Social media is a powerful marketing tool that can increase your brand visibility and help you connect with your audience – both existing and prospects.
There are 1 billion active users on Instagram who spend an average of 2 hours a day scrolling their social media pages (religiously). Not to mention, it is the first point of contact that consumers have with your brand. Instagram has global appeal and if you employ effective branding and marketing techniques, you can engage with consumers globally who resonate with your brand.
Below we have 5 tips that you can implement into your Instagram marketing strategy to help you extensively leverage from the social network platform.
1 -Identify Your Target Audience
In today’s hypercompetitive world of business, it’s the business that most understands their customer, that wins. When you understand your customers’ pain points, values and what they want to achieve, you will be able to position your brand as the CORE solution to their problems. Hence, having a well-defined target market is ultimately what determines the success of your business.
How do you identify your target audience? To build the core, foundational aspect that your market is built on – you must first identify your customer avatar. A customer avatar is a detailed profile of your ideal customer. Identifying your ideal customer will allow you to tailor your marketing pitch correspondingly to your target market. To begin we recommend analysing your current consumers using the 80/20 distribution rule, also known as the Pareto Principle. From a marketing perspective, the Pareto principle acknowledges that the top 20 percent of customers will be responsible for 80 percent of your sales. When the Pareto principle is applied it will help you identify trends between your top 20 percent of customers. At this point you should notice similarities in age, occupation, geographic locations or behaviours and values that they have in common. This information will help you understand the types of individuals your brand is resonating with and the similarities they share. Hence, identifying your target market means knowing with full clarity who it is you are targeting.
If you are a brand owner — ask yourself who your target market is? Are you able to answer with full clarity?
Example:
Let us delve further by hypothesising that you are selling high performance, plus size activewear in Australia. You want to target females between the ages of 16-35 and considering the average woman is a size 14, you would want to offer sizing options between 14-22 AUS. Your brand acknowledges their pain points are having to constantly adjust their active wear mid workout and the challenges they face with activewear that doesn’t complement or sit right with their figure. Now, because your brand understands their pain points you are able to place your activewear brand as the solution to their problems by speaking the same language as them in your selling points. This is so important because if you do not have a SPECIFIC audience you want to target and selling points that are reinforced with a particular language that resonates with this audience — your brand will be overlooked because it lacks a sense of connection.
Pro tip: target market does not mean ‘everyone’.
Try marketing plus size activewear to petite women. Do you see what we mean?
2 -Define Your Goals
It goes without saying that you can’t measure improvements if you don’t set goals. So, before you venture straight into the tools it’s a good idea to develop specific goals that direct your marketing strategy. A good way to start is to ask yourself what it is you want to gain from social media platforms. Are you trying to generate more leads? Increase your brand sales? Gain engagement? Set a more consistent posting schedule? Run ads?
Beginning your brand journey on Instagram should start with a clear and defined goal that sets the scope for what you want to achieve.
3 - Storytelling: Sell The WHY Not The WHAT
Neuroscience proves that storytelling is the most effective way you can capture somebody’s attention. In today’s digital world consumers choose the type of content and information they consume and they tend to navigate to brands that offer them an experience opposed to what is being sold. This highlights the importance of shifting the focus from the features and benefits of WHAT it is that you’re selling and focusing the attention on WHY your product will solve their problems.
Consumers no longer buy products or services, they also don’t buy features and benefits. What they do buy is meaning — what it means to buy an eco friendly tote bag, what it means for them to contribute their money to a cruelty-free and vegan friendly cosmetic brand — what it means to buy something that understands their problems and addresses their solutions. Marketing is no longer about selling products, it is aligning values with people who get what your brand is about. When you set out to sell your product, tell your consumers WHY. Essentially, it’s moving consumers emotionally that allows you to instil your product or service’s memory in them.
What is the meaning of your product or service? How will it add value to your consumer?
4 - Build Authentic Relationships
Implementing authenticity marketing ties in with tip 3 and is about nurturing an emotional connection with your consumers. It is about expressing your brand’s purpose and sharing your values to attract people who feel the same way. It sounds ironic that marketing can be authentic, but as we have discussed above, people don’t want products or services anymore – they want to feel a natural connection with your brand. A connection that is genuine, real and true. There are many ways you can build an initial connection with your audience and it includes:
Engage them in your products/services:
This does not mean constant sales pitches being thrown at your customers. To engage with your audience means developing an emotional connection with them. The most effective way you can build these connections is to show them that they are dealing with a human. For example, introduce yourself, use staff images on your socials, build a community, share exclusive offers and discounts, offer loyalty and membership programs.
Understand how your product and/ or service provides value: this ties back into creating your ideal ‘customer avatar’ and understanding their pain points in order for selling points to resonate and evoke emotions with your target market.
Respond to their concerns: it is important that you remain human. This means taking the time to respond to your comments, questions or general feedback that your consumers have left. People love brands that acknowledge what they have to say and follow up accordingly. Remember to ensure that your customer always feels heard.
Give consumers a personalised experience: this relates back to adding value to every touch point. This can mean adding a simple, but thoughtful ‘thank you’ message, whereby you address the consumer by their first name for a recent purchase they made. Other examples include adding your consumers name in an email marketing campaign, or responding to a comment they made on your social page. These little touch points turn prospects into clients and turn existing clients into loyal customers.
The experience your brand creates should always be emotional. Tap into your consumers emotions – this is how you forge connections that turn into relationships.
5 - Visuals Matter
Visual cues are possibly the most significant factor in both marketing and advertising. The colours, fonts, graphics, textures and overall identity that you choose for your brand is ultimately the decisive factor that connects or dissociates consumers from your product or service. Considering that 90 per cent of all purchases are made subconsciously, it is evident that emotions are pushing that sale and is generally the result of the visual cues you have chosen for your brand.
Now, considering Instagram is an aesthetic experience, you want to choose the visual elements for your marketing campaign very attentively. You want to share content that your audience can consume in a matter of seconds. However, content should be strategic and created in a cohesive manner that is true to your brands purpose and values. This means going as far as choosing a set color palette or images that work in a series and reflect your brand identity. We recommend creating a visual strategy and using Instagram app planners to ensure your visual layout is consistent prior to posting.
Pro tip: The entirety of your visual grid is more important than individual posts.
Example: Visual of two different content for brands
In Brief
Essentially, your brand is a representation of who you are and what you value as a business. What your brand is about is ultimately how you want to be perceived by your target audience. When you know your brand, you are able to communicate selling points in a language that is relatable to your target audience and as a result forge emotional connections.
Remember:
Your target audience is your ideal customer. Define your goals. Sell the WHY. Be authentic. Instagram is an aesthetic experience — be creative with your visual content.
And at every touch point, remain HUMAN.
