What is Instagram Marketing?

Instagram marketing is a type of social media marketing platform in which marketers use the Instagram platform to promote their business. Instagram is considered one of the fastest-growing social media platforms. Instagram helps in for a free, online photo-sharing application and a social media platform that was acquired by Facebook in 2012. Instagram is not only a tool for teenagers and adults for their pleasure time but it is also a tool for survival for some small business people.

The photo-sharing app offers companies the opportunity to start a free business account to promote their small scale or large scale brands and products. On Instagram, companies with business accounts are given access to free engagements and impression metrics. According to Instagram policies, more than 1 million advertisers worldwide can use Instagram to share promotion stories and drive business results. 60% of the people in the survey say that they discover and try new products through social media and especially through Instagram.

When looking at various ways to use Instagram for marketing, you can split the activities into two main categories:

• Paid tactics like advertising and influencer marketing, these influencers can be actors and other famous people who are active on Instagram.
• Unpaid tactics like creating organic content, such as posts, Instagram stories, and comments, they as well engage with other user content.

The main business goal might include selling your products and services, getting more followers and engagement, building a promising relationship with potential customers and other brands, and generally boosting a brand’s reputation. Instagram has become a source for many people for doing business via social media and also influencers give publicity of the product through Instagram.

It is clear that Instagram is not only for personal use but now it is a global platform that allows brands to humanize their content, recruit new talent, showcase products, and inspire their audience. Moreover, Instagram users aren’t just active users but they are totally engaged in Instagram. About 59% of them visit these marketing sites daily, and spend at least 7 hours per week browsing content and interacting with friends and brands.

Instagram can also help you grow your brand awareness and introduce new products according to the user’s choice. Every month about 130 million Instagram users engage with shopping content on Instagram. Instagram allows you to promote your brand and products in a friendly and authentic manner without forcing or hard selling to customers. This allows people to grow with the trending current styles.

Why market on Instagram?

Instagram’s primary advantage over other social media platforms is its visual nature. Instagram marketing is the best options platform to showcase that content or the product. The product promotion can be of any type; it can be through the influencer’s post or through their story. Video, imagery, and illustration are all great content fit for these social media platforms, but your marketing effect will ultimately depend on the influencer’s followers and their influence on them, and another marketing strategy will ultimately determine what type of content to publish and how often the business is progressing through Instagram posts.

Having a clear-cut idea of having a strategy is very important before diving right into a new social media platform, no matter how well it works for everyone else’s business, the business should focus on their goals and most importantly your audience.

What exactly is digital marketing?

Digital marketing is also known as online marketing; digital marketing helps in the promotion of brands and to connect potential customers using the internet or it can be any other form of digital communication. It can be through email, social media, and web-based advertising, but also text and multimedia messages as marketing channels. These social media posts can help small business owners to establish and have recognition. We can find a lot of digital marketing companies and agencies in Kerala.

How can we identify our goals and objectives to start a business in social media?

Your goals and objectives are the pillars of your marketing plan. We need a smart acronym for goal setting:

• It should be specific: It should be specific enough to give the exact numbers and milestones instead of a vague goal.
• Measurable: Choose goals that can be tracked and can be measured with analytics and insights.
• Attainable: It should be realistic.
• Relevant: Stay aligned with your industry, business, and outlook.
• Time-bound: Give the company a timeframe to accomplish the goal.

Once the goal is set, it’s time to flesh out your Instagram content strategy.

Build your Instagram content strategy

• Make sure that every post is aligned with your branding and aesthetic

We need to make sure that the brand name should be unique and the customers should be able to identify the brand easily. For example, if your brand is high fashioned, ensure that all the images should be of high quality, with feelings of elegance and sophistication. If the brand is quirky or funny, then Instagram is a great place to let your true color shine.

• Get valuable Intel from your friends

If you are just starting a business in social media, it can behave used to help to peep yourself to what other companies are up to. Check out the top-performing posts from similar brands, and your biggest competitors, leaders in specific niches, and the most broadly popular accounts on the platform. Doing this competitive research will make you understand important trends, best practices, and will help in knowing Instagram hacks to take you to the next level in marketing.

• Create a social media content calendar to stay on a fixed schedule

This social media content calendar can help you stay on top of your Instagram content strategy, ensuring that it’s cohesive and consistent. Write out all of your posts for the next month, scheduling for at least three or more posts per week.

• Use Instagram insight to track the performance of the business.

Instant insight is a free tool that is available for everyone and anyone with a business profile. It gives you a valuable idea about the key performance metrics of your account, like how much people are getting attention for your post and how engaged users are. While this build-in analytics tool is not mind-blowingly comprehensive, it is a fantastic tool for starters.

Making money with Instagram marketing

If you love being active on Instagram and have a decent number of engaged followers, then there is the choice for you to make money from Instagram. While top influencers make a lot of money out of these posts, so even those having follower strength between 1000 and 10000 have the potential to earn from Instagram which is a healthy source of income.

The topmost ways to make money from Instagram:

• Sell your own products:

Start making money by selling any digital or physical product that you manufacture yourself or buy from suppliers.

• Sign up for an affiliated program:

There is an opportunity for you to sell other people’s products as an affiliate or for promotion and receive a cut.

• Become an influencer:

Having an influencer status, you can actually pitch brands to promote their products and services in your post or in your story according to the wish of the business company. The amount will be credited to the influencers by the brand.

New technologies in digital marketing have made business management an easy task. In comparison to traditional marketing and Instagram marketing, it is more complex, omnipresent, efficient. This product has much quicker results and profits than traditional marketing techniques and it is a more versatile form of marketing than conventional methods. The greatest thing about Instagram marketing is that it offers numerous resources for an immediate study of the impact of every digital marketing industry.