As we step into the year 2024, it’s time to drop the same old strategies from last year. But don't worry, we're here to help. We have compiled a list of 11 hottest Instagram marketing strategies that will make your follower count skyrocket.
From Instagram reels to stories, we have all the insider tips to help you build your personal brand, create a community, and keep your ideal target audience engaged. So, get ready to take your Instagram game to the next level. 🌐✨
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Brief overview of Instagram marketing
Instagram marketing is a process of using in-app content like photos and videos to spread the word about your business and products, connect with your Instagram target audience, establish connections with them, and spark their interest in your brand.
With the popularity of Instagram as a marketing channel, the platform constantly helps businesses and customers get in touch with each other and discover, research, or even buy products in-app. Instagram marketing also includes the practice of using different business-specific features like clickable links, product tags, in-app checkout, and much more.
Now that you know about marketing on this platform, it's time to look through 11 Instagram marketing strategies every business can try in 2024 to get better results.
11 Instagram Marketing Strategies
1. Understand your audience’s wants and needs
First things first: to create an effective Instagram marketing strategy, you need to know your target audience's wants and needs. Your Instagram content should resonate with your following to get higher engagement and therefore get in front of a wider audience of growing followers.
Once you have tailored your Instagram content strategy to your following and to your business strategy, you can get better results and Instagram audience insights can streamline this process, helping you measure the performance of your posts and your account overall.
To understand your following, you can access insights in the Instagram app or use third-party tools that provide users with advanced Instagram analytics. Regardless of how you go about measuring it, keeping an eye on your content’s performance is the best way to understand whether it delivers the desired results for your selected audience.
2. Stand out from the crowd with stunning visual content
With a strong focus on visual content, Instagram has quickly become one of the most popular social media networks among visual learners.
The platform’s users upload a staggering 95 million photos and videos daily. To get a chance to stand out from the crowd, it's important to create stunning visuals and great content that stands out in a crowded newsfeed.
Here is an example of Adobe sharing a nicely designed Reel on how to use the Generative Expand Tool.
3. Make good use of Instagram Stories
Back in 2016, when Instagram introduced its alternative to Snapchat Stories, this post format quickly became popular among users. As of January 2019, 500 million people create or watch Instagram Stories daily.
With a limited lifespan of 24 hours, not only do Instagram Stories create a sense of urgency among users, but they also help businesses achieve their goals faster. For example, you can add Story links or create engaging polls to understand your audience better. Thus, using Instagram Stories should be a part of your Instagram marketing strategy.
There are many ideas on how to create story content for your business profile, such as:
- Announce a new product launch
- Show a typical workday at your company
- Post short employee interviews
- Report user-generated content
- Share time-limited discounts and offers
- Host an Instagram contest
- Share feed posts for increased exposure
- Host a story take-over with Instagram influencers
- Create engaging Instagram stories highlights
- Popular memes to show off your brand personality
Want to know the best part? You can work on ephemeral content in advance and schedule Stories to ensure that your Stories go live when your audience is active and engaged.
4. Promote products with Instagram Reels
Video content is easy to digest and engaging, so it's no wonder that 91% of Instagram users watch videos on the platform weekly.
Since people usually prefer to hold their phones vertically, short yet engaging vertical videos like Instagram Reels grab their attention. What’s more, Instagram rolled out Reels as a tactic to compete with TikTok, so the platform favors Reels in the newsfeed algorithm, making it a great post type for maximizing your reach and get higher engagement rates.
The platform allows users to create multi-clip videos with audio and effects, which makes Instagram Reels a great solution for businesses that want to cut through the noise and spark interest in their products.
Sephora, for example, makes use of Instagram Reels to create entertaining and captivating promotional posts that showcase their products in a unique way.
5. Optimize your business profile for discoverability
No matter how great your Instagram marketing strategy is, it means nothing unless your content reaches your audience on the platform. Thus, it's important to optimize your profile or Instagram business account for discoverability.
Once you know how to boost discoverability and implement these tactics, you get a chance to increase your reach and get in front of new audiences of potential customers.
Here are several tips that help to optimize your business profile for discoverability:
- Include keywords in your name and bio section
- Add an eye-catching profile photo
- Publish when your target audience is active on Instagram
- Add hashtags and geotags to posts (tip: use an Instagram hashtag generator and branded hashtags)
- Team up with relevant influencers and businesses for more exposure
6. Add social proof with user-generated content
When your customers create content that promotes your business or products, not only can you get new content for your business profile, but you also add social proof and increase brand trust. That's why companies make user-generated content a part of their Instagram marketing strategy.
For instance, you can draw inspiration from Levi's and repost user-generated content to your Stories and then organize a dedicated Instagram Story Highlight album where interested followers can see more content from your customers and customer photos.
Source: Instagram
However, here are other effective ideas on how to use user-generated content on your business profile or brand story:
- Mix branded and user-generated content in your editorial calendar (ensure a good content mix in your Instagram content calendar)
- Create Instagram ads with user-generated content
- Leverage customers as brand ambassadors
7. Turn your profile into a storefront
Instagram is not just an app for posting content anymore; it's a powerful channel for boosting direct response sales, especially for ecommerce brands. Why? People spend a lot of time on the platform, so they love using it for product discovery and purchase.
As specified in Meta's own data, 83% of users discover new products or services, 81% of them do research, and 80% of people decide whether they want to buy a product with the help of Instagram. It has become an important part of your lead generation funnel.
Instagram knows about its potential, so it has many business-friendly features to help ecommerce businesses sell and customers buy on the platform. And when you turn your profile into a storefront, you can affect the purchase intent and turn your followers into paying customers.
Here are the steps you need to take to turn your profile into an effective storefront:
- Connect a product catalog with your Instagram profile to promote product discovery
- Create Instagram shopping posts by uploading appealing product posts, product images and videos
- Show off products from different angles
- Add product tags and product stickers
- Include branding for your Instagram Shop
- Be sure to include product-related hashtags
8. Increase reach with Instagram influencer content
Word-of-mouth marketing has always been one of the most effective tactics to spark interest in a business or its products. With the growing importance of social media influencers, 72% of marketers find Instagram as one of the best platforms for influencer marketing.
Practically every Instagram user follows at least one influencer, and we trust their recommendations (as long as it’s an original post). If you market your products on Instagram, it's a great idea to collaborate with relevant influencers as they help you achieve the following:
- Increase brand loyalty and trust
- Reach a wider audience of potential customers
- Gain new followers by creating engaging content
- Find more clients on social media
- Produce original Instagram content
Let's take a look at the collaboration between fashion brand Lulus and one fashion influencer. Not only does Kemper Baugh share a photo of herself wearing Lulus clothes in one of her influencer posts, but she also includes a promo code to help interested customers save money when making a purchase.
9. Boost Instagram presence with paid ad campaigns
Instagram is popular among users and marketers, so it can be hard to cut through the noise of published content and get the attention of your target audience. But if you invest in paid ad campaigns, you can bring your Instagram marketing to the next level.
Whether you want to boost brand awareness, drive website traffic, or generate leads, Instagram ads offer different ad objectives for any business goal. You can experiment with different content formats, brand creatives, stories ads, promote individual posts, Instagram video posts etc.
Do you want to increase sales? Consider using paid ad campaigns, just like Clinique did in the example below:
The company created a dynamic video that told viewers more about the products and their prices. As a result, the campaign drove a 2-point lift in action intent with combined people- and product-focused ads, a 5.2-point lift in action intent within the key age demographic of US women aged 45-54 with combined people- and product-focused ads, and a 4.4-point lift in brand awareness with people-focused ads.
10. Cooperate with other niche businesses
Wouldn't it be great if you could increase your customer base and boost sales with the help of other companies?
Over 25 million businesses are active on Instagram, which means it’s a great opportunity for your businesses to build each others’ communities. How? Cooperate with other businesses within your niche that have similar audiences out of the competition.
When done right, co-promotion with other businesses can help you attract more followers to your business profile, spark interest in your products, or even drive sales. Check out the following ideas on how to cooperate with other businesses on Instagram for maximum impact:
- Ask for endorsements or reviews
- Sponsor an Instagram giveaway
- Host an Instagram livestream with experts
11. Use Instagram as a customer service channel
Another Instagram marketing strategy that should be high on your list in 2024 is the usage of the platform as a customer service channel. Since users want to follow businesses in-app and 375 million people use Instagram Direct Messages each month, the demand for Instagram customer care has grown.
People contact businesses on Instagram with customer inquiries, and when it takes days or weeks to get a reply from your company, they lose interest in doing business with you. Thus, it's important to optimize your profile for customer service.
First, you can add various contact options to your Instagram bio and monitor DMs and comments. Second, you may want to create a separate Instagram handle, dedicated to customer service. Check out how Oh Polly did it:
What is more, the above-mentioned profile is a great example of Instagram branding where the company bothers about a cohesive Instagram feed that meets the brand identity and style.
Finding the best Instagram marketing tool for your needs
As a marketer or a business owner who has an Instagram presence for a business, you have a lot on your plate. Maintaining an effective Instagram marketing strategy takes much time and effort. When you use Instagram for marketing, it's more likely that you create visuals, write captions, monitor brand mentions and comments, communicate with followers, analyze content performance, and much more.
To save time and put some tasks on autopilot, it's important to rely on social media management tools that can optimize the process and make Instagram marketing easier for you.
And if you want to manage your Instagram on one platform, consider giving StoryChief a try.
Over to you
The importance of Instagram marketing isn't going anywhere within a short time. To stay competitive in the market and keep your customers happy, it's important to create an effective Instagram marketing strategy that can help your business achieve the right goals.
If you want to create a strategy for your Instagram or spice up an existing one, consider using one (or a couple) of the above-mentioned Instagram marketing strategies that work best in 2024. And don't forget to share your thoughts!
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