One of the most popular social media marketing websites today is Instagram. Don’t be fooled by its novelty–Instagram isn’t just used for funny cat videos, vacation pictures, or selfies–it can be a useful tool in marketing your website, especially to millenials and young people. Thousands of companies have started to use Instagram to market their businesses, and producing visibility for their products, and the benefits have been manifold. Here are a few reasons why you might want to open up an Instagram account for your business today!
More people than ever are using Instagram.
Instagram diagnostics have shown that there are nearly 800 million users on Instagram as of 2018. Of these people, about 500 million use the platform on a daily basis, which 80 percent of them residing outside of the US, 34 percent being millennials, and about 38 percent check the website multiple times per day. By signing up for Instagram and running an active business account, you’ll be able to reach global users and a young audience regularly, with a comprehensive Instagram strategy.
You can make money directly from Instagram.
With the new innovation of “shoppable posts,” as an Instagram marketer, you’ll be able to post pictures of your products on Instagram with a pop-up tag that users can press to link them to the listing directly on your website. Through these tags, you can list pricings, a product description, and an immediate “shop now” feature that will convert user’s viewing of your product with an easy and direct link to shop for it. And the proof is in the pudding–about 72% of Instagram shoppers have admitted that they’ve purchased products through the social media platform!
An opportunity for creativity.
As a purely graphic app, you’ll be able to easily capture potential customers’ attention with a visually appealing, business aesthetic. Instagram provides for a visual flexibility in the curation of your feed – you can opt for a minimalist aesthetic, bright and colorful one, and express your brand’s unique personality in the pictures that you post. You can also leverage the app’s social quality by posting contests, shoutouts, interactive videos, and creative captions to make your brand stand out. There’s no limit to your creative license.
Mobile Shopping is the Future.
As a smartphone/mobile app, Instagram allows you to access the marketing sphere of the future. Unlike its counterparts, Facebook and Twitter, Instagram was incepted as a purely mobile app, and was never a browser-based website. A study has shown that 90% of time spent on mobile phones is spent on apps, and Instagram allows you to take advantage of this fact. A majority of mobile phone users opt for Instagram for its cleanliness and entirely mobile-geared nature, with engagement on Instagram being about 10 times higher than on Facebook.
Instagram is Business-Friendly and has a high conversion rate.
Recently, Instagram has added a feature in which you can explicitly classify your account as a business account. Converting your account to a business account helps you unlock a trove of different features that you can leverage to promote your business, such as a call to action button for visitors to your account, promoting your posts with ad dollars, and account metrics and insights access. By naming your account as a business page, you also give potential customers a clear idea of the purpose of your account and can add a layer of professionalism to your page.
It’s still early in the game for you to dominate your niche.
Unlike Facebook, Instagram is still a somewhat novel platform to start a business account on, and getting your brand noticed on it can be a lot easier than on Facebook. Thus, you can take advantage of the minor competition to carve out your brand’s hegemony as the dominant player in your business’ niche. Only about 9% of US small businesses are currently using Instagram, so with this fact in mind, it can be a great place for visibility for small businesses. Getting on board now can be a great way to beat out future competition by establishing your business ahead of the curve.
Instagram is a great platform for on-the-go sharing.
Because of Instagram’s mobile nature, it makes it the premier social media platform for mobile sharing. Users can DM (direct message) or tag each other on products they see on Instagram, and business can even use memes to advertise, which users will often share with their friends quickly and easily, regardless of when and where you’re posting from. This’ll easily promote your visibility, and can help drive sales.
The ad platform is one of the most advanced social media platforms out there.
Ever since Mark Zuckerberg acquired Instagram a few years back, Instagram has been innovated to catch up with Facebook’s advertising platform. Like Facebook, Instagram allows you to hone your target audience to age, interests, behavior, and location, equipping you with the tools necessary to reach a specific demographic.
You can track your sales and leads.
Instagram uses the same Ads manager platform as Facebook, so it has the same comprehensive tracking capabilities – you’ll be able to see link clicks that lead to conversions, cost per result on your campaigns, and everything in between. Taking advantage of this tool can allow you to gauge how well your invested money is being used. By tracking metrics, you can easily see which ads are performing best.
High conversion rates.
Instagram has some of the highest conversion rates among other popular social networking sites – according to shopify, the rate of conversion among Instagram is about 1.08%, meaning that among 100 shoppers, one will typically make a purchase. This puts Instagram pretty high, at the #4 spot in all social networking sites in terms of conversion.
