12 Powerful Instagram Marketing Strategies To Follow

With more than 2 billion monthly active users per month, Instagram is considered the trendsetter of social media advertising or marketing. Instagram has changed the landscape of social commerce, and how brands have used social media for over a decade. So, the question is, how can one use Instagram marketing to grow their business in 2023?

What is Instagram Marketing
Instagram marketing is how brands use Instagram to establish a link and connect with their target audiences and advertise their products and services. Recently, Instagram has gained popularity as an excellent means for brands to display their cultures, hire new employees, interact with customers, and advertise products in a new light.
Like Twitter and Facebook, everyone with an Instagram account has a profile and newsfeed. People can connect and interact with each other by following, being followed, private messaging, and commenting on or liking videos or photos. The editing options and in-app filters on Instagram make the app exclusive with the in-app editing feature. Users can upload videos and photos on their Instagram profile and edit them with various options. Instagram is a very efficient marketing platform for entrepreneurs, brands, and creators. Instagram marketing strategies include:
Organic content: Videos, photos, or carousel posts, stories, reels
Paid content: Instagram ads, that include shopping ads, stories ads, and more
Influencer marketing
Shopping tools: product tags, shop tab, catalog, live shopping, Instagram checkout, shopping ads, and so on.

Instagram Marketing Advantages

1. Instagram has nearly 1 billion monthly active users. These users being rife with the opportunity to buy your product/ services.
2. The platform also has 500 million daily, active users.
3. Marketers who have already taken advantage of the platform can attest to more than 7 billion dollars of revenue being generated from Instagram mobile.
4. It also the home of more than 2 million advertisers.
5. It offers increased conversions. Research indicates that more than 1/3rd of the audience using the application has used it to purchase products. Indicating that the more you advertise on Instagram, the higher the likelihood of your products being sold.
6. Instagram also offers a plethora of targeting options. Thanks to its parent company, Facebook (with which Instagram shares an advertising platform too), Instagram, like Facebook has access to features like advertising based on age, location, gender, interests, and much more.
7. You can also build better brand-follower relationships. As a platform, Instagram enables you to engage in conversations with your followers and build relationships with them. Understanding your audience based on engagement will also help you make smart and well-informed decisions about your content. This can significantly improve the chances of your follower to turn into a customer. 

Now, coming to the most important part: Instagram Marketing Strategies and Tips.

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What is Instagram Marketing

Instagram marketing is how brands use Instagram to establish a link and connect with their target audiences and advertise their products and services. Recently, Instagram has gained popularity as an excellent means for brands to display their cultures, hire new employees, interact with customers, and advertise products in a new light.
Like Twitter and Facebook, everyone with an Instagram account has a profile and newsfeed. People can connect and interact with each other by following, being followed, private messaging, and commenting on or liking videos or photos. The editing options and in-app filters on Instagram make the app exclusive with the in-app editing feature. Users can upload videos and photos on their Instagram profile and edit them with various options. Instagram is a very efficient marketing platform for entrepreneurs, brands, and creators. Instagram marketing strategies include:
Organic content: Videos, photos, or carousel posts, stories, reels
Paid content: Instagram ads, that include shopping ads, stories ads, and more
Influencer marketing
Shopping tools: product tags, shop tab, catalog, live shopping, Instagram checkout, shopping ads, and so on.

How to Set Up Instagram Marketing

To advertise your business on Instagram, you need an Instagram Business account. Creating a business account on Instagram is free, and you can create a new account or also convert your previous Personal account. Perform the following steps to set up Instagram Marketing:
Step 1: Download Instagram: You can download Instagram for iOS as well as Android.
Step 2: Create a Personal Account: Click Create new account and specify all the details required and then choose your username and password. You need not fill out the rest of your profile right away.
Step 3: Switch your new account to a Business one: If you want to change your old account to a business account, log on to your profile and open the menu. Go to Settings and select Switch to professional account. This option is available at the bottom of the screen. Select Business as the account type and then specify the details required. Following figure illustrates the settings option on Instagram:

Note: You can also apply for verification as having that blue checkmark helps you earn the customer’s trust and you also stand out.

Instagram Marketing Advantages

Following are the key advantages of Instagram marketing:
Ever-increasing opportunities: This social media platform is continuously growing, and it is safe to believe that Instagram is going to get saturated or outdated any time sooner. There are still many opportunities left for businesses to reach their target audience.
Build a following for your brand: On Instagram, millions of people are following different brands and are keeping tabs on what the brands are sharing. Not every platform has users doing that actively.
Create ads easily: Instagram Ads can be integrated with Facebook Ads Manager, and you can reap the rewards of most optimization selections, campaign objectives, and targeting options.
Showcase your brand through stories: Instagram has its own version of stories, and more brands continue getting into this popular placement and witnessing great success.
Leverage high engagement rates: The engagement rates on Instagram are much highe as compared to any other social media platform.

Instagram Marketing Strategies and Tips

Following are some of the best Instagram Tips and Strategies:
Use Instagram reels: Instagram users spend close to 20% of their time watching Reels on the app, and it is still the fastest-growing format.
Improve your graphics game: Instagram is a visual platform and you need to create eye-catching posts that attract your audience.

Post frequently: Bringing in new followers is only one-half of the equation of your business growth, the other half depends on how frequently you post.

Concentrate on high-value accounts within your niche: Focus on quality engagement with high-value accounts within your field.

Interact with your audience: Reels can bring new viewers, but you need to turn them into long-term followers. The easiest way to turn followers into customers and fans is by liking, replying, and resharing their responses.

Select the right hashtags: Hashtags are an easy way to expand your reach, which is an essential component of accomplishing Instagram follower growth.
Work with influencers: Working with Instagram influencers is an effective way to advertise your product.

Post when your audience is online: Early engagement mostly occurs if you post when your audience is online.

Be original – and stay true to your brand: Always stay true to your brand. It is essential to keep a check on platform updates.

Try Instagram ads: The easiest way to use Instagram ads is to boost a post or a story and use the More Profile Visits ad objective.

Try Instagram Live videos: Live video is a powerful tool for Instagram growth.

Experiment: Analyze your performance frequently and set aside time for experiments to see the tactics that work best for you.

 Top 5 Instagram Marketing Tools

To help you make the most of the marketing potential that Instagram offers, we suggest that you invest in third-party marketing tools. Following are the top 5 Instagram Marketing tools:

Iconosquare
Sprout Social
Linktree
Keyhole
Phlanx.

Instagram Marketing Strategies and Tips

Tip 1: Optimize Your Bio

Your Instagram bio offers your viewers the first look at your brand. And that’s exactly why your bio needs to be captivating, informative, and engaging. Your bio can be used to give a basic description of your product, what kind of content you plan to post, brand hashtags, links to other social media platforms, and much more. You should also include a trackable URL to which you want to drive traffic, a link to your brand’s website, or your product page. Make sure you track this link to see how much traffic it brings. 

Here, you can see how Samsung advertises the bio effectively with a branded hashtag, different services, links to other pages, and a link to its website. It is one of the most basic and yet most important Instagram Marketing Strategy that is bound to give you a good result.

Tip 2: Create a Content Calendar

Having a content calendar for your brand is considered one of the most important things you need to make a mark on any social media platform. With a content calendar, you can keep track of the posts you have made or plan to make. You can plan and even automate when your posts go live based on when your audience is most active. You can decide what content, caption, image, or hashtag goes live when. It is also immensely helpful when you’re planning to repost your older content. 

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Tip 3: Get Greater Reach With Ads

Paying for ads will help you gain more followers, leads, likes, conversions, and more. The Facebook Ads Manager, through which Instagram ads can also be set up, gives you a whole range of targeting options based on interactions, interests, buying habits, and more. It also provides a wide range of options to choose from, like image and video ads, story ads, collection ads, and much more. 

Here’s an example of how The Body Shop uses a single image ad with an attractive ad copy (which is offering a sale) and creativity. This will attract the customer to interact with the post and click on the link.

Tip 4: Have a Visually Consistent Feed

Aesthetically pleasing content always works on Instagram. And that’s where you need to put your focus. Your feed needs to follow a particular theme and connect to the audience within your industry. Your content must make your brand seem approachable and down-to-earth. 

Here’s an example of aesthetically pleasing content. As you can see, the images here follow the theme of being underwater or blue. You need to make sure your content is understandable and follows an aesthetic fitting of your brand. 

Let’s now continue with the next step in our Instagram marketing strategies and tips.

Tip 5: Tell a Story

Tell a story with the images, videos, and the stories you post. They must grab the attention of your audience and connect with them. Your captions can tell stories that make your brand seem more human and build deeper connections with your audience. Whatever content you make, it must align with your audience's needs or solve a problem they face.

The page here, Patagonia, talks about forests in America in their posts. Each post tackles and brings awareness to a different issue that affects nature.

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Tip 6: Use The Right Hashtags

Using the right hashtags can greatly impact how many people will end up seeing your posts. Use something too generic like #newyear, #christmas, or #style, prepare to have your post getting lost in the sea of several similar others. Try to find keywords that incorporate trending and industry-specific keywords that your followers will connect with. Research also shows that the ideal number of hashtags is seven or less. You can also find what hashtags your competitors use and how you can do something similar. Researching on hashtags that are specific to your brand is also a great idea. These need to be short, memorable, and should ideally involve your brand in some way. 

Tip 7: Take Advantage of UGC

User-generated content enables your audience to involve themselves with your brand further. It’s cost-effective since the content created is made by the audience itself and approved by them. Regardless of your field, UGC can greatly help with converting users to advocates of your brand. 

Here’s an example of how Starbucks uses UGC to advertise their products. In this post, Starbucks has posted a followers’ image of their children dressed in Starbucks products. Thanks to it being from another follower, oozes authenticity and will be greatly appreciated by the audience.

Tip 8: Take Advantage of Video Ads

Instagram offers three types of video ad formats for marketers. Single video ads that can create 60-second ads, carousels are a combination of images and videos, and Instagram stores that enable you to combine images and videos to create visually attractive ads. Although photo ads are more popular among marketers, video ads aren’t very far behind, with a spike in usage among marketers. 

Here’s an example of the brand Pizza 73 using story ads to advertise their pizzas. It’s successful because they’re showing off the product they’re advertising with well-shot videos and captions. 

Now, let’s move on to our next step in our Instagram marketing strategies.

Tip 9: Partner Up With Influencers

Influencers on Instagram are usually thought leaders within your industry who can show off your products/services to their audience. By connecting with them, they trust their audience has in them will translate to trust they’ll have in your brand. With the right amount of resources, tools, and guidance, influencers can provide great returns. 

Here we can see how Ralph Lauren has collaborated with an influencer to advertise their products. The influencer is showing off the latest Ralph Lauren has to offer. This encourages his interested followers to check out the page and buy something for themselves.

Tip 10: Host Contests and Giveaways

Contests and giveaways enable your audience to engage with your brand. Giving away your product or service improves engagement and brand awareness. You must plan out the process, collaborate with the right brands, set up competition rules, monitor the contest, and ensure it runs properly. You should also track the contest and share the results on other social media platforms. 

Here’s an example of a contest run by Dominos pizza, which encourages people to contribute their own short stories and connect better with the brand.

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Tip 11: Take Advantage of Stories and IGTV

Stories are features that are a combination of images and videos that disappear after 24 hours. This has a significant impact on your reach and engagement. It also helps make your brand seem more approachable and authentic. Links to your website can also be added to these stories.

IGTV, although assumed to be on the decline now, has a few advantages to offer the smart marketer. IGTV provides a unique mobile-friendly layout that works well for evergreen content like interviews and featurettes

Another new tool they’ve introduced is Instagram reels. Instagram’s answer to TikTok. Instagram released reels through which users would be able to upload 15-second clips. And since it was released very recently, it’s rife with marketing potential.

Tip 12: Track and Learn 

Identify effective hashtags, visual styles, and the best times to post. By doing this, you can develop the best practices for your brand. Social listening and analytics will help you finetune your marketing strategy and increase Instagram engagement. 

What’s Next For You?

Now that we've covered some important Instagram Marketing strategies and tips, a great next step would be to take up Simplilearn's Digital Marketing Associate Master's Program and be on your way to making a splash in Digital Marketing. 

With this course, you will get a comprehensive understanding of popular tools such as Crazy Egg, SEMrush, Feng-GUI, MailChimp, and Buffer. The course will also serve as a great preparatory program for OCMA, Google Ads, Facebook, HootSuite, and HubSpot exams. 

If you have any questions for us, do mention them in the comment section of this digital marketing interview questions article. We'll have our SMEs answer them for you right away.