There is no doubt that Instagram is on the rise as one of the most reliable platforms for social media marketing. When compared to the other social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, where brands easily promote their content by sharing links through their posts, Instagram may not seem to be that straightforward for marketing.
It is because Instagram cannot be used to share links directly, but on the other hand, this adds more authenticity to this platform. Even in the image text or captions, no links can be added. The only place where you can add your website link is the Instagram bio, which makes marketing a wise game here for the social media experts.a
In light of recent studies, we can see that numbers speak in favor of Instagram. There are nearly 400 million users, which makes it one of the leading social media platforms in terms of user engagement.
How does Instagram marketing work?To give you a better idea of what is possible through Instagram in terms of marketing, here we will discuss a few latest instances of major brands that used Instagram successfully for business promotion.
There are plenty of people following National Geographic on various social networks. The brand maintains different accounts as per specific categories. Some of their noted profiles include NatGe o, NatGeo Wild, NatGeoTravel, NatGeo Photography etc., and they share some of the most viral images, stories, videos and articles on nature and science.
With stunning images to share with the audience, National Geographic is capably using Instagram to increase its reach. They have about 58.5 million followers, and the official National Geographic profile is surely an example of how the social platform is meant to be used for user engagement.
Most of the major airline companies such as Qantas, Air France, Emirates Airlines and Cathay Pacific are on Instagram. If you observe closely, you will notice a significant similarity in each of their marketing strategy. They all rely heavily on influencers!
- British Airways joined hands with Luanna90 and grabbed about 2.1 million followers.
- Alaska Airlines partnered with the top eight influencers on Instagram and launched the #WeekendWanderer campaign, which largely drove in traffic.
- Qantas used influencer Nicole Warne to launch @GaryPepperGirl and reached the count of 1.6 million followers.
In industries like aviation, where all the brands offer the same products, competition is tighter. Reaching a large and loyal mass of audience through Instagram can surely add value.
Adidas identified the right influencers and invited them as well as the followers for Instagram to participate in their contest made for Adidas Neo. The followers enthusiastically participated in it by creating Adidas Inspired posts on Instagram. The company has chosen the best content creators to model in their professional photo shoot. This move created a huge degree of engagement with Instagram audience.
For this, Adidas teamed up with Selena Gomez to increase reach. With this, the contest created a real buzz over the hashtag #MyNeoShoot. Thousands of Instagram users posted using #MyNeoShoot hashtag to participate. This campaign of Adidas generated nearly about 71,000 mentions and gained about 41000 new followers.
WeWork, a provider of office space, is another great example of brand promotion through Instagram. The service they provide seems to be a rather boring thing to common public, but still they run a winner Instagram account. How do they do it?
The approach here is not only to make people post images from their place of work, but also to actively encourage them to spice up the Instagram wall with creative and funny ideas as you can see at #DogsOfWeWork.
Frank Bod is a leading Australian brand specializing in skincare and cosmetic products. They offer a line of coffee-based products, and this specialty takes the centre stage in their images on Instagram. They have introduced their own hashtag campaign to their posts as #letsbefrank.
The interesting case study of Bloom & Wild will tell you about advertising for a startup. Bloom & Wild is a very young company, which delivers flowers to your doorstep in the UK. They grew their business enormously by using Instagram advertising.
The primary goal of their social media campaign through Instagram was to attract a larger and wider group of audience towards their new business based on an innovative idea. The strategy they adopted was pretty simple. They used Power Editor and their comparatively small email list to create a group of look-alike audience. Before they jumped fully into the advertising campaign, they tested each and everything related to it with a small budget.
In case of Bloom & Wild, videos gave back the best conversion rate, which was not so bad considering that Bloom & Wild was a just a startup and had no popular brand name to kick start it. They have increased the bouquet orders by about 60% with Instagram marketing. The company also witnessed many new followers coming and commenting on their posts. Many of these followers successfully converted as valuable customers.
There are people in every city and each of them has hundreds of stories to tell. What do you know about your city? No Your City helps people to tell stories of the city they live in through images and videos. They can share beautiful pictures about the nature, culture, heritage, business, or anything in their city by using the hashtag #noyourcity. With it, the followers get a chance to be featured on their account and get all the fame.
There are a lot of great Instagram accounts for people to follow. More and more brands are using Instagram to give their online marketing efforts a boost. No Your City is a classic example of how the Instagram community can add to small businesses to make them more popular and engaging.
Final thoughtThere are numerous ways for you to use Instagram for more personalized marketing, brand awareness, and business promotions. The best move is to browse around and identify what others are doing right. This will help you devise your strategy accordingly.
Author Bio: Walter Moore is a leading influencer with many followers for Instagram, and he has published many articles on different social media platforms on how to increase online marketing efficiency.