Top 15 Benefits Of Instagram Marketing For Business [2021]

Today, the majority of our social interactions are imbued with visuals, snapping a quick photo to send to a friend, posing at a restaurant for a selfie, or just scanning through newsfeeds filled with photos and videos.

Just think about the massive amounts of new products and services you’ve likely discovered on Instagram through paid social media ads or friends tagging brands you’ve never heard of in their posts. Of course, social media connects us, but what’s difficult is getting those connections to your most important business assets, your customers.

At the same time, we know creating, managing and maintaining an Instagram account is daunting. It takes remarkable time and consideration to not only make it work, but drive sales.

But for certain industries, leaving Instagram out of your buyer journey could seriously limit your ability to reach new customers. So, to help you get on the right track, we’re providing a few tips. Here are 15 benefits of Instagram that you might not know:

1. More people are using Instagram

According to the folks at Instagram, their social media presence currently has over 800 million active users. Of those millions of people, over 500 million are on the platform on a daily basis. Using Instagram on your site enables you to connect with customers across various channels and increase cross-channel engagement.

For instance, let’s say you display photos from your Instagram account on your website. When a customer is browsing through your site, they may not follow you already on Instagram. But when they see a gallery of Instagram photos, they can click through to see your account, start following you, and reconnect with you later.

Take a look at how businesses use a dedicated gallery of Instagram photos on their website to lead people to their Instagram.

Using Instagram photos allows you the opportunity to connect with customers where they are, while also taking advantage of the far higher Instagram engagement rate.

2. Any business can thrive

With all of those users to choose from, the sky's the limit to what a business can achieve. That goes for large, well-known companies as well as smaller mom and pop shops and one-man operations.

Even for the best-known companies, success does not come overnight, but if a marketing team wants to get their organization on the map, what they can do is keep an active presence and maintain a routine of at least one post per day. This is how both household names like Coca-Cola and Adidas as well as a slew of small businesses have effectively used Instagram to thrive.

3. Easy to target or retarget your audience

We know that targeting the right audience is key in the success of your ads. But how does Instagram help you reach your right audience?

If you’re familiar with Facebook advertising, you understand the power and depths available to reach your audience. Some of the targeting features include:

• Location: Whether you’re targeting a whole country or just one city, location isn’t any issue.
• Demographics: Want to send your ads only to 40-year-old men who speak German? Instagram can pinpoint language and gender demographics.
• Interests: Base your ads on what your audience follows on Instagram, also including other businesses that may be your competition. You also can base interests on ads they click and apps they use.
• Behaviors: Define an ad’s audience by the actions they take on (and off) Instagram and Facebook. For example, easily retarget potential customers who have visited your website in the past but never made a purchase.
• Lookalike Audiences: Your followers are part of a specific persona who is eager to see your content (and hopefully buy your products). So, you can target ads to people that are similar to the ones that already follow you or have purchased on your website.

4. Its Visual

As a photo sharing platform, it may sound like we’re stating the obvious here. Unlike most other social media platforms, which focus more on text and links, Instagram is exclusively used for photo and video posts.

Considering that visual content is more engaging than text, this is a huge opportunity for marketers. Instead of trying to send followers to your site to make a purchase or explain the benefits of working with you, you can use photos to create a more compelling message.

Photos give your business a chance to call more attention to products, and videos are a great way to show your services in action. And apart from that, you can also use the platform to show company culture and other behind-the-scenes aspects of your business which will make your customers feel more connected to your brand.

5. Build a community

Another benefit of using Instagram pictures is that traffic that comes from these photos is super-engaged.

Instagram draws in more engaged traffic than any other social media platform. Research shows that when comparing time on site from various social media platforms, Instagram beats out other sites like Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube and more.

Instagram content manages to attract more engaged traffic than other visual social content from Pinterest or YouTube.

Moreover, Instagram helps you engage with your audience on the social platform, increasing the chance of you bringing customers back for repeat purchases.

If someone buys from you and then follows you on Instagram, they will probably see your brand on a regular basis and purchase from you again.

6. Great for building your brand

Unlike most social media platforms, you can’t always expect to send traffic to your site with every post you make on Instagram. In fact, Instagram lets you share links in your captions as long as you pay for them. This may seem like a disadvantage, and if you were hoping to drive revenue directly from Instagram, it is.

However, it also means that users are more likely to follow and interact with your company because they know you aren’t trying to directly sell them anything. Instead, you can use the platform to build your brand.

Share user-generated content, highlight company culture, and upload photos that reflect your values and mission. By humanizing your brand and showing your authenticity, this type of content can build the kind of trust that leads to long-term customer relationships.

7. Use all the visual marketing features on Instagram

Visual content empowers shoppers to make purchases with more in-depth details and images of what they want to buy. But that doesn’t mean you should just add photos and videos of your products every day and call it a day.

Retailers are getting much smarter to how and where they advertise to shoppers on Instagram. Moreover, brands and retailers are creating more relevant content for their audience on the platform because they’re focusing on the correct Instagram sizes and features that users actually enjoy.

8. Hashtags can increase your visibility

As a new business on the block, you may be intimidated by the competition, but with the proper use of hashtags, you can separate your company from the herd.

Hashtags are essentially keywords that summarize what your post is saying. Popular Instagram hashtags such as Calvin Klein's #MyCalvins and Coca-Cola's #ShareaCoke has stunned the industry. Instagram has made these popular companies even more recognizable and beloved.

You may not be Coke or another well-known brand, but effective use of hashtags can do wonders to separate your business from the crowd.

9. Engage with customers

As mentioned earlier, more than 800 million people use Instagram every month and over 500 million log on every day. The time spent on Instagram is pretty astonishing and for brands and retailers, this is a network to engage and connect with your base.

This is telling because approximately 70% of all Instagram accounts follow at least one business. The visual network is perfect for brands who don’t want to be bombarded by sales copy, announcements and other messaging. Instead, Instagram works the way it does when you follow your friends, if you see visual content you like, you engage.

People like to make their opinions public, especially if they like something. And Instagram is a platform for users to like, comment and share the posts that become their favorite. The more likes and comments you get, the more visible your brand or company becomes. You can get more likes by taking high-quality photos, using local hashtags and partnering with other brands.

10. Sales and Leads Are Trackable Through Instagram Ads So You Can See Clear ROI

This benefit of Instagram may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised to know how many companies invest into platforms without determining the effectiveness of it!

Since Instagram uses the same Ads Manager platform as Facebook, it has all of the same tracking capabilities as Facebook does. You can see everything from link clicks, to leads to conversions, and you can also see the cost per result on any campaign you run.

This means depending on what objective or goal you’re measuring; you can always see how many results you achieved and at what cost.

In addition to this, you can break down the results you receive to see who or where they came from.

Having this knowledge allows you to understand where your money is going to best be invested.

11. Boost your marketing with UGC

User-generated content is an essential part of building trust in your brand and products. Why? Because people trust each other more than businesses. If you don’t already have solid user-generated content marketing strategies to increase sales, it’s time to jump on board. It’s the single most effective way to grow relevant traffic and sales.

Instagram has the potential for user-generated content built in.

On Instagram, customers are perpetually creating and sharing images of their own. With their permission, you can use their images for your own marketing.

By collecting the UGC Instagram photos by asking customers to hashtag photos with your brand name not only means you get free content, you also feature your customers which makes them feel like a part of your brand. You also stimulate future engagement by having customers submit photos on Instagram to you.

Without lots of additional efforts, you can build up your brand’s presence on Instagram by attracting attention when customers’ followers see them hash tagging you in their photos.

12. Instagram offers many ways for you to get creative

A great benefit of the photo-sharing app is the creativity it provides. On Instagram, your marketing team can keep coming up with new ways to draw attention and add followers and new customers. Show the public that your brand has personality and that it is cool to shop with you by mixing it up with contests, shout outs, vivid images, interactive videos and more.

13. Know your content

You never want to invest already tight Instagram resources in content that won’t perform well. fortunately, on Instagram, you have feedback about how your audience will react to content before you take up valuable real estate on your website or shell out money for Instagram ads.

Before finalizing content for your Instagram UGC campaigns, you can measure the results of how it was received on Instagram.

This enables you to choose the photos that customers liked the most on Instagram and then display them on your site, rather than guessing which product photos will perform best.

14. Learn the Likes and Dislikes of Your Customer Base

Whether you’re a startup who has everything to learn about exactly who your target market is or whether you’re a seasoned company that’s just new to Instagram, there’s always going to be room to learn more about your target market.

It’s important to remember that a target market is more than just an audience with statistical demographics and behaviors. A target market is composed of real people, so your marketing efforts have to stay as fluid and flexible as they are to stay in front of them.

Having said that, Instagram is a great tool to learn the ever-changing likes and dislikes of your customer base and followers. You can see what kind of content they like best and are drawn to, and which they aren’t. You can see which accounts they like to follow and what intrigues them.

This information will be crucial to know as you create content for your Instagram account, but it’s also valuable to know for your marketing strategy as a whole.

15. Constantly Updated Marketing Features Within Ads and Stories

Instagram knows you want to sell more products and raise brand awareness. They understand your goals to improve your Instagram marketing strategy and the platform gives you the tools to accomplish them.

Instagram knows their users. They understand how people spend money online. That's why major retailers do stellar work on Instagram to make it completely easy to click, search and buy. The social network created shopping and marketing experiences as an integrated part of their platform specifically to allow brands to advertise without obstructing the process of the platform.

At the same time, running Instagram Story ads lets you add links and product tag widows to learn more in an instant. The constant updates tailored toward businesses make this one of the hottest spots for retailers and brands to showcase their products. Also, with ads that appear in the feed, you can attach links with CTAs like “Shop Now” to encourage shoppers to leave their feed.

How will you use these benefits of Instagram Marketing?

Now that you know a few important benefits of Instagram, what will you do with the tips? Remember, Instagram is one of the best social media platforms to engage with your target audience and connect through visual content.

Also, business-specific features such as business profiles, targeted ad campaigns, incredibly detailed insights and shopping buttons in stories and in-feed ads help you get the most out of this platform while boosting your ROI.

More people are drawing their attention towards Instagram than ever before, and you are only ignoring millions of potential customers by not joining this powerful social media platform. Take the tips you learned here and start building your Instagram presence.

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