Have you ever posted something on your social media account whether for business or just a personal post and no one likes it? When no one likes your post, or no one leaves a comment, no retweets and reports, it feels like no one has seen it or no one is paying attention to it. If you are posting for a business or a small brand, likes and comments matter.
With Instagram, whether how big or small your followersare, every post you make will receive at least a couple of comments, shares, and likes, especially if you are using relevant and powerful hashtags. And with at least500 million active users that are using platform daily, it is an enticing marketing tool.
The business part of Instagram e-commerce is not just reliable but also useful. Not only the engagement of Instagram demolishes Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Google+, but for businesses and brands, it can outperform Facebook by at least a factor of ten. It makes every marketer wonder why a lot of companies and brands are not using Instagram.
For a very long time, the problem with marketing on photo-sharing platforms like Instagram is how to direct your Instagram followers back to your website. Since you can’t put links that are clickable on your organic posts, a lot of brands and businesses have to direct their Instagram followers to their link found on their bio page and continuously update them that links to their website are available in the bio page every time they post something new.
Although this is not ideal, Instagram has still been an important source of sales and traffic for a lot of companies. Instagram was one of the most successful sources of traffic, next to Facebook. All the traffic came from the “link in the bio.” But here is the best part: you can include live links on your site on the posts if you are advertising on Instagram. If you want to know more about tools that can help people market their businesses using Instagram, you can visit websites like https://reportgarden.com/instagram-reporting-tool/.
Shopping on Instagram
Instagram has now entered a partnership with Shopify to take the shopping experience to the next level, offering products and service tagging and a “Shop” tab directly in the Instagram interface. Shopping using Instagram can provide the user the best customer checkout experience for people who discover your products and services in their Instagram feed.
Using product tagging, e-commerce brands and services will have more reason to start using Instagram for their product and service advertising. But like all platforms Instagram also has limitations. It includes:
- It is sometimes costly.
- It requires negotiating and reaching out.
- No recourse or accountability if the marketing doesn’t deliver.
- Instagram has a limited reach or audience targeting
But despite that, sponsored posts still have a place in Instagram advertising. Hiring someone to promote your services or products carries a lot of substantial benefits. It can provide social proof, adding a significant factor to your brand and your business. Not only that, people are more likely to look or buy something from your website if someone they know or trust bought it first.
Plus, although you do not have total control over the audience, at least you do not have to make a lot of decisions about who you need to target. Sponsored posts or posts that are paid are still an excellent way to do outreach, especially if you are selling or offering products or services. And they are not the only way to attract influencers.
In the latter part of 2017, Instagram launched a paid partnership to maximize and increase transparency for all the users as well as provide the brands, the companies, and the influencers alike with a lot of Instagram advertising opportunities. The new features are available to accounts that have a lot of engagements and followers. It offers more reporting and insights than a normal sponsored or paid post.
Everything you need to know about paid partnership, check here.
How does Instagram advertising work?
Since 2015, any users can now learn how to make Instagram advertisement through Facebook’s self-serving ads platforms. Because of it, the users will have a lot of control over their advertisements, how they look like, how they will appear and how their target market sees them. And not like sponsored or paid posts and partnerships, the user’s ads will get posted directly from the user’s account. Some of the advantages of this method include:
- It is instant and self-serving
- The prices are scalable.
- Robust reporting so you are in control of everything.
- Highly refined and quality audience targeting.
Not only that, when you are using Instagram, it moves away from chronological feed and gives curated feed a lot of exposure. You will never know how many of your Instagram followers will see all of your posts.
Types of Instagram advertisements
You can use five different types of advertisement using Instagram. It includes:
- Video advertisement
- Slideshow advertisement
- Photo advertisement
- Stories advertisement
- Carousel advertisement
Video advertisements
Before its latest update, Instagram has a 15-second limit for their videos, but because of increased public support, Instagram lifted that rule. Today, videos advertising can go up to 60 seconds and can be shot in a square or landscape format. The Dollar Shave Club uses these video formats in their Instagram ads to promote new membership deals, highlighting different products included in that deal.
Slideshow advertisements
Slideshow advertisements are similar to video advertisements in a way that it appears as a video in every user’s feeds. The ads, however, are made of a series of still images that plays like a video, just like a slideshow. You can also add audio and texts to your Slideshow advertisements. You can visit this link: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/jayson-demers/5-reasons-to-add-slidesho_b_4851563.html to know the advantages and disadvantages of using slideshows to your content.
Photo advertisement
A photo advertisement is a simple picture in square or landscape format. It is the simplest type of ads regarding visual asset needs since you only need to use a single image.
Stories advertisement
Instagram Stories are one of the newest types of ads available for businesses on this platform. Instagram Stories are the same with Snapchat because it allows the users as well as the brands, to share photos and videos. Companies can also use Instagram Stories as an advertising tool using video and photo contents. ASOS, an online fashion brand, used Instagram Stories advertisements to build a successful ad recall and brand awareness.
What are Instagram stories? Click here to know more.
Carousel advertisement
Instagram Carousel Ad can go anywhere from two to ten videos and images that the users can view by swiping or scanning through. Famous brand West Elm uses Instagram Carousel Ads to increase, highlight, and maximize the range of their products for their Instagram marketing campaigns.