instagram marketing advanced strategy 2022

 What Instagram can do for your Business?

So now you know what Instagram is all about, and right after you learned some stuff you probably didn’t know about the platform, now it’s time to start talking business. That is, the benefits of using Instagram for doing and promoting your business.

For most marketers, doing business on Instagram is kind of a confusing Endeavor. You see, doing business on Facebook, for example, is a no brainer, as everybody knows how that platform works. But an app such as Instagram, with very specific functions and a dedicated set of features, can be a bit more difficult to tap into at first.

But the truth is that businesses of all sizes, from local brands, to family owned shops, to large corporations, are driving results from being active on Instagram, and their secret is in knowing how to implement their business practices into the way the platform works.

But their performance is also backed up by the numbers: 80 percent of Instagram users follow a business on the platform. That said, it wouldn’t be profitable for those business to be on the platform if it weren’t for their loyal followers, and an engaging business on Instagram can easily:

✓ Drive and spread awareness of their business activities, their brands, their products, and their services.

✓ Make potential customers get interested through visual discovery.

✓ Get new customers, which in turn will increase the desired conversions, including product sales, app downloads, website visits, and visitors to a local store, among others.

Instagram’s own built-in features will allow you to reach those milestones the easy way as long as you put in the effort, because Instagram has also been designed with business in mind, allowing them to:

✓ Create an Instagram Business account, which allows companies of all sizes to be recognized with a unique business profile, to gain insight about their followers, to promote posts designed to drive business goals, and giving visitors to your profile the right info such as your business address and contact details. All within Instagram!

✓ Send full screen adverts to Instagram stories, which is a friendlier approach to advertising compared to what other social platforms offer.

✓ Use business tools to get deep marketing insights, including reach, number of impressions, replies and exits for each individual campaign.

More so, the visual nature of Instagram combined with the story driven advertising model means that you will be offering an experience that far

surpasses the flat, impersonal feeling of marketing campaigns created on other platforms.

Instagram has many other benefits for businesses that are too often overlooked by marketers that focus their conversation on advertising, and in this training you will become aware that Instagram is as diverse as diverse can get.

For starters, you can repurpose your Instagram photos on your business website to create cross-platform engagement, and if your business has a physical location, you can bet that customers have uploaded pictures of it on the platform!

Even if you don’t have a physical location and only offer your products online, customers have probably uploaded pictures of some of them as well! There is a lot more to say about Instagram, so follow us to the next chapter for some shocking Instagram marketing facts that you should know!

Shocking Instagram Marketing Facts to Consider

As popular as Instagram is as a platform, both for personal use and for doing business, there is still a lot of stuff that is under most marketers’ radar. Here are some of the most inspiring Instagram marketing facts that you should consider when creating your own profit generating campaigns.

✓ Over 700 million people use Instagram on a monthly basis, with 400 million of those active on a daily basis, making it one of the largest online audiences that any business can aspire to reach! (source)

✓ Instagram posts earn 58 times more engagement per follower than Facebook posts on average, and 120 times more engagement per follower than Twitter posts, making it a must in your social-networks-to-be-in list. (source)

✓ Instagram users share an average of 95 million photos and videos on a daily basis, with even more expected growth in the coming years. (source)

✓ 60% of Instagram users have said that they have learned about a new product or service thanks to posts on the platform. (source)

✓ 80 % of Instagram users are from outside the United States, which represents a big opportunity for businesses to reach a global audience (source)

✓ 31% percent of American women use Instagram, outnumbering the 24% of American men using the platform, which is great news especially if your business targets the younger female demographic. (source)

✓ Currently, a whopping 48% of US based brands use Instagram for marketing purposes, and that percentage is expected to grow to 70% by the end of 2017 (source)

✓ 75% percent of Instagram users take action after seeing a promoted post. Such actions are driven by calls to action on these promoted posts, such as website visits, which means that, on average, your business has a higher chance of converting followers into customers by being on Instagram.

In this sense, “B2C” businesses, or “business to customer” businesses, are the ones that benefit the most from being on Instagram. This is mostly due to the fact that, buying a pair of sunglasses is an easier decision to make for a potential customer after seeing a beautiful picture of them on Instagram.

✓ Brands with Instagram accounts surpassing the 100,000 followers mark have grown a whopping 163% in just two years! So make sure to take advantage of what you will learn in this training to make those numbers grow for you as well! (source)

✓ The secret behind why marketing on Instagram is such a successful strategy can be explained with science, as Instagram has devised a

platform that allows its users to process content 60,000 times faster through image posts than, say, simple text ads, with people remembering 80% of your marketing message in your Instagram promoted posts. (source)

✓ There is a very specific set of hashtags that have been determined to be the best for marketing campaigns on Instagram, including “#contestalert”, “#sweepstakes”, “#giveaway”, “#discount”, “#travel”, “#deal” and “#smallbiz”. (source)

Instagram Walkthrough

Hey there dear friends! So far it’s been an educational roller coaster, as we are sure that there was a lot of stuff that you didn’t know about Instagram up until this point. And now that you know what Instagram is all about, it is about time that you learn how to use it from the inside out, and there’s nothing better than an introductory walk through to get you started.

Ok, so let’s start right on the app’s main login screen, where you will be asked to either enter your phone number, your email address or your username as well as your password to log into your Instagram account. In our case, we are going to login with our username, so we enter it in the corresponding field, then enter our password, and tap on the “log in” button.

Awesome! Now you are going to be taken to your Instagram feed. In your feed you will be able to see what others are posting in chronological order by scrolling down, and stories are featured on top as you can see here.

You can identify which account posted a post by looking at the profile icon on the upper left above the post image, and by tapping on the three-dotted button on the right you will be able to “report” a post, to use “copy link” to save a post’s link and share it, to “turn on post notifications” and to “share on WhatsApp”.

Below the post image you will be able to see how many likes a post has, and below the number of likes you will be able to see the post text and the

comments left by users on the post. Let’s now take a look at how you can interact with posts in your feed.

On the lower left there are three icons. The heart shaped icon will allow you to “like” a post. The dialog icon will allow you to leave a comment on the post, and the paper plane icon will allow you to send a post to your Instagram contacts by selecting them and then tapping on “send”. The bookmark icon on the lower right will allow you to add posts to your “collection”.

Note that you can revert any of these actions by re-tapping over any of those icons. Ok, let’s now check the features outside your feed, starting with the options available on top. Tapping on the notification number on the right will allow you to check your “direct” messages. Please note that once you are ready to exit a section, you will simply have to tap on the arrow button located on either side of the screen.

In this case we are going to tap on the arrow on the left to exit and move to the next section. Right, now by tapping on the camera icon on the left you will be able to either take a picture or film a short video that you can directly share on Instagram. We are going to teach you how to use these features in detail in the following section, so let’s tap on the arrow icon to go back to the feed for the time being.

Ok, let’s now check the icons located on the menu at the bottom of the screen. Let’s start from left to right by tapping on the profile icon, which will take you to your user dashboard. The first things that you will be able to see are your number of posts, your number of followers and the number of accounts that you are following, as well as your uploads as a gallery below.

By tapping on the list icon you will be able to see your uploads as large images or videos in list form. By tapping on the profile type icon beside the list icon you will be able to check posts where you have been tagged in, and tapping on the bookmark icon will show you your saved posts and collections.

Tapping on the three-dotted button on the upper right corner will take you to your account options, from where you will be able to manage how you invite friends and how you follow people. Here you will also be able to edit your account and your settings.

In this section you will also be able to get support, to get detailed information “about” Instagram, to “clear search history”, to “add account”, and to “log out”. We’ll take a deeper look at these options in a later chapter, so let’s just go back.

Tapping on the plus profile icon will allow you to discover more people on Instagram. In this section you will be able to find suggested contacts, you will be able to connect to Facebook, and to connect with people that you might already know who are also on Instagram.

Ok, let’s now go back and tap on the icon on the left, from where you will be taken to the “archive” section, where you will find a collection of your archived posts. Let’s now tap on the “edit your profile” button.

Tapping on this button will take you to the “edit profile” section, from where you will be able to edit your profile info, including your name, your username, your website, and your Bio. From this same section you will be able to “try Instagram business tools”. Let’s not forget that you will also be able to change your profile photo by tapping on “change photo”.

Ok, now that we have looked at everything inside the account dashboard, let’s tap on the heart shaped icon. Here you will find two tabs. In the “following” tab you will be able to see how the profiles that you are following are interacting with others. On the “you” tab you will be able to see how you are interacting with other profiles.

The “plus” icon in the middle is perhaps the one that you’ll be using the most, as that is the button that will allow you to quickly upload stuff to Instagram. When you tap on it you will be taken to the “gallery” section by default, from where you will be able to upload images and videos from your device to Instagram.

Tapping on the “photo” tab will allow you to take a snapshot, and tapping on the “video” tab will allow you to film, save and upload a quick video. Tapping on the search icon will take you to the “search” section.

In this section you will be able to search for trending posts as recommended by Instagram, and to use the “search” bar on top to look for posts using your own keywords and criteria. Lastly, tapping on the “home” icon will simply take you back to your updated feed.

And that is it! Tune in to the following section so we can show you how to use your Instagram account as a powerful marketing tool the right way

Do's and Don’ts for Instagram marketing 2022

Do’s

✅Use Your Profile to Promote Your Product Pages

The “website” field in your profile is a piece of overlooked Instagram real estate that you can use to get extra traffic to your product pages, so make sure to use it to promote profitable sections of your site to people looking at your bio!

✅Ask Questions to Engage Your Audience

One of the best ways to engage with your audience is by asking questions, as questions basically force people to weigh in with their opinions!

✅Post On A Consistent Basis

Posting on a schedule will ensure that your audience comes back for more on a timely basis because they will know when you are most likely to post.

✅Engage with Other Business Profiles

Engaging with other brand profiles on Instagram through comments, likes and by following hashtags will expose you to their own following, giving you a chance to get more followers as well!

Don’ts

Don’t Use Instagram Bots

You might be tempted to use an automatic responder or following bots, but in doing so you risk being perceived as a Spammer, not a brand!

❌Don’t Post Irrelevant Content

While off topic posts are not bad on occasion, avoid posting about stuff that is not centered around your brand or business, or you will end up losing your audience!

❌Don’t Over Post

Keeping your audience engaged two or three times a day is Okay by all standards, but posting any one of your passing thoughts is going to be annoying for most, so don’t do it!

❌Don’t Neglect Your Account

Going the other way and not posting regularly is just as bad as posting too much, as you risk your followers losing interest in your content.

❌Don’t Over Do Hashtags

Hashtags are necessary, but too many of them are not going to help you, so keep them on the down low, with 10 hashtags per post at most.

 Premium tools and Services to consider

Grum

One of the most resounding complaints that you’ll hear from Instagram marketers is that it doesn’t allow them to schedule posts, which means that there’s no way to create a post to be posted later than now.

Now, there are other Instagram post scheduling apps on the market, sure, but “Grum” is the only one that allows you to create and schedule posts right from your desktop!

INK361

Ask a marketer what they wish they had, and he or she will tell you a crystal ball. Knowing what followers like and what they don’t is something that can take you lots of effort to unravel.

“Ink361” can help you to take off some of that load by allowing you to analyze competing accounts to see what their audience likes so you can apply some of their strategies on your own campaigns. In short, it is an app for actionable insight discovery.

Crowdfire

One of the most popular practices on Instagram is to find popular accounts that have a large number of followers that meet the criteria of your target audience, follow them, then hope that doing so doesn’t backfire.

“Crowdfire” can help you to avoid all the guesswork by letting you see those that you follow but that are not following you back, then letting you to unfollow them with a simple click without you having to go to Instagram first!

Iconosquare

There’s nothing more discouraging than mapping out a marketing plan that you see as perfect based on analytic data to later see it fail. “Iconosquare” is a dedicated analytics tool that will allow you to analyze data from all angles, such as what hashtags would work the best for you and what times of the day are best for posting.

 Shocking Case Studies of Instagram marketing 

Burt’s Bees

“Burt’s Bees” is an American producer of cosmetics and natural beauty products that targets both its domestic and the International markets.

Objective: Their objective was to increase product awareness as well as brand recall across the beauty community.

Strategy: They promoted posts targeted at females aged between 18 and 24 in the United States using a “delight your lips” theme.

Results: They got a 15% lift in product awareness and a 16% lift in brand recall!

Philadelphia

“Philadelphia” is brand of cream cheese that is highly popular word wide.

Objective: Their objective was to reach out to young adults aged 25 to 40, specifically those more likely to throw casual get together parties.

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Strategy: They promoted posts showcasing many types of quick, party friendly recipes that could be easily done with Philadelphia cheese.

Results: They got an 8% increase in purchase intent and a whopping 41% lift in sales!

Levi's

“Levi’s” is a classic American apparel retailer that specializes in vintage style denim garments.

Objective: Their objective was to get the brand’s Instagram presence recognizable at first glance.

Strategy: They used beautiful images of people aged 18-34 wearing their branded clothes sharing unique moments with awesome background landscapes, thus making their brand part of the scenery.

Results: Their posts were seen by 7.4 million people in the US alone, and it generated a 24% increase in brand awareness among Instagram users!

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 Frequently Asked Questions for Instagram marketing 

How can You Gain More Followers Than What You Already Have?

It depends on what you are actually using now to engage with your followers, but there is a three-item rule to gain followers on Instagram: Gain by photos, gain by content, or gain by video. If you are currently engaging with content, try with photos or videos, or maybe a combination of the three!

Should You Buy Instagram Followers?

If you value your time, your followers and the type of engagement that you create, you shouldn’t. If you have to buy followers because you are not generating engagement, it means that you should optimize your content and your strategy.

Who should You Follow if You’re Using Instagram as a Brand?

You should follow basically anyone who is interacting with your Brand’s account. There is enormous value in following ordinary followers as well as other brands to foster better engagement.

What Is The Best Equipment For An Instagram Marketer?

While lots of people find great success by using a high resolution smartphone camera, serious Instagram marketing requires you to be prepared for any occasion, and the best equipment for any occasion includes a professional or mid-range camera, zoom lenses, and an action cam such as a GoPro.

Will Instagram Marketing Work For You If You Are From Outside the US?

Absolutely! While English is the most prominently used language when it comes to marketing on any platform, you can have great success no matter where you’re from when you follow our training to the letter.

Does Instagram Improve Your SEO?

It can, but consider that SEO is not the strongest point of social media, as search ranks do not improve with social shares, no matter how much you’re being shared. SEO on Instagram works when you build relationships with the right people and get them to share your non-social content with their following.

Should You Advertise Your Instagram Content?

Organic reach dropped by 52% in 2016 for publishers, and content creators are publishers by nature, so you will benefit from some paid advertisement as long as you develop a clear advert strategy that will not deplete your marketing budget.