With over 2 billion monthly active users worldwide, Instagram is one of the leading social media platforms out there. It’s a platform adopted by many users for sharing high-quality, eye-catching photos and graphics with friends and potential customers. Many marketers believe Instagram is heavily biased towards the B2C market, but many B2B businesses also use the platform. With continuous growth in popularity and improvement in features, you should seriously consider using Instagram for your business if you’re not doing so already.
What is Instagram?
Instagram launched in 2010 as a photo-sharing app and was acquired by Facebook in 2012, now Meta platforms. It remains a trusted marketing tool, and the platform has since evolved into a photo and video content sharing app. You can also use the app for advertising through the Facebook Ads management platform.
Key areas on Instagram include:
- Your feed: Where your photos and videos are shared.
- User timelines: Where users see the content published by people they follow.
- Posts: Photos or videos shared on your feed.
- Reels: Short videos you can post to your feed and are usually between 15 and 90 seconds long. It features music or voice-overs and sometimes text over the video.
- Stories: Photo or video content that disappears after 24 hours unless saved to Highlights.
Why Use Instagram for Business?
Instagram has around 600 million daily users worldwide, and 50% of the UK population have an Instagram account. The highest percentage (30%) of these users fall in the 25-34 year age range, often regarded as one of the best consumers to target as they tend to have more disposable income. Hence, the platform provides a massive potential reach for businesses.
It’s not just the potential reach and the age of users that makes Instagram perfect for business; it’s the platform's capabilities. Below, we highlight some of the benefits of using Instagram to reach new customers.
1. Builds Brand Awareness and Trust Through Instagram
Instagram is a fantastic word of mouth platform for businesses. A well-rounded Instagram profile indicates legitimacy, enhancing consumer trust. User generated content (UGC) is important for businesses. By sharing imagery from your users, you build a community and trust. Engaging with comments and feedback from individuals also reflects your business values, so you must keep everything professional yet personal.
2. Makes Use of Shareable Content
Instagram makes sharing content easy. Users can tag brands in their own post, to maximise reach. Encouraging people to share your content through entertaining and educational posts increases your chances of gaining visibility.
3. Creates a Revenue Channel from Instagram Shopping
Instagram doesn’t allow links within the caption of any post. However, for B2C customers, you can integrate Instagram shopping into your posts using the online shopping option. It provides users with a click-through option to buy products.
In 2021 Instagram started allowing links in Stories for every user, and it's now possible with one click to direct your audience to the exact page you want them to land on. Before this feature, you needed a verified account – a bonus if you are a business trying to sell or promote their products on Instagram – or over 10,000 users before you could add links to Stories.
4. More Access to Competitor Behaviours
Your competitors are already likely to be on Instagram, and using the platform to monitor their strategies provides insights you their engagement tactics, helping you build on your current organic social media strategy to benefit your target audience.
Hashtags are very popular on Instagram, and users can follow hashtags that they want to see more content about. One of the best competitor analysis approaches you can use when starting on Instagram is looking at your competition’s hashtag usage and seeing how popular those hashtags are.
5. Attracts New Talent
Your Instagram profile showcases your company’s culture and values, which serves as a magnet for potential employees. Highlighting your team and workplace environment allows you to attract new talent and customers to your business.
6. Connects You with Influencers
Influencer marketing is very popular on Instagram, brands across all industries make use of influencers in order to enhance their visibilities. Companies like IMB, Microsoft and Amercian Express all have successfully engaged influencers for B2B campaigns, proving that influencer marketing isn’t just B2C.
7. Tracks Engagement and Conversions
The Instagram Business tool allows you to have complete transparency over how well your posts are performing, which will help you understand what works best for your business and what resonates with your audiences. Key metrics to consider include engagement rates, traffic to your website, and sales or Conversation rates.
How to Promote Your Business on Instagram?
As well as using Instagram for organic, consider Instagram ads to enhance your profile and conversions. Using
Facebook Ads Manager allows you to benefit from highly targeted campaigns and develop creative, eye-catching adverts. You also have complete control over the budget and duration of your adverts, and it offers in-depth performance insights so you can track what works and what doesn’t for your brand.
Use Instagram to Extend Reach and Increase Conversions
Develop a great Instagram strategy, post regularly and make use of the features the platform features , so your business can thrive on Instagram.
If you need assistance developing your Instagram presence or understand more about the platform’s features and what it can offer your business, we can help. As a social media agency, we have plenty of experience building client engagement through Instagram and other social networks.
Enquire today, and we can get your business in front of the right audience on Instagram in no time.
