From radio advertisements to billboards and television ads, businesses have adopted multifarious marketing strategies from traditional times.  However, in contemporary times, the dynamics and verticals of marketing are changing at a rampant pace. In this digital age, businesses are keen to market themselves on digital platforms, and that is why Instagram Marketing is in vogue.

The internet is a pandora’s box of opportunities for all. Within seconds, businesses can reach out to their target audience via the internet and social media. You can make your brand or products viral with a few clicks, which is fascinating, to say the least. It would not be incorrect to say that social media has emerged as an immensely powerful marketing tool in recent years. Speaking of Instagram alone, as per Statista, the platform has more than one billion users. This should give you an idea of why companies are allocating budgets for Instagram marketing. Such effective and viral marketing becomes even more important for your startup. By spending a little on social media marketing, you can take your small business to great heights.

There are multifaceted ways in which you can market your business on Instagram. You should also know that 57 percent of millennials and 67 percent of Gen Z people use Instagram. If these are the most vital segments of your target audience, Instagram is the best place to engage them. Besides, as per Social Sprout, 98 percent of marketers opine that Instagram is the best engagement platform for influencer marketing. To add, as per Insights from Instagram, more than 90 percent of people follow at least one business on the platform. These reasons should suffice for you to believe in the prowess of Instagram marketing. Now that you have realised its charm, the next step is to understand how you can market your startup on Instagram.

In this blog, we shed light on the most effective Instagram marketing strategies. By getting these strategies right, you can attract millions of Instagram users to your brand and drive value. For your small business to go big, Instagram can prove to be a gamechanger. Let us delve deeper to know more about it.

Worthwhile ways for marketing your startup on Instagram

1. Create unique and relatable content

Social media users love content that is unique, creative, engaging, and relatable. On Instagram, you can share amazing content with your followers in a host of ways. The focus of the content strategy, however, should be on creatic people-centric content. Besides, content should be such that it maps the digital journey of your followers and target audience. Instagram offers your business a great scope for sharing valuable content and driving high engagement. You can use the following verticals to share enticing content on Instagram.

• Instagram posts
• Instagram captions
• Instagram Stories
• IGTVs
• Instagram Reels

What works the best for content strategies is the relatability factor offered via informative content. For instance, let us say your startup is about clothing and merchandise. Creating IGTV videos on how to dress for the office or wear the same attire in different ways will be a great idea. You can share the same content concisely on Instagram reels and stories. Such compelling content will create high brand awareness, and Instagram users will gravitate towards your brand. You can further tag your followers or some influencers in your posts to make your brand more noticeable. Also, engaging followers in the comment section of your posts will be a good technique.

You can create a lot of buzz around your brand or business with effective content marketing. You can also create content around emotional storytelling, sharing your brand’s journey. People these days are in awe of such meaningful content. But content marketing trends keep changing with time, and you need to keep an eye on the latest developments. If needed, you can also hire some good content creators or social media managers as freelancers. There is no dearth of people looking for intriguing freelancing jobs! They will ensure the creation of optimised content and streamlining posting schedules to engage a larger audience.

2. Leverage Influencer marketing

No Instagram marketing strategy is accomplished without having a few influencers on board. Instagram influencers are no less than celebrities in the digital space. They have the kind of outreach you need in favour of your business to make it big. When you partner with influencers, you increase the social media outreach of your brand. When they market your products or services, they are able to engage the massive number of followers that they have. As cited by the Influencer Marketing Hub, Instagram is the most effective social media platform for Influencer marketing. To add, as per BigCommerce, more than 17 percent of businesses are willing to dedicate more than half of their marketing budgets to influencer marketing. Of course, businesses would not allocate such amounts to it if it was not an immensely rewarding strategy.

You can partner with influencers that work around the themes pertaining to your business. For instance, if you have a business of skincare products, you can partner with influencers who create content for fashion, lifestyle, makeup, beauty tips, and so on. On similar lines, if your product is fitness equipment, you can collaborate with influencers who endorse fitness tips. You have to identify the best scopes of collaboration among influencers of various niches. In addition to the followers on your brand’s Instagram handle, you can then also reach out to their followers. The target audience will be much wider, and so will be the prospects of conversions.  But you also need to analyse the kind of followers they have and if their audience is relevant to your product. If the interests align well, you can gain many out of such partnerships in terms of marketing.

3. Reach out to the relevant audience with targeted ads

One thing that every business needs to realise while reaching out to people on social media is that not everyone is their audience. You need to filter the users on Instagram and try to define a relevant target market for your business. After you define your target audience based on various parameters, you can create targeted ads on Instagram. Instagram ads rely on the advertisement system that Facebook uses. This system of advertising comes with strong targeting abilities to create ads for your specific audience.

You can lay down the specifics of your target audience based on demographics, location, shopping interests, purchasing behavior, and much more. For instance, if you have a car insurance business in London, you can create targeted ads for people in and around London. This is far better and refined than reaching out to people in an arbitrary way. Reaching out to social media users who do not even live in the United Kingdom will be meaningless. The best part is that you can track the performance of your Instagram ad campaigns and make constant tweaks. In fact, as cited by Forrester, Instagram ads have the highest engagement rates among all digital ad placements. Hence, Instagram ads and their ability to target a specific audience is something you should leverage to the fullest.

4. Integrate a strategy for hashtags

The use of relevant and robust hashtags can make posts more visible in the social media space. Experts recommend that you add eight to ten hashtags to your posts and videos on Instagram. Using hashtags, people find the businesses or services they are looking for. When the Instagram handle of your business uses specific hashtags, it can become a part of communities and conversations.

To explain further, tags will correlate your posts and content to specific themes. It is recommended not to go for more than 12 hashtags in a post. If you want to add more, you can always add the rest in the comment section of your posts.

5.  Post product previews and create a buzz around new launches

Have you seen those ads wherein automobile brands or smartphone brands exhibit teasers for the upcoming cars or smartphones? They do so to create excitement around their upcoming products even before they are launched. You can do the same for your startup as well and engage social media users by offering them a sneak peek into your upcoming launches. People will be keen for the launch of your new products and will look forward to them. This is what the top brands like Apple do in the run-up to the launch of new products. Even before the product is launched, the customers are interested in it.

Through IGTV videos, Instagram stories, and Reels, you can do the same thing. Capture the imagination and interests of social media users by posting previews of your new launches. Also, when your business launches new products, you can do an Instagram Live session to engage your target audience in the launch. You have to capture the enthusiasm of people awaiting new products in your segment. That is how you can win over social media by staying one step ahead of your competitors. The stronger your digital marketing framework, the more will be a competitive advantage.

To encapsulate, before you incorporate the above measures, remember to switch the Instagram handle of your business to a business profile. A business profile comes with added advantages and more flexibility for businesses to endorse themselves. After you do that, you are all set to pursue a revamped approach to Instagram marketing. The popularity of Instagram is not going to fall even in a subtle manner in the coming years. In fact, it will only rise, and more businesses will be inclined to be on Instagram. Before others make a move, it is vital that you take the lead. Among all other social media platforms, Instagram is winning by large margins. Now it is up to you how you use Instagram’s power to grow your business. Instagram is one of the most opportune marketing platforms for startups. The rest depends on how creative and agile you can be with it!