How to build a profitable Instagram marketing strategy?

Before getting right to the point of the article, let’s do simple math. Here’s why your business is dead if it’s not on Instagram. Or why your business will win if it is.

Count of Instagram daily active users now equals to 500 million. Monthly active users number is one billion. One. Billion. See? Instagram is a precious platform for businesses and brands, and here are some plain facts to prove that.

• 32% of all Internet users are on Instagram.
• 130 million users tap on a shopping tag to learn more about a product.
• 25 million business profiles are on Instagram.
• More than 200 million users visit at least one business profile daily.
• ⅓ of the most-viewed Stories are from advertisers.
• The possible reach of Instagram advertising is 802 million.

So, the statistics are remarkable. But how to get the most out of Instagram? Not every business owner or marketer knows that. Here are several crucial steps every entrepreneur should take to build a winning Instagram marketing strategy.

Set Your Business Goals Right

What do you need Instagram for? Because all your competitors have an account there? Because the audience there is very large? If so, your Instagram marketing strategy will not win. Regular users don’t use Instagram to buy things there. Instagram is not a marketplace or fair. Keep this in mind. Your potential reasons for appearing on Instagram are brand awareness increase, sales increase, or creation of a loyal community. And these are just to name a few.

Development of Instagram Marketing Strategy

Okay, you’ve set your goal. Depending on the purpose you choose, your strategy may vary. But the steps we’re going to talk about are essential no matter what your business goal is.

Competitors And Audience Analysis

Before pumping money into advertising or influencers, analyze your competitors on the platform. Check their content marketing strategy, look through the ads they make, influencers they collaborate with, and their audience. Try to think about their strong and weak points.

You can easily find the potential competitors within Combin, a smart tool for skyrocketing your Instagram marketing. Simply type your business while searching by Hashtags, and there you have it. Posts of your potential competitors.

Or you can search your competitors by Bio. Put the keyword into the required field and get informative results. If you want to find your local rivals, use Search by Place with Combin interactive map.

Along with the competitors, analyze your target audience. Before doing so, you need to understand that you know your clients – their age, gender, places they live, their interests, and favorite bloggers/brands. After your client’s image is clearly imaginable in your mind, search for real people matching your criteria.

Find followers of your competitor’s account, analyze them, then select and comment, like, or follow them to grab their attention and let them know about your brand.

Content

One of the critical parts of your Instagram marketing strategy. If your content is poorly made and delivered, no ads or influencers will help you to grow your clientele and increase sales. Your content on Instagram should be like this:

1. Valuable. Give your audience something interesting and unique. Even if your content is 70% selling posts. Make it creative and smart.
2. Engaging. Write interactive captions, make different Stories with polls, questions, quizzes, chats, and stickers. Make your audience interact with your account. And don’t forget about videos. Combine regular feed posts, Stories, make live videos with other brands, influencers, and even your customers.
3. Aesthetic. Instagram is a visual platform, so make sure your profile looks good, fresh, and stylish.
4. User-generated content. This increases loyalty among your clients and strengthens your market power.

Content is what is designed to make your audience stay with you and be loyal to your brand. If you make brilliant ads and pay no attention to the content, then no ads will make people follow you and buy your product.

Brand Guidelines

This is the set of rules made by you or your marketer. These guidelines will determine your marketing strategy, help you diverge from your competitors, and build your brand DNA. What should be included in the brand guidelines?

• Content strategy. What posts you will make, how often you will publish them, what style and language you will use, whether you’ll use emojis, what topics you will never touch on, etc.
• Hashtags. What hashtags you will use and how many.
• Customer support on social media.

Keep in mind that your brand guidelines are not about being wrong or right. Your brand needs to behave consistently so that everyone could see you and recognize you.

Account Growth Analysis

Marketing without analysis is hardly marketing. Set KPI that correlate with your business goals to track your progress. You can do it either within Instagram or use third-party tools to get more detailed data.

Combin allows you to track your engagement and profile growth in a window of time based on your activity within Combin or Instagram.

Collaboration

To increase your brand awareness, gain new genuine followers, and thus, to skyrocket sales, you shouldn’t do your marketing alone. Collaborate with influencers and other brands to achieve your business goals.

If you want to cooperate with influencers, check their stats first. Do some research regarding a blogger’s ER and audience before buying ads. Make sure the audience of a particular influencer is your target audience. Otherwise, you’ll just throw your money away.

You can find influencers using Combin searching by Bio, Hashtags, Place, or active users (Commenters or Likers) of any influencer you know.

But not only influencers are your collaboration option. You can easily work with other brands. For example, if you’re a fashion designer and make clothes, you can cooperate with some bags or accessories brands. Just find the niche where your target audience is and do it. This experience is equally useful for a brand you want to cooperate with.

In Conclusion

Instagram marketing is just another form of digital marketing. Don’t choose Instagram because all your competitors use the platform. Think it all through and learn how Instagram works, follow the recommendations above, and track your profile data – ER, best posting time, and winning content forms. Marketing is not rocket science, and with so many third-party tools to assist you, it’s even more accessible.

Have any thoughts on this? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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