media apps that are one-sided, Instagram Live allows you to have a conversation in real-time with anyone who is watching, which can be a powerful tool for increasing engagement on Instagram for small brands.
Instagram launched “Live Rooms,” which allow up to four people to broadcast live together at the same time.
Instagram Live is a perfect platform for collaborations. With the Add a Guest and Live Room features, you can bring influencers on for interviews, Q&A sessions with your viewers, or just to have them on for a chat.
11. Expand with Instagram Ads
Instagram ads are one way for brands to reach the ever-growing Instagram audience. It has been introduced by Meta for marketing purposes on Instagram.
The benefit of using story ads as your Instagram commercial tool is that businesses have the chance to create stimulating ads that are full-screen and can really connect and engage the user.
In fact, 50% of Instagram users have their interest piqued after seeing a brand’s Instagram commercial. This may be well worth the investment if you can gain traction on the platform and target your ads correctly.
Brands can create an ad that is up to 15 seconds long and is typically played before viewing another user’s story.
12. Track Instagram Performance
Marketing on Instagram can’t be successful if you don’t have the right metrics for your marketing campaign. For example, the number of followers is important to know to gauge how many people are interested in your company.
However, a higher number of followers does not always mean a better engagement rate. It’s important to take other factors into account such as post-engagement and follower growth rates.
You can’t optimize your Instagram performance unless you know how it’s performing based on metrics like:
- Engagement rate,
- Follower growth,
- Click-throughs from the links,
- Lead Generation,
- Impressions.
13. Take advantage of sponsored posts
Asking influencers to post sponsored posts is one of the most effective methods of Instagram marketing for gaining the trust of your followers. These Instagram commercials are typically not separated from the organic content because they look like they came directly from the owner, rather than an advertising company.
So, users actually pay attention to them. It won’t be like YouTube ads that make users desperate for singing the skip button.
Create an Instagram marketing strategy
Building a brand and generating revenue with Instagram is easy when you choose the right strategy!
As more and more companies join the world of Instagram, it becomes increasingly important for them to develop a strong Instagram marketing strategy. Here are a few tips for your Instagram marketing strategy:
1. Set your goals for Instagram
When you know that your business is on the rise, it’s important to set goals for Instagram marketing. You might set a goal of gaining 100 new followers in one month or building 10K followers in two years. These types of goals help you make Instagram marketing more manageable and pave the way for your campaign success.
The goals you define should be smart and achievable. This means they should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.
Some goals you can consider for Instagram marketing strategy are:
- Increase brand awareness,
- Increase engagement,
- Boost sales,
- Generate leads,
- Increase website traffic through Instagram.
2. Research your Instagram target audience
Social media is a tool that can be used to reach one’s target audience and get their message across. With any marketing campaign, Instagram marketers should determine who they want to communicate with and why they want to communicate with them before deciding how they should integrate the platform into their Instagram strategy and plans.
3. Conduct a competitive analysis
If you want to take your Instagram marketing strategy to the next level, it’s important to research your competitors. The best way to do this is through a competitive analysis conducted on Instagram.
It allows companies to spot weaknesses in their competition and create strategies that will help them grow. By analyzing what brands are doing, it’s possible to see what works and what doesn’t work.
4. Configure an editorial calendar
Every company has its own goals when it comes to publishing content, but there are some tried and true best practices for publishing content. An editorial calendar is a great way to stay on top of deadlines for publishing your content in a cohesive way.
5. Build a consistent brand on Instagram
Consistency is the key when it comes to Instagram marketing. As social media is continually becoming more prevalent in society, the need for brands to remain cohesive throughout all platforms has grown as well.
This consistency refers to the design you are using, fonts, colors, the kind of content you share, and when you post your content. Having a brand identity is a thing that helps you stand out from the crowd.
6. Grow your Instagram follower base
Instagram followers come and go as the influencers rise and fall in popularity. To help increase your Instagram follower count, start posting more quality content. Quality content is important because it will attract people who want to follow you for your posts which means they are gonna engage with your content through liking, commenting, sharing, etc.
Conclusion
The idea of Instagram marketing isn’t a new concept. It’s a great way to reach a customer demographic and target a niche audience. With the rise in popularity of Instagram, it’s been becoming more and more important for businesses to adopt this form of marketing into their content strategy.
Instagram marketers try to get the best out of Instagram to run the campaigns and use their sources such as Instagram marketing services.
You can take advantage of Influencers as great assets to your Instagram marketing in order to reach more people and generate more sales.
Instagram is a great social media to build a more intimate relationship with your audience and target new customers. Brands of all sizes acquire many techniques to increase engagement. Many of these techniques are totally FREE.
Create an Instagram business account, collaborate with influencers, set up shop on Instagram, use branded hashtags, encourage more user-generated content, etc.
Search for Instagram in your following. Many might already be on your list and reach out to them. Analyze your competitors to see who they are working with. And use Influencer marketing platforms that give you detailed information about influencers.
