In the digital age, it’s nigh imperative that businesses use social media marketing. Social media offer access to a vast, untapped potential audience. For marketers, they provide an alternative for competitive SEO and pricey PPC – or a complementary channel alongside them. While finding the right marketing channels does ultimately hinge on the business itself, social media are undeniably an option.
Since before its acquisition by Facebook, now Meta, Instagram has consistently attracted attention as a unique platform. From its audience size to its user metrics and tools, it is one that small and large businesses can use effectively. This post will explain just why that is, what the exact Instagram benefits for digital marketing are, and how you can approach it best.
But before you get started with the platform, you may lay some groundwork in advance. Like all social media platforms, Instagram favours the prepared. So, especially if you’re new to social media marketing, you may consider the following.
#1 Know the numbers
First, Instagram offers handy audience insights tools. Marketers with established strategies may tap into other analytics sources, such as Google Analytics, their CRMs, etc. Therefore, you may consider boosting your marketing analytics skills to make the best of said necessary assets. The most crucial talent in this regard is to learn to read the numbers so as to best inform your efforts.
MoversTech notes that ways to do so include online courses, seminars, books, and old-fashioned personal research.
#2 Ensure consistency
Second, as with all social media platforms, Instagram will require consistent output. Rather, your audiences on it will. Consistency is a key factor to success, which is the same principle business automation abides with. It will keep your audiences engaged, your traffic flow steady, and your SEO growing.
The best way to ensure consistency is to use social media schedulers, automating the process around the posting times that best resonate with your audiences.
#3 Be ready to engage
And third, when you do attract audiences, you must be ready to engage to maintain their attention. Oberlo finds that keeping up with family aside, most people are on social media to engage, learn, and be entertained.
To address this, you may use a channel consolidation solution to manage Instagram engagement alongside your other channels. If you’d like to be proactive about it and expand your reach, you may also use social listening tools to seek out engagement yourself.
That said, Instagram is well worth the preparation and effort. When used effectively, it can both augment existing marketing strategies and perform well as a standalone channel. To illustrate this, here are the 5 main benefits of the platform for marketers.
#1 A vast audience for brand awareness
Perhaps most notably, Instagram boasts a massive user base. It may not reach that of the juggernaut that is Facebook, but it’s still the 4th largest platform with 2 billion users. As of this year, DataReportal finds that 1.44 billion Instagram users can be reached via ads, too.
With these numbers in mind, Instagram is undoubtedly among the best social media platforms for brand awareness campaigns. On Instagram, such campaigns also have the distinct advantage of humanizing brands, given the platform’s visual focus and user-centred posts. Even before considering engagement and conversions, and thus potential revenue, this is a notable benefit for any marketer.
#2 High engagement rates
In addition, Instagram users are notably engaged compared to most social media platforms. This user behaviour trend lends itself very well to better lead generation strategies, as audiences are actually engaging with marketers’ material.
Specifically, for business accounts, HootSuite reports the following engagement rates by content type:
· All Instagram post types: 0.54%
· Instagram photo posts: 0.46%
· Video posts: 0.61%
· Carousel posts: 0.62%
In addition, they report the following rates per number of followers:
· Fewer than 10,000 followers: 0.76%
· 10,000 – 100,000 followers: 0.63%
· More than 100,000%: 0.49%
Most notably, however, these are only average rates. Good engagement rates, fueled by your own analytics and marketing prowess, can reach 1-5%. Such engagement can best reap Instagram benefits for digital marketing, significantly increasing website traffic and more effectively pushing it into your sales funnel.
#3 Great conversion rates
Beyond engagement, Instagram also boasts terrific engagement rates. The adjective here is far from hyperbolic; simply consider the following average conversion rates by type as Renolon reports them:
· Ecommerce; 3% versus 1.9% for all other eCommerce platforms
· Ads; 1.08%, versus Twitter’s 0.77% and Pinterest’s $0.54%
· Downloads and installs; 15.11%, versus Facebook’s 13.08%
Of course, exact conversion rates vary significantly across industries, conversion types, etc. They also depend on the efficiency of any given campaign, as with all platforms. Nonetheless, Instagram can evidently serve as an effective conversion portal, driving revenue and inciting desirable, goal-relevant actions.
#4 Efficient use of content marketing materials
On other social media platforms, Instagram is just as visual-focused as many others. Arguably more so, given that Instagram is essentially a visual search engine, complete with its SEO practices. Therefore, it also lends itself well to cross-posting marketing materials, from captivating photos to content for video marketing campaigns.
Platforms you may already be on and thus consider cross-posting to or from include:
· Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business)
· Facebook
· Pinterest
Thankfully, Instagram already offers the option to automatically cross-post stories to Facebook. For other platforms, you will still need to tailor content to each platform’s unique settings and strengths – but the effort will be well worth it.
#5 Tailored ad options
Finally, on the subject of similarities with Facebook, Instagram benefits for digital marketing also expand to PPC campaigns. Instagram offers ample advertising options and built-in tools, including audience targeting, budgeting and duration settings, performance tracking, and more.
With this in mind, Instagram’s paid ad campaigns can be highly effective – as its conversion rates show. It can also synergize well with Facebook’s analytics tools, assuming audiences overlap somewhat, allowing marketers to inform their efforts based on audience segmentation, past campaign performance, and so on. If you’re able to leverage additional analytics, like those of your CRM, then all the better.
Conclusion
In closing, Instagram remains a very viable social media platform for marketers. Its large user base, the 4th largest today, offers ample opportunities for brand awareness campaigns, meaningful engagement, and effective branding. Audiences are notably engaged and show high conversion rates, setting campaigns up for success. Finally, the platform itself is quite cross-post-friendly and comes with an array of built-in tools for focused paid advertising.
In brief, whether you have years of experience or you’re now learning digital marketing, it’s a very viable platform with notable inherent strengths. If these Instagram benefits for digital marketing sound appealing and align with your existing goals and strategies, it may very well be a platform worth considering to help your business thrive.
Since before its acquisition by Facebook, now Meta, Instagram has consistently attracted attention as a unique platform. From its audience size to its user metrics and tools, it is one that small and large businesses can use effectively. This post will explain just why that is, what the exact Instagram benefits for digital marketing are, and how you can approach it best.
Preparing for Instagram
But before you get started with the platform, you may lay some groundwork in advance. Like all social media platforms, Instagram favours the prepared. So, especially if you’re new to social media marketing, you may consider the following.
#1 Know the numbers
First, Instagram offers handy audience insights tools. Marketers with established strategies may tap into other analytics sources, such as Google Analytics, their CRMs, etc. Therefore, you may consider boosting your marketing analytics skills to make the best of said necessary assets. The most crucial talent in this regard is to learn to read the numbers so as to best inform your efforts.
MoversTech notes that ways to do so include online courses, seminars, books, and old-fashioned personal research.
#2 Ensure consistency
Second, as with all social media platforms, Instagram will require consistent output. Rather, your audiences on it will. Consistency is a key factor to success, which is the same principle business automation abides with. It will keep your audiences engaged, your traffic flow steady, and your SEO growing.
The best way to ensure consistency is to use social media schedulers, automating the process around the posting times that best resonate with your audiences.
#3 Be ready to engage
And third, when you do attract audiences, you must be ready to engage to maintain their attention. Oberlo finds that keeping up with family aside, most people are on social media to engage, learn, and be entertained.
To address this, you may use a channel consolidation solution to manage Instagram engagement alongside your other channels. If you’d like to be proactive about it and expand your reach, you may also use social listening tools to seek out engagement yourself.
Instagram benefits for digital marketing
That said, Instagram is well worth the preparation and effort. When used effectively, it can both augment existing marketing strategies and perform well as a standalone channel. To illustrate this, here are the 5 main benefits of the platform for marketers.
#1 A vast audience for brand awareness
Perhaps most notably, Instagram boasts a massive user base. It may not reach that of the juggernaut that is Facebook, but it’s still the 4th largest platform with 2 billion users. As of this year, DataReportal finds that 1.44 billion Instagram users can be reached via ads, too.
With these numbers in mind, Instagram is undoubtedly among the best social media platforms for brand awareness campaigns. On Instagram, such campaigns also have the distinct advantage of humanizing brands, given the platform’s visual focus and user-centred posts. Even before considering engagement and conversions, and thus potential revenue, this is a notable benefit for any marketer.
#2 High engagement rates
In addition, Instagram users are notably engaged compared to most social media platforms. This user behaviour trend lends itself very well to better lead generation strategies, as audiences are actually engaging with marketers’ material.
Specifically, for business accounts, HootSuite reports the following engagement rates by content type:
· All Instagram post types: 0.54%
· Instagram photo posts: 0.46%
· Video posts: 0.61%
· Carousel posts: 0.62%
In addition, they report the following rates per number of followers:
· Fewer than 10,000 followers: 0.76%
· 10,000 – 100,000 followers: 0.63%
· More than 100,000%: 0.49%
Most notably, however, these are only average rates. Good engagement rates, fueled by your own analytics and marketing prowess, can reach 1-5%. Such engagement can best reap Instagram benefits for digital marketing, significantly increasing website traffic and more effectively pushing it into your sales funnel.
#3 Great conversion rates
Beyond engagement, Instagram also boasts terrific engagement rates. The adjective here is far from hyperbolic; simply consider the following average conversion rates by type as Renolon reports them:
· Ecommerce; 3% versus 1.9% for all other eCommerce platforms
· Ads; 1.08%, versus Twitter’s 0.77% and Pinterest’s $0.54%
· Downloads and installs; 15.11%, versus Facebook’s 13.08%
Of course, exact conversion rates vary significantly across industries, conversion types, etc. They also depend on the efficiency of any given campaign, as with all platforms. Nonetheless, Instagram can evidently serve as an effective conversion portal, driving revenue and inciting desirable, goal-relevant actions.
#4 Efficient use of content marketing materials
On other social media platforms, Instagram is just as visual-focused as many others. Arguably more so, given that Instagram is essentially a visual search engine, complete with its SEO practices. Therefore, it also lends itself well to cross-posting marketing materials, from captivating photos to content for video marketing campaigns.
Platforms you may already be on and thus consider cross-posting to or from include:
· Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business)
Thankfully, Instagram already offers the option to automatically cross-post stories to Facebook. For other platforms, you will still need to tailor content to each platform’s unique settings and strengths – but the effort will be well worth it.
#5 Tailored ad options
Finally, on the subject of similarities with Facebook, Instagram benefits for digital marketing also expand to PPC campaigns. Instagram offers ample advertising options and built-in tools, including audience targeting, budgeting and duration settings, performance tracking, and more.
With this in mind, Instagram’s paid ad campaigns can be highly effective – as its conversion rates show. It can also synergize well with Facebook’s analytics tools, assuming audiences overlap somewhat, allowing marketers to inform their efforts based on audience segmentation, past campaign performance, and so on. If you’re able to leverage additional analytics, like those of your CRM, then all the better.
Conclusion
In closing, Instagram remains a very viable social media platform for marketers. Its large user base, the 4th largest today, offers ample opportunities for brand awareness campaigns, meaningful engagement, and effective branding. Audiences are notably engaged and show high conversion rates, setting campaigns up for success. Finally, the platform itself is quite cross-post-friendly and comes with an array of built-in tools for focused paid advertising.
In brief, whether you have years of experience or you’re now learning digital marketing, it’s a very viable platform with notable inherent strengths. If these Instagram benefits for digital marketing sound appealing and align with your existing goals and strategies, it may very well be a platform worth considering to help your business thrive.