13 Powerful Instagram Marketing Tips (That Actually Work)
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Over the years, marketing has evolved from what we used to know it to be a more simple system.
With the social media boom, we have been able to connect with people all over the world, getting a broader reach that can be streamlined to our taste.
The world has been gifted with Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to bring all creativity to life while allowing for easy visibility.
This is why we have compiled some marketing tips that will help you leverage the power of Instagram. Those tips are critical, especially if you want to make money on Instagram.
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT INSTAGRAM
Instagram is a social media app that encourages the sharing of photos from your smartphone.
Just like Facebook and Twitter, it is a personalized application that allows you to share your pictures, thoughts, comment, and like pictures from friends.
Your images can be seen on your friend’s feeds as soon as you post a picture while you can see theirs on your feed also.
Sweet, right?
Additionally, you can send private messages to people you follow and those you do not follow, as well. Also, you can save and share pictures that you like.
This application is available on iOS devices, i.e., iPads and iPhones and Android devices as well.
Also, a PC can be used to access Instagram via the web; however, you can only share and upload videos and photos.
While signing up to Instagram, you can link your account to your email and Facebook account, with a feature that allows you to follow your friends from Facebook.
Apart from posting pictures on your page, you can equally post videos that are up to 1 minute long.
INSTAGRAM AND MARKETING
Hidden in the buzz of mobile photography, likes, and gossip blogs is the treasure of marketing on Instagram.
The ability to reach just about anyone (whether a friend or a stranger) makes for good business publicity.
Instagram has about 800 million active accounts monthly, with an average of 60 million photos posted per day having nearly 1.6 billion likes daily. These statistics are enough to make any marketer shift camp to Instagram.
Coupled with the fact that there are hoards of influencers who can promote any business, it makes it the best way to get clients on a global scale.
This way, you get to connect with your clients on a personal basis and get to meet prospective customers within your target market.
It is fast becoming a trend to float a business with a virtual store where your products are snapped and posted to attract clients. The success of sales on Instagram is one that outshines other social networks.
However, your page could be just another unknown business page, except you follow the unspoken rules of Instagram marketing. We have outlined some of these rules below:

Figure 1: Conversion Rates of Social Media Source: Venngage
13 INSTAGRAM MARKETING TIPS
1. Use a Business Profile
Instagram has evolved from just being a personal account to having some business features that help improve marketing. Paramount on this list of features is the business account.
Users can now switch their profiles to a business profile to help them with plans to reach even more clients.
Switching to a business profile allows you to access metrics on your stories and posts, and insights of your followers. It also allows you to add the location, business hours, and phone numbers of your business.
Additionally, your clients can contact you straight from your page, just like from a website.
Also, publishing Instagram ads gets easier while using a business profile as you can post ads without using advert tools from Facebook.
2. Make Use of the Free Instagram Tools
Instagram business profiles come with tools that are similar to Facebook business accounts.
These tools may include metrics and insights. The metrics on your business profile will allow you to understand your followers.
Insight is an analytical tool on Instagram that gives you statistics of your posts and their reach. Impressions and engagement data are some statistics you can view through Insights.
Additionally, you can see the demographics of the users who follow you. Statistics of their age, location, and gender are also made available with these tools.
Also, you can narrow down the insights to a specific time and posts to see the impressions during that period.
While using these tools, you can tell the most liked product and get to adjust your market accordingly, to maximize sales.
3. Use Product Teasers Gently
Using product teasers is a way of advertising your products without being too pushy.
Followers tend to unfollow a page if the adverts get too much. The best way to sell your products without trying too hard is by using product teasers.
One right way to do this is by using a discount offer while redirecting them to an app where they can shop them. This is way better than posting pictures of your products with their prices continuously. This can get tiring after a while and can make you lose followers.
This is the best approach, especially when your brand is a bit known.
For instance, Starbucks uses product teasers on its audience by showing pictures of their drinks seasonally without pressuring them to buy.
Teasing customers with products that they might be interested in gives them the freedom to make their choices without feeling rushed.
Even if they don’t buy, they could show interest by liking, commenting, and sharing, while making a mental note to get it later.
Thus, be confident while posting pictures of your products, however, be gentle while doing so.
4. Sponsor Your Ads
Instagram ads are the confirmed way to increase your reach. Before sponsored ads, only your followers could see these updates. Consequently, these sponsored ads can reach non-followers, while allowing you to set a budget on your adverts.
Your content for sponsored ads should be appealing and engaging to your target audience.
This is where the statistics from your insights come in handy; you can use your top posts to create sponsored ads.
You can sponsor different content to different audiences at the same time for a broader reach. Sponsored ads could be in various forms such as
- Videos
- Photos
- Stories
- Carousels
- Stories Canvas

Figure 2: Instagram Content Chart Source: MarketingCharts
5. Post Instagram Stories
Posting Instagram stories is a great way to let your followers keep up with your daily activities. These stories appear in a slideshow, where your updates appear for 24 hours on your follower’s timeline.
It usually appears at the top of their feed, where they can see it easily.
Additionally, you can save these stories and use them at a later date. Instagram stories are beneficial to different brands as their content is placed where it can be viewed easily.
You can feature behind-the-scene contents that could be entertaining and must not be in line with your brand products. In your Instagram stories, you can test different effects like Boomerang, video rewind, live video, e.t.c on your story.
Additionally, you can tag different accounts, especially other brands and influencers that could aid your brand. The sequence you use to post your pictures is the way your followers will view it.
6. Work with Influencers to Widen Your Reach
The fastest way to reach more potential customers on Instagram is by partnering with brand influencers that already have an audience with a large followership base.
More people buy products because they saw an influential person sporting the product.
When they see these influencers using these products, they automatically believe that it is authentic.
Thus, when you work with the right influencer that appeals to your audience, it automatically makes your brand reach more people.
Firstly, you should pick an influencer that would represent your brand accurately. For instance, if you have a skincare line, your influencer could be a public figure with smooth skin.
Additionally, you could collaborate with these influencers over a long time, say, making them your brand ambassadors.
This will allow you to benefit long term from the partnership.
If the relationship with your influencer is strong enough, then you would have built a relationship with the thousands or millions of people following them.
7. Post Testimonials and Reviews of Customers
It is never really enough to post pictures of your products and brand influencers alone.
There is a different level of trust when your customers see testimonies and reviews from people they can relate with.
Encourage your followers and those who patronize you to send their reviews and stories, while using the products. This way, you have great content without working too hard.
When users submit pictures of them using your products as well as how good the product works, this encourages your other followers to buy from you.
Additionally, your followers will be intrigued by these contents because they are unpredictable, authentic, and come from fellow customers.
Getting these user-generated content is a bit easy.
You can encourage your users to share their reviews and testimonials with you so you can post it on your page and help them gain more followers.
This will be a win-win situation where you get to gain their friends as followers while reassuring your followers of your authenticity.
Also, you can post these pictures in a manner that doesn’t overwhelm your followers. For instance, you can organize a contest where they can post photos of them using your products and tagging you.
Be liberal with picking winners of these contests; switch between those who have a large followership base and others.
8. Increase Interaction Using a Branded Hashtag
Using branded hashtags is a great way to encourage interaction and engagement between your brand and its followers.
These tags will be used alongside pictures and allow followers and non-followers to search through the said content exhaustively.
Customers can use these tags to see posts that are relating to your brand.
Also, you can search through the pictures attached to these tags and consider reposting them.
This method is a free way of advertising your brand, because, when your followers post photos with these tags, they expose your brand to their followers.
Creating these branded hashtags should not be too tasking as they could be a famous phrase or slogan related to your brand. For instance, Coca-Cola does this with the tag #ShareACoke.
9. Avoid Over-Posting
One way to lose followers is to over-post content on Instagram. In the same way, you need to post consistently to remain in your followers’ news feed.
However, if you have a scheduled time or day of posting, your posts could remain relevant to your followers.
The days and times of posting will be more effective if they are posted when your followers are online. Also, there are some days that you shouldn’t post on Instagram; Sundays and Wednesdays.
The best days to post are Mondays and Thursdays when there are more Instagram users online.
Additionally, posting between 8:00 am and 9:00 am is one of the best times to post on Instagram.
This is because, at this time, users are probably preparing for work and commuting to work. Consequently, this is when they go through their feeds and timelines for the day.
Also, 2:00 am is another time when you can catch a good number of users online, as this is the time when most people will be going through their feed instead of sleeping.
However, you can go through your Insights to see the days and times that your followers are more active online. Consequently, your posting days and times may differ from the above statistics.
Also, the Instagram business account can allow you to set a schedule for posting if you might not be available at these times.
Additionally, research shows that you should post either once or twice a day to avoid overwhelming your followers.
If you have more than one picture to show, the carousel feature will let you do this at once, without creating too many individual posts.
10. Track Your Metrics
Instagram marketing requires tracking to see how well your page is performing, so you can increase performance.
This is why you need to check your metrics regularly to know what you need to improve on or reduce.
You can start by monitoring the growth rate of your followers.
When you do this, you can pick out the kind of content that increases followers or has less influence on your followers.
Also, you can check engagement rates, which totals your likes and comments.
This feature allows you to check the average percentage of engagement of all your followers.
You can also check the engagement rate on individual posts to see how your page is thriving.
11. Organize Giveaways and Contests
Doing giveaways and competitions is a sure way of increasing your followers as well as customers. This can help you gain more followers, sell more products, and capture leads.
One popular way of doing this is a photo contest with a hashtag and encouraging those with the highest likes.
As a result of this, there will be more traffic on your page as everyone will go about tagging their friends to your page to increase their chances of winning.
Another way is doing this in partnership with another brand. Their followers will indirectly get access to your page to see your posts and products.
Additionally, you can run your contests as an Instagram ad to increase the number of people who see it.
This will allow people who might be interested in your products to view it. In this ad, you should include the prize to make followers more interested.
12. Include a Call to Action
Call to Actions are beneficial to marketers and work effectively not only on websites but also on Instagram. Your profile has a provision for a bio where you get to explain your business and offers.
When you add a CTA to your bio, you increase the traffic on your website, especially if it is a link to your site.
For instance, you can say, “Click the link below to book a seat in the (insert) conference.” This will increase the engagement between you and your customers.
Additionally, on your post, you can prompt them to like, comment, and share your posts. Faithful followers will do this, thus, increasing the traffic on your page.
13. Encourage Followers to Turn on Post Notifications
With the many feeds on your timeline, it is possible to miss some notifications and posts from some brands. This is why it is best to prompt your followers to turn on post notifications so that they can be alerted when you add a post.
You can do this with every post you add as well as on your bio.
Thus, as soon as you make a post, they will be able to click and react to it to increase your organic reach.
Additionally, when you post on your story, you can alert followers that you have a new post.
Other tips on Instagram marketing include:
- Reply to your comments and messages: Closure is one thing that customers cherish more than anything. Acknowledging their comments and direct messages will give them this sense of belonging. This might be challenging if you are a huge brand, but just a simple “hope to hear from you soon” might go a long way.
- Comment on other related brand pages: Instagram marketing is all about the traffic you can amass on your page. Commenting on posts by other local brands can help you with new and potential customers. This will be more effective if the brand is a bit related to your brand. Additionally, leave well-meaning comments other than “Nice post.”
- Go live with your followers: Instagram Live allows brands and people to connect with their followers. This will even be more appreciated as a product brand as it will enable you to communicate with your followers personally. You can host your live sessions as a Q & A session, a product launch, or a live ad with influencers.
FINAL THOUGHTS
These tips are proven to help you get more followers, effective social media marketing and more traffic on your page.
Although these tips are useful, you should still try them out and maximize what works more for you.
If you are not sure where to begin, you can start by changing your profile to a business account. This way, you can get access to Instagram business tools and maximize them. And then learn how to make money on Instagram.
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