Guide to Instagram Marketing in 2021

Any business that wants to grow has an Instagram page. The platform has over 1 billion active users who log on every day to catch up with new posts from influencers, family, friends, & their favorite brands. More than 72% of Instagram users have bought products they’ve seen on the platform. Being on Instagram offers endless advertising opportunities.

How to Create an Instagram Marketing Plan

Before creating your marketing strategy you must keep in mind that to get results you have to be active, creative & constant. Otherwise, you’re set for failure.

Research the Competition

Knowing who your competition is & what they’re doing will help you create an effective strategy. You can take advantage of their weaknesses & improve on what they’re doing right. Here are some key points to consider:

– Do they have a business profile or a personal profile?

– What type of content they share & how often?

– How much do they use Instagram stories & reels?

– What strategies are they using & what is working for them?

– Do they use hashtags in posts or on their bio?

Analyzing these will help to know your target audience & know which strategies work on them.

Identify your Instagram Marketing Goals

Instagram is a visual platform & you have to consider this when identifying your goals. Here are few ideas you could use Instagram for:

– Increase visibility

– Humanize your brand

– Drive more traffic to your website

– Make your services known

– Connect more with your audience & have more engagement

– Connect with influencers & network with other brands

Optimize Your Instagram Profile

Without a well-optimized bio & an attractive profile, you won’t get any engagement from users. Optimizing is key to start on the right foot. 

– You can’t forget to add what your business does on the bio, contact information, if there are any special promotions, upcoming launch dates, a call to action, & a link. You must engage users & show why they should follow you

– Add custom link shorteners that entice the user to click. (you can customize the URL with tools like bit.ly or LINKTR.EE which allows you to have all your links in one).

– Pay attention to your profile photo. The logo or photo you use must look professional & be easy to identify

– Have uniformity and a style in your posts. The UNUM app is great to preview how your Instagram feed will look.

– Divide your bio into lines, use emojis & arrows that prompt them to click on your link.

– It’s recommended that you use a business profile as it will allow you to add buttons with calls to action to your profile (for example: “Call”, “send message”), to promote your post & view statistics. To convert a personal profile into a business one, it has to be a public account & have a Facebook page that you can link to. 

Content Strategy

To define an Instagram content strategy, you must know your niche, who you want to reach, what you’re going to offer, & how you’re going to do it.

1. The potential of Instagram Stories

– Add hashtags & location, this will help you increase your visibility

– Do live streams since Instagram notifies your followers whenever they start

– Make recommendations, mention other accounts strategically to create connections

– Do surveys, questions to interact with your followers, & know their opinions

– Announce your contests, their winners, new content, launches, exclusive offers, etc.

– Do demos of your product, show tutorials on how to do something

– Promote your new blog content to increase your web traffic

2. Your own IGTV Channel

In this channel, you can upload videos from 10 minutes to an hour-long.

How you can use IGTV:

– Tutorials

– Interviews

– Webinars

– Product demos, unboxing

– Tips

If you bet on this format, unlike stories that only last 24 hours, these are videos that remain on your IGTV channel. This is why they require more professionalism, that you take care of the lighting, the sound, & the angles.

3. The new REELS 

Instagram has added another format to its site: REELS. Short “TikTok-style” videos.

What are REELS about?

– Short videos between 3 & 15 seconds

– They are recorded from the stories in vertical format

– You can record multiple clips, add music, text, emojis, gifs

– You decide where to share it: (1) News – all your followers will see it. (2) On the Explore page – to reach new people. (3) On profile – along with the rest of the FEED publications. (4) Stories – for 24 hours

Keep in mind that Instagram shows REELs before profile posts so it’d be a waste to not include them in your strategy. Remember to be as direct as possible, dynamic, & add a touch of humor. 

Instagram Ads

Once you know your audience, set up your goals, & optimize your profile, running ads could be the next step to reach your target. The great thing about Instagram ads is the variety of ad formats to choose from: image, video, carousel, story, presentation or collection. 

Running ads on Instagram is not difficult. The most complicated thing is to make effective ads, capable of reaching the preferred target. 

Giveaways

Giveaways work great on any platform, including Instagram. They’re great to reach more people, retain followers, increase your followers, & increase web traffic.

In your giveaways you can include promotional items with your logo design as an extra touch to thank your customers for participating. If you don’t know how to customize white-label products & get your promotional items, print-on-demand services like CustomCat are your best option.

Create Personalized Products with CustomCat

With Instagram & proper research you can figure out what sells & what doesn’t. Instead of ordering scores of inventory hoping the product converts, print-on-demand only produces & fulfills your order when it sells. We take care of the shipping, customer service, & help empower your business to scale. This way you can experiment with new products & grow your brand without losing money.

Want to know more? Read more about how CustomCat works here:

POD for Promo Products with CustomCat

How to Get Started with CustomCat

Final Thoughts

Do you use Instagram marketing to grow your eCommerce business? Tell us about your experience!