As one in four social media users is now willing to buy a product appearing their feed, social media advertising is proving its worth. Most traditional advertising methods have struggled for years to get half the trust that social media advertising gets.
Here are five tips for ensuring you go viral using Instagram, one of the most vital advertising tools in the modern era.
1. Make Your Feed Shoppable
Getting people from your Instagram posts to your e-commerce page is really hard. With the help of ads and a story, you can get them off of the post and into your bio or to swipe up on your story.
Now there are monetization tools to make your Instagram feed shoppable. The page they create replicates your feed so that people can click on the photos that interest them to get more information. Instead of having to constantly update your bio link, you can use one bio link as a hub for everything.
A hashtag that you use to collect all of your posts can help drive traffic as well.
2. Don’t Overlook Instagram Ads
When you’re scrolling through your own feed or looking through your own stories, you’re sure to be interrupted with ads. While the ads are minimally disruptive, they’re definitely present and hard to miss. If you create your own Instagram ads and use them to promote your products or a contest, you’ll get more engagement.
Using ads to promote a contest or a give away is a great way to build up some traffic. It’s hard to get people to click when you’re selling a product but if you’re willing to give a product away, you could be collecting a lot of traffic. A giveaway almost guarantees that your contest will get traffic whereas a traditional ad can go without interaction for days on end.
Make sure it’s clear what your prize is and what can be gained by clicking through. Add a little bit of copy to your ad but when possible, allow your product or service to speak for itself.
3. Post Discounts and Specials
Most people don’t interact with the things they see on Instagram too heavily. It’s one of the reasons so many people are attracted to the platform. Browsing happens without intent and can usually be done idly to pass the time.
If you’re looking to increase sales through Instagram, consider this fact seriously. Telling someone to click something is challenging as most viewers aren’t very active.
When a promotion is paired with a chance to get ahold of a new product or an exclusive event, you can attract people. Connecting sales with an event like the Super Bowl or the Fourth of July can help your promotion feel more relevant. You can avoid seeming like you’re devaluing your product with the promotion.
4. Use Stories to Your Advantage
When trying to generate leads, Instagram’s Stories function is one of the best new ways to do it. You can create expiring posts in a slideshow format that live for just 24 hours. This gives them an innate sense of urgency and way that they’re hidden until they’re clicked allows you to keep a sense of mystery each time.
Make sure that you’re offering quality content each time so that your customers feel like it’s worth their time. While it can be just 5-10 seconds of their time, they might make a snap judgment in that first second about whether or not it’s valuable.
With stories, you get to see who has clicked and who have watched them. This will give you a sense of whether or not your posts are valuable. You can start to rank the type of content your post and optimize future posts.
The story that you tell with your business is vital. If you’re not using the stories feature to tell stories about what makes your products and services special, you’re not going to connect as well as competitors.
5. Work With Similar Brands
There are millions of Instagram users out there scrolling through their feed seeing brands they use and love, connected via data. Instagram collections terabytes of data on every user, noting what they like, where they’re located, and similar things they might enjoy.
If you make the effort to bridge the gap between your brand and other similar brands, you could double your impact.
Building an audience is hard, but with the help of a partner, you can see a huge spike in how many people are looking at your brand. You can split advertising costs and end up doubling how much attention you get from each ad deployment.
When partnering with another brand, connect with someone who has a share of the market you’ve had a tough time reaching out to. Show them what you have to offer them and what kind of new market you’ll unlock.
By advertising partnerships, you can build legitimacy with audiences that might be brand new to you.
Marketing on Instagram Takes Practice
While your first few forays into Instagram advertising might be challenging, you’ll find it more rewarding than most social media. When you can show your customers what’s great about your products, you don’t have to rely as much on hard-selling. Your reputation, built through social media, will precede you and help manage the first level of your sales funnel on its own.
If you’re worried about how voice search is going to spend your entire model, check out our guide for tips.
