Out of all social media platforms, marketing experts say that Instagram is the most effective and popular platform that will ensure wider outreach and better connection with the followers. This will ensure higher traffic to your site and also a better conversion.
More and more businesses are taking on to Instagram marketing strategy because there are several benefits that the platform has on offer. This is in addition to the already existing 25 million businesses that are actively using this platform to market their product and brand to their target audiences.
Ideally, this mobile app helps the marketers to:
- Get instant-access to the retail world
- Reach out to a larger audience
- Provide better visual content to the people to influence their buying decisions.
According to report of the Power Reviews Ecommerce Snapshot, it is found that more than 72% of shoppers look for an item on Instagram before making a purchase.On the other hand, only a meager 3% people do not look for such visuals before making a purchase.
When you follow the tips and suggestions you may find in sites like Stormlikesto make the best use of the Instagram platform, it will help you to leverage the visuals to describe and detail your products in a much better way. In short, it will be much easier for you to target or retarget your audience.
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Connection with your customers
Most of the people think that Facebook and Twitter are the two most effective platforms to get in touch to their followers but you will be surprised to know that the Instagram platform is equally good at it. it is due to the fact that the Instagram followers are most active and highly engaged.
A recent report published by Forrester Research found that the Instagram user base typically generates engagement that is 120 times more than Twitter.Given such high engagement potential, Instagram will prove to be the best platform to listen to and connect with your followers to gain more feedback.
This will help brands to build relationships with the customers through the conversations that Instagram will help you to start and continue. Through this platform you can:
- Share photos of your new product
- Give people a sneak peek
- Ask them how they like it or think about it and
- Get to know any input that they may have.
All these will help you to know more about your customers and deliver them with what they want. This will make your site, brand and product likeable to them. They will share and comment on it, making your Instagram marketing more productive.
Attract traffic with UGC
One of the most significant benefits of using Instagram for your marketing purpose is that you can use UGCs to attract more traffic to your site and get them engaged. This will provide you with several additional benefits such as:
- This will help you to build a better community that will come back to you time and again.
- Using the Instagram pictures will help you to use better photos that will ensure higher engagement.
- You will be able to boost your marketing with these photos from your customers with increased sales.
These photos will build up your eCommerce brand awareness both on Instagram and off. This will surely improve your visual and digital marketing strategy.
All you have to do is use selective photos on your homepage. Make sure that the photos that you use reflectsthe active lifestyle of your customers that they wish to associate with your product or brand.
Collect these photos organizing contests or asking your followers to hashtag photos with their name. this will not only help you to get lots of free content but will also make the customers happy making them a part of your brand. This will boost engagement and traffic as well.
Ensure high visibility
Instagram is the second largest social networking site in popularity, usage and visibility after Facebook. Research shows that 60% of its users reside outside of the US. This means that you will have a global reach when you use this platform.
In addition to its high popularity and fast expansion, there are several other good reasons to use Instagram rather than any other social sites for your business marketing purpose.
- Your social media strategy will be transformed into visual marketing just like Pinterest does with its visual contents. Taking the advantage of your images, you can turn them into a thousand words!’
- Making Instagram a part of your content marketing strategy, you will ideally have to do a lot less typing. This will save you a lot of time and effort that you can utilize on other important jobs of your business.
Most importantly, your posts will have a very high visibility. This will result in high level of engagement. According to several scientific studies conducted by organizations like Pew and Mashable, it is found that Instagram engagement ratio is much higher and exceed the number of comments and likes generated from any other social media platform.
Disadvantages of Instagram
Well, in spite of all these benefits, there are a few disadvantages of Instagram. Your knowledge will not be complete until you know about these downsides.
- You must ensure that you produce and use great photos. However, you will not get the benefits if you manipulate these photos of your product or services to create a better impact message to your customers using high level of technology. However, you can enhance the quality of the images or adjust the size using different Instagram tools and filters.
- Another disadvantage of this platform is that it is available only on iPhone and Android photos. That means if you have Windows Mobile, Linux or BlackBerry, you will not be able to use this app.
Lastly, you must be smart to use Instagram because, amazing tool as it is for marketing, there are also a few other social media platforms that you can use free.
Now that you know about the advantages and disadvantages of using Instagram for business marketing, go ahead and explore!
Author Bio: Karen Anthony is a social media marketing specialist who has worked with several startups, small businesses and helped them also launch effective campaigns to boost their overall online presence and visibility.
