Unlocking the Power of Instagram Marketing

Are you marketing your business on Instagram? If you’re not, you are missing out on an amazing platform with impressive engagement rates.

This guide will get you started on your Instagram marketing journey. Let’s jump right in!

The Instagram Advantage

What started as a platform for sharing filtered selfies quickly turned into one of the most powerful social networks.

The data speaks volumes about Instagram’s ability to attract and engage a large audience:

1. Instagram has over two billion active monthly users

2. It generates more engagement than Facebook and Twitter

3. 83% of Instagram users have discovered a product or service via the platform and 47% of them have actually purchased products or services on Instagram.

4. 90% of Instagram users follow at least one brand on the platform.

If you’re now wondering how you can leverage the social network’s enormous potential and build a successful Instagram marketing strategy, then this guide is for you.

Crafting Your Instagram Marketing Strategy

It’s clear that Instagram is not just for personal use anymore. Especially if you are a business that can leverage the visual nature of this platform, it is high time you start promoting your products or services here. But, how can you get started?

Here’s what to keep in mind when building your Instagram marketing strategy:

1. Define Your Goals:

Start by asking yourself what you want to achieve by advertising your business on Instagram. Maybe you want to showcase your product in action and a visual-first platform is perfect for that. Or maybe you want to build awareness and from that a community. Marketing without a clear objective will make it difficult (if not impossible) to track the effectiveness of your Instagram advertising efforts.

2. Identify Your Target Audience:

Define your audience and try to be very specific in the process. Determine their age group, location, interests, hobbies, gender, income, pain points, and motivations.

3. Research Your Competition:

Search for keywords related to your business and analyze your competitors. See what type of posts get the most engagement, how often they post, what hashtags they are using, and so on.

4. Build Your Brand’s Voice

Before starting posting content, you need to take a minute to determine the type of content and style you want to create. Build your brand’s voice by paying attention to the theme of your posts, the color palette, and the hashtags you are using.

Mastering Instagram Advertising

With a clear and consistent Instagram marketing strategy, you should be able to grow a dedicated follower base. But, if you want to take things to the next level, you should delve into Instagram advertising too.

Instagram ads have an immense reach (over 96% to be more exact,) and are a fantastic way to promote your business. These ads appear on a user’s feed, stories, or explore page in the same format as organic content, making it more likely to engage with them. They also come in various forms, such as:

1. Image ads
2. Video ads
3. Story ads
4. Reels ads
5. Explore ads
6. Carousel ads
7. Collection ads
8. Shopping ads

How can you get started with Instagram advertising? Here are some quick tips:

There are two ways to promote content on Instagram:

1. Boost an Existing Post: If you already have a post that has a lot of engagement, you can boost it to harness its potential. All you have to do is click Boost Post on the post you want to promote, select your goal, define your audience, and set a daily budget.
2. Create an Instagram Ad Campaign: Go to the Ad Campaign Manager and click Create. Next, you will have to choose from different campaign objectives, such as awareness, traffic, engagement, leads, sales, etc. You will also have to define your audience and budget. The last step before creating your actual ad is to determine the Instagram ad placement.

Understanding Instagram Advertising Costs

How much does Instagram advertising cost? It depends on various factors, such as:

1. The duration of your ad campaign
2. The competitiveness of your industry
3. Your target audience
4. The type of ad (a video ad will require more production costs than an image one)
5. The time of the year (Instagram advertising costs increase during holidays, for example.)

As a rule of thumb, you should start with at least $5 per day and try to optimize your ads to get the maximum return on your investment (ROI.) Here’s how you can do that:

1. Identify Your Ad Objective: Know what you want to achieve with your ads and select the right goal for your campaign.
2. Choose the right Ad Type for Your Goal: For example, if you want to boost engagement rates, then Story ads might be the way to go.
3. Define Your Audience: The more detailed you are about your audience, the higher the chances your ads will reach them.
4. Make Your Ads Look Native: Use real people instead of images of your product to make your ads look like real content.
5. Keep Your Ad Text Concise: Instagram is a primarily visual platform so focus on telling a visual story rather than using too many words.
6. Use a Call to Action: Let people know what you want them to do – click, shop, comment, etc.

Instagram Marketing Tips and Best Practices

Here are some more tips you can use to skyrocket your Instagram marketing strategy:

1. Optimize Your Profile: Add all the relevant information to your bio. Use a relevant photo that defines your business.
2. Post When Your Audience Is Active: Data shows that the best days to post on Instagram are Tuesdays and Wednesdays, but that might depend from industry to industry. Experiment with different days and hours to find the best time for your audience.
3. Engage with Your Followers: Always look for opportunities to start a conversation with your followers. Engaged followers are more likely to turn into paying customers.
4. Use the Right Hashtags: While it’s OK to jump on some trends, stick to hashtags that are relevant to your business and industry.

Leveraging Mandala AI’s Tools

As visual and creative as Instagram is, it still boils down to hard data to create successful marketing campaigns. Mandala AI’s suite can help you optimize your efforts and get better results. Two features can be particularly helpful:

1. Mandala Analytics: Get all the insights that you need to get the full picture of what people are saying about your business and take your campaign to the next level.
2. Ripples: Monitor content from your competitors and similar businesses in your niche to see how they are performing.

Benefits of Using Mandala AI’s Tools

Here’s how Mandala AI’s tools can benefit your marketing efforts:

1. Better Engagement Tracking: Get a detailed overview of how your campaigns are performing. With these insights at hand, you can tweak your campaign accordingly.
2. Discover Audience Sentiment: Find out how your audience feels about your brand. With this valuable information at hand, you can better control your narrative.
3. Determine Overall Industry Success: Discover how your competitors are performing and your position in the industry.

Take Action Now!

Are you ready to take your Instagram marketing to the next level? We can help!

Find out more about Mandala AI for Instagram marketing and advertising here, and get started today!

Conclusion

This short Instagram marketing guide can help you get the ball moving in the right direction. But, if you want to start making data-based decisions and leverage the full potential of this platform, you need to be able to access key insights that will reveal everything you need to know about your audience, their behavior, and emerging trends. Mandala AI can help you get all this information seamlessly.

Get started today!