Instagram Marketing For Small Business: 8 Powerful Insta Features

by Sonal | Jul 29, 2022 | Marketing, Social Media Marketing

You’ve probably seen the power of Instagram by now. In the social media world, it is one of the fastest-growing platforms. In just a few years, it has grown from one billion users to two billion active users. From customer complaints to a product going viral, the platform offers many features for small businesses and the platform generates 4x more interactions compared to Facebook. From taking advantage of Instagram’s features to specific ideas on how to increase your digital footprint, we explain how to use Instagram for your small business.

Let’s start from the basics.

What Is Instagram Marketing?

By Definition, Instagram marketing is the practice of using the Instagram platform to market a product or service. Marketing on it can involve many different tactics and strategies, enabling businesses to accomplish a variety of goals.

It can be used for marketing in two broad categories:

1. Advertising, influencer marketing, and other paid marketing strategies.
2. Marketing that uses organic tactics, such as creating organic content (such as posts, stories, and comments), in addition to engaging with the content of other users.

Some of the Goals you may wish to achieve from Instagram marketing include: Selling products or services, Gaining more followers and engagement, Building relationships with prospective customers and other brands or Enhancing your brand’s reputation.

How to Start Marketing on Instagram: The Basics

Start with having a proper business profile – not just a regular personal profile. This allows you to reap the benefits of Instagram’s business marketing features and Insights. It also makes you more credible in the eyes of your audience.

Follow along for some of the best practices that can turn a good profile into an awesome one.

How to Create an Instagram Business Profile

To create an awesome Instagram business profile, you’ll need two things:

1. Your Insta account which can be an existing personal profile or one you’ve just created for your business. For brand recognition, create a handle with your company’s name.
2. Your brand’s FB Business Page. In order to verify your Insta account, you will need to create this one first

Once you have both these things ready, On your smartphone, log in to Instagram with your company handle.
Tap the circular icon in the bottom right corner. The screen will expand to show another menu. Tap “Settings” in the bottom right corner.

On the Settings page, scroll down until you find “Switch to Business Profile.”

During setup, you will be asked to link your business account to your Facebook business page, as well as edit your business’s public contact information: email address, phone number, and physical address. And voila. You’re ready to use Instagram for marketing your business.

How to Market on Instagram: Creating Your Strategy

Set Up S.M.A.R.T Goals

Creating a successful Instagram marketing strategy requires you to set a clear goal, build individual tactics gradually toward it, and monitor your progress so you can adjust where necessary.

Marketing plans are built around goals and objectives. Read more about ‘How to set up S.M.A.R.T goals for your business. This is a widely used acronym used to guide people in setting objectives for themselves. Goals should be a clear milestone of what you wish to achieve.

Create Your Instagram Content Strategy

Your Instagram content strategy can include several posting options, Choosing the right ones depends mainly on how well you know your target audience.

What are the key demographics of your audience? What do they like to do, see, and experience? What entices and entertains them? How do brands generate trust and motivate them to make a purchase?

You probably need some time to know all these answers, which is perfectly normal. It’s a learning process that you’ll get the hang of as you go. As you gain a better understanding of your audience and what works for them, you’ll be able to optimize your Instagram marketing strategy.

Some Tips for building a strong Instagram content strategy:

• Plan your posts/ creatives keeping your branding strategy in mind. 

• Consistency is the key. Be consistent with your content and it should reflect your brand’s identity.

• Observe what other brands are doing on this platform. What content are they using to connect with their audience? Check out top-performing posts from similar brands, your biggest competitors, leaders in specific niches, and the most broadly popular accounts on the platform.

• This competitive research will help you in following the latest trends, best practices and hacks to take you to the next level.

• Create a social media content calendar to plan and schedule your posts.

• And lastly, Make use of Instagram Insights to track your content’s performance. Instagram Insights is a free tool, available for everyone to have a look at the key performance metrics of your account. It also helps you find your target audience on Instagram, their demographic details, etc.

Execute Content Strategy with Top Instagram Features

Whether you are a new business in the market, or you want to strengthen your community, create brand awareness, or even make sales, there’s an Instagram feature to help you achieve your goals. Let’s look at some of the top features of Instagram that can help you connect with users and boost your Instagram marketing strategy.

REELS – The Number One

Instagram and its algorithm are mainly focused on using Reels as the major format for content marketing on social media. It is one of the most organic ways of boosting your brand’s presence on social media. Quality content using trending sounds when marketed as a short-format video gets more reach and impressions than feed videos.

VIDEOS

Building trust with your followers and customers is easy with videos. This video feature is perfect for businesses who want to get endorsements from influencers and celebrities.

According to research, 54% of people who wish to see more video content from marketers are more likely to purchase a product online after watching a video. You can increase sales by showing your products how they look, how they can be useful, and how they stand out in the market. Your brand story can be told with the help of Instagram videos, which can also be used to explain the value proposition of your brand and build valuable relationships with customers and potential prospects.

Stories

This is that one feature that almost everyone uses and loves on this platform, whether they are using it for personal or professional reasons. Stories appear as tappable circles at the top of your followers’ feeds and last for a limited time. Content disappears after 24 hours, just like on Snapchat.

Here are a few ideas for how you can use Instagram Stories:

• Provide answers to frequently asked questions within your company’s niche or about your company in general
• Take your audience behind the scenes by sharing “behind-the-scenes” content
• Get people to check out your blog, ebook, or infographic by promoting it
• Consider having an employee (or influencer) take over your social media for a day
• Take a poll on a hot topic or solicit feedback from your audience
• Host a contest or giveaway in which you ask users to create a post a story that tags your account or includes a brand hashtag

Instagram Live

A popular feature used by big brands as well as small businesses is Instagram Live. These are videos but they are LIVE! For maximum use, live sessions can be recorded on the feed and viewed later as videos.

Instagram Live allows you to engage your audience in a real-time “live broadcast” format. This is an especially helpful feature if you’re attending an event or discussing anything timely or urgent.

Your story will appear first in your followers’ Story feeds when they open the app, and they will also get a notification that it’s happening. But with great power comes great responsibility: use this feature only when you have some truly good content to share, or you might push users away for wasting their time.

Instagram Shops

Meta made a revolutionary leap into eCommerce when it launched Instagram Shops in 2020 in the midst of a pandemic that affected physical businesses across the world.

Businesses use shops to make product discovery convenient and easy by providing a full-screen storefront. Consumers or users can visit a shop from a business’ Instagram profile or from feed/Stories.

Hashtags

Hashtags are virtually everywhere on the internet and off the internet these days. When applied to your marketing strategy, Instagram hashtags are a clear signal to users that your posts are relevant to what they’re looking for. In fact, many users look for content based on hashtags alone. So if your posts are related to a trending topic, be sure to include the associated hashtag. This can help you get in front of the eyes of people who are genuinely interested in what you have to say.

It’s also a smart idea to create a branded hashtag and use it frequently. This hashtag might include your company’s name or the name of a particular campaign, event, or promotion.

Harness the Power of Instagram Marketing

It is a powerhouse in social media when it comes to offering best-class features. In terms of getting attention, stimulating engagement, building strong relationships, and surpassing financial goals for brands, there is virtually no limit to what can be achieved.

The new business world can seem overwhelming and daunting, but new businesses should stay alert, listen, and learn as they go. You will find that Instagram marketing becomes easier and more profitable as you go if you approach it with a growth mindset from the beginning.

Facebook Marketing for Small Business | Benefits of a Facebook Business Page | 7 Steps of Creating Facebook Ads

by Sonal | May 13, 2022 | Marketing, Social Media Marketing

What should you do when you’re getting started today in marketing and you’re building a social media brand — where should you spend your energy if you’re that marketer?”
Do you think you can be alive in the marketing game without Facebook?
I don’t think it is possible. Period.

Facebook is a powerful tool for small businesses. Every small business can benefit from a Facebook presence. Having more than 2.91 billion monthly users, Meta provides many opportunities for small businesses to market their services, increase customer support, and boost sales and recognition. Let’s dive deep into all of its aspects to use this giant tool to its maximum capacity.

What is Facebook Marketing?

In Facebook marketing, a brand can benefit from a variety of highly targeted paid and organic posts, allowing them to reach a huge audience with its products and services. The social media giant has transformed into one of the biggest marketplaces on the internet over the past decade.

This offers a powerful advertising system that lets you target a specific audience. The platform maintains a significant amount of information about its users, which can be advantageous when targeting ads. Let’s have a look at what are the benefits of Facebook marketing.

Benefits of Facebook Marketing

In this section, we’ll dive deeper into the advantages of using Facebook in your marketing strategy. You’ll get to know which goals you can achieve with this platform apart from reaching wide audiences.

• Precise targeting: You already know that FB allows users to deeply segment their audience but let’s take a closer look at the options available. Within demographic targeting, you can select an audience with a particular income, education level, life events, relationship status, or job. You can look for customers, taking into account their interests, such as their preferred entertainment, sports, hobbies, and shopping habits. Also, you can reach clients based on purchase behaviours, intent, device usage, etc.
• Increased website traffic: You can drive your audience directly to your website. Moreover, these people will be higher quality leads than users who land on your site organically because they already know your business. Hence, you have more credibility in their minds. Encourage your followers to visit your site to find out more about your products. Besides, when linking to a site, Facebook generates a full-size image if your site page has one. So, it will attract many users’ attention and help you boost website traffic.
• Various ad formats: Facebook provides businesses with excellent opportunities that allow them to showcase their products from the best angles. Ads on this platform include both text and visual formats. You can boost your post by turning it into an ad, produce stories to show your behind-the-scenes, make a slideshow of your new collection, use carousel ads to demonstrate up to 10 products linking to the corresponding pages, etc.
• Customer support: A lot of people prefer to connect with a brand via social media. Phone calls have become a thing of the past. Create a chatbot for Facebook Messenger to communicate with users based on their popular queries — keywords. They can include “price,” “delivery,” “payment options,” “purchase,” “book,” etc. You only need to develop a scenario-based on users’ FAQs and write the answers. Your chatbot will imitate the real conversation. As a result, your support team will have time for more complicated issues and you can automate routine tasks.
• Positive impact on SEO: Some marketers claim that social media influences search rankings. It’s believed that robots take into account your data in the About section while ranking. Moreover, your social media engagement contributes a lot. Shares, likes, and comments tell Google that people are interested in your brand and engage with it. Although there is no exact proof, it isn’t superfluous either. In addition, creating a Facebook Business Page can be an effective small business marketing tool. Here’s a look at the various ways to use Facebook to benefit your business and maximize your efforts.

What is a Facebook Business Page?

A Facebook Page is a public presence similar to a personal profile but allows your audience to like or follow the business, brand, celebrity, cause, or organization. The Page updates its followers’ news feeds with content, and the business can raise brand awareness, deploy and track advertising, collect audience insights, and chat with users who seek assistance.

You’ll need your Page to stand out from the crowd to draw significant attention to your company, considering how many companies have a Facebook presence. If you’re not sure whether the work it takes to distinguish your company on Facebook is worth the effort, there are many reasons to create a Facebook Business Page. Have a look at Facebook Business Page of DigiAvtar.

Benefits of a Facebook Business Page

If you create a Facebook Page for your business, you can use it to do the following:

1. Provide basic contact information :
   People may visit your Facebook page to find out your contact details, your address, your working hours and details about your services. A Facebook Business Page is a one-stop-shop for listing all of this information.
2. Retain existing customers and acquire new ones :
   A Facebook Page is a great place to post shots from inside your store/ workplace or behind the scenes with your support team. You can also boost customer engagement by updating followers about new products, discounts and giveaways.
3. Know your customers :
   Facebook Business Page provides you access to audience insights and demographics. You can use the data provided to create an efficient marketing strategy and structure your campaigns accordingly.
4. Reduce marketing costs :
   Starting a Facebook Business Page is free, and many additional Facebook marketing and analytics features are either free or inexpensive. Integrating a Facebook Business Page into your marketing plan is a budget-savvy way to reach more people – potentially an audience of billions – with lesser money.
5. Boost web traffic :
   By providing your company’s website link on your Facebook Business Page, you’ll drive more traffic to your website. The more people you get to your website, the better the chances of people knowing about your products and services.
6. Improve SEO :
   Facebook Business Pages give you more than just a social media presence; they also improve your search engine rankings. Improves SEO tactics imparting a big role by optimising data and linking back to the website.

How to create a Facebook Business Page?

Now that you know some of the benefits of having a Facebook Page for your business, it’s time to start creating one. Follow these steps to set up your Page:

1. Create your Facebook Business Page
   The first step in creating a Facebook Business Page is to ensure that you’re setting up the right type of account. Remember that you are creating a Facebook Page, not a Facebook profile.
   A profile is a personal Facebook account designed to share personal information and photos with friends and family. Pages are public profiles that allow businesses and public figures to connect with followers and customers. Facebook users need only “like” a Page to start seeing its updates in their News Feed.
2. Answer questions
   For creating a Facebook Business Page, you must already have a personal profile and follow the on-screen instructions. When creating a Page, you will need to provide information, such as a category to describe your Page and your business’s name, address and phone number. It’s crucial to include as much accurate information as possible so that customers can easily recognize your Page and find information about your business.
3. Add profile and cover photos
   Give your Page an identity by uploading your profile and cover photos to your Facebook Business Page. It’s a good practice to do so, as attractive graphics and a visual brand lead to better engagement rates with your audience.
4. Fill in the appropriate Page sections
   You can add many sections to a Facebook Page, but I would recommend that you add at least these sections to have a complete and functional page:
   Home: This section is where all your updates and posts live. It’s also the first section users see when they visit your Page.
   About: The About section is one of the most essential parts of your Facebook Page. Fill it out with your address, business details, contact information, hours, website URL and description of your business. Many people go online to find specific information about a business, so, I’d recommend you to show your brand’s personality through this section.
   Community: The Community section is where posts, photos and videos from customers show up. Customers can also check out your store here. This is an excellent place for your audience to interact and learn more about your business.
   Events: You can create event pages and promote upcoming events in this section. Once you create an event on Facebook, you can invite people and share specific information about it all in one place.
   Info and ads: This section is designed to add transparency to your Page. It shows your followers any Facebook ads you’re currently running.
   Offers: This section allows you to post discounts or deals. This is an easy way to encourage people to come to your Facebook Page. Ask customers to like your Page and grab a deal on it.
   Posts: This section shows all your posts, including timeline photos and updates.
   Reviews: Customers can write a review and indicate if they would recommend your business, in this section. Ratings show up at the top of your Page. Reviews help verify your business and make it easy for customers to recommend your products or services.
   Services: You can showcase your services in this section. You can also add information about your specialities – including photos, descriptions and pricing.
   Photos: The Photos tab features the images you’ve posted on your timeline.
   Shop: You can add your inventory to this section so users can buy your products directly from Facebook. Sales are sent to your bank account, and it’s an easy way to start e-commerce.

What are Facebook ads and boosted posts?

Now that you have set up your Facebook business page successfully, Let’s look at how to reach users through paid advertising options like boosted posts or Facebook ads. Boosted posts are posts you place on your Facebook Page; you pay a fee to “boost” the post to a target audience. It gives your content better reach and visibility.

On the other hand, Facebook ads offer more functionality and placement choices. Facebook ads make it easy to target a specific audience. You can target people who like your Page or segment by location, age, gender and interests. The platform collects user data, so it can target your advertisement to those most likely to be interested in your product or service.

Should you use boosted posts or Facebook ads?

Boosted posts and Facebook ads can both be valuable elements of your marketing strategy. Here are some benefits of boosted posts:

• Simple tactic: Boosted posts are one of the easiest ways to advertise on Facebook. You choose your target audience, set a budget and determine your campaign’s length. When the post is approved, your target audience will see the post in their News Feed during the campaign.
• Online advertisement: With fewer customization options, boosted posts are still considered ads and will be listed as ads on your billing statement.
• Brand awareness: Boosted posts are an excellent way to build a brand, foster brand awareness, and gain comments and shares.

These are some of the key features of Facebook ads:

• Customization options: Facebook ads provide more customization options.
• Support tools: You’ll create Facebook ads in the comprehensive Ads Manager platform or Business Suite.
• Creative sharing: You have options like sharing the ad to Instagram, Instagram Stories and Messenger, and choosing placement locations, such as on the side of the News Feed.
• Close Monitoring: You create and manage the ad and select objectives like tracking conversions and lead generation. You also receive deeper targeting capabilities.

Steps for Creating Facebook ads

Since boosted posts are straightforward with fewer options, we’ll focus on maximizing your Facebook ads’ effectiveness. However, many of these tips also apply to boosted posts.

1. Set goals
   Ads are most effective when they have a clear objective. The objective will also help you track your ad’s progress and assess whether your strategy needs to be tweaked. For example, some organizations want to use ads to get people’s attention, while others want people to engage with their content.
   It goes without saying that your campaigns must focus on building awareness and attracting new potential customers. When defining your objectives you need to ask yourself what exactly you want to accomplish. Do you want to boost your brand’s visibility or create a strong customer base?
   Facebook defines two common ad types – dynamic and lead – to help businesses accomplish their goals. Dynamic ads promote relevant items from your product catalogue and retarget them to people who have shown interest in your site. Lead ads give viewers an easy way to get the information they’re seeking.
2. Select your audience and choose the location
   A campaign’s reach must be defined properly to target the proper audience. Facebook allows you to adjust your audience using the following criteria: location, demographics, interests, behaviour and connections.
   Location can help you with a local marketing strategy, narrowing down people in your general area who may find your products or services more relevant than someone in a different state or country. Demographics allows you to choose the age range, gender and job title of your target audience.
   Use the interests, behaviour and connections criteria to narrow down your target audience even further.
3. Set your budget
   Facebook’s ad management tool, Ads Manager allows you to purchase ads for Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network, which shows Facebook ads in other publishers’ apps.
   Buying an ad requires you to create one and then submit it to Facebook’s ad auction. By bidding on an advertisement, you can define the terms under which your ad will run – including the budget. You’ll need to determine how much money you want to spend daily and over time.
   Facebook’s ad auction requires you to set a “bid,” which is the maximum amount of money you are willing to pay when someone sees or engages with your ad.
4. Create compelling ad copy
   A good ad copy is all you need in marketing and Facebook ads are no different. Regardless of what type of ad you choose to run, the ad copy you write must speak directly to your ideal customer and make them want to listen to you. To do this effectively, you have to know precisely who you are targeting, what their pain points are and what action you want them to take.
   Here are the primary written components of your ad:
   Headline: Start with the headline. Make sure your headline is attractive, conversational and engaging. When developing your ad, the field listed as the headline is essentially the first sentence above the image; it needs to be as good as the first line in your favourite novel if you want people to keep reading instead of scrolling past.
   Description: Use the description field to answer any objections. This text will be prominently displayed beneath the image and is easily visible without the viewer clicking to read more. When viewers see that your offer is free or has a money-back guarantee while scrolling, they might stop to think about it.
   The ad copy you write will likely need to be changed for different audience segments even if the offer is the same. You may need to try out different combinations of headlines and descriptions and test them to determine the most effective one.
5. Use images and videos
   A compelling image or a video is all you need for people to pay attention to your ad. This can be a carefully curated image that visually articulates your offer or brand, or it can be a video that people will love to watch.
   If you use stock images, use high-quality images relevant to the advertising copy. Facebook has several image and text rules about image types and the ratio of words allowed on ad images.
   It can often be more effective to opt for video for your Facebook ads. People love to watch videos online, and editing video is easier than ever thanks to the growing field of user-friendly video-editing apps.
6. Create Messenger ads
   Messenger ads are still in the Wild West marketing phase, making it the ideal time to jump on the bandwagon. The wonderful thing about Messenger ads is they are delivered directly to customers’ Messenger app, along with messages from their friends, co-workers, and family. It’s an intimate space that still feels very personal, primarily because few businesses use this platform.
   It is essential to keep this feeling of intimacy at the forefront of your mind when creating ad experiences for Messenger. To do this effectively, you’ll want to utilize a chatbot service to build full campaigns. This process allows you to ask your subscribers a question or offer them something of value. You can then create an automated experience that moves them further along the sales funnel in a way that feels less like a sales pitch and more like a friend offering advice.
7. Learn the basics of Facebook advertising
   Facebook ad-targeting has come a long way in the last few years. Early on, there were a few hit-or-miss approaches to creating Facebook ads. Now, the platform allows you to choose the type of ad campaign you want to run, detailed objectives and custom audiences.
   You can also run multiple versions of the same ads to determine which is more effective and limit the amount you spend by carefully allocating your budget by day and ad.

If this all sounds complex, that’s because it is. It’s crucial to take your time and learn the fundamentals of setting up your campaign properly. Stunning copy and attention-grabbing graphics are no longer enough. Read our step by step blog on how to set up Facebook campaigns.
It’s good to understand how Facebook ads algorithms work, but if you don’t have the time to stay on top of them and their updates, seek help from DigiAvtar’s skilled team.

Guidelines for best practices

After setting up your business’s Facebook Page, it’s time to create content and engage with your followers. Let me share some tips on using Meta’s business tools to market your products and services most effectively:

Reply to messages
With Messenger, it’s quick and easy to reply to customers’ messages. Messenger is a tool and customers expect you to use it. In fact, Facebook tracks your Pages’ response rates so customers know how quickly they can expect an answer.
Facebook recently announced merging the messaging tools on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. This move emphasizes the importance of using Messenger and these other tools to communicate with customers and provide assistance.

Understand your target group
When promoting a post, you can target specific demographics, locations and interest groups. To run successful ad campaigns, you need to know your target audience and use Facebook’s targeting tools to reach those potential customers.

Use analytics
Facebook Audience Network shows insights on actions taken, Page views, the number of people you’ve reached and the number of post engagements. This information can help you measure the effectiveness of your social campaigns so you can decide how to improve your content.

Publishing Tools
Create a publishing schedule for Facebook posts and schedule them to go live in the future. Your Facebook Business Page also provides you with the opportunity to post videos, advertise your business, promote events, make offers, and post job descriptions.
It’s crucial to post regularly – at least thrice a week. If you find that you’re spending too much time on Facebook each day, try a third-party social media management tool – such as Canva, Hootsuite or Buffer. While creating and scheduling multiple posts takes time upfront, it saves you time in the long run.

Share relevant content
It can be time-consuming to Create and share only original content. Curating content from other sources or sharing user-generated content can save time and effort. Networking with other sources can benefit you in other ways, and they may share your content in return.

Communicate with your audience
Don’t publish a post and then not open Facebook for a week. Create and share posts to engage with your audience. Respond to comments, questions and concerns. If you’re having conversations with your followers, they’re more likely to become your customers.

Offer giveaways and contests
The best way to drive organic traffic to your Facebook page is to run giveaways and contests regularly. Before you create a contest or giveaway, make sure you understand and follow facebook’s rules and policies, or you could get in trouble.

Create events
Facebook allows you to create events. Invite influencers to these events, and pay extra to promote them to a targeted audience. Events can be a fun way to engage your audience and turn them into customers.

Create and post videos
If you scroll through your Facebook timeline, you might notice that there are a lot of videos. That’s because videos do great on the platform. One way to create videos is through Video ads, which allow you to broadcast to a large audience for free. With Video ads, you can have real-time conversations with followers and give them an inside look at your business.

Use Facebook ad campaigns
The best way to reach your desired audience is to run Facebook ads. While these ads cost money, they’re effective because you can choose your target audience based on demographics, behaviours or contact information. Set a daily or overall budget for ads, select the amount of time an ad runs and pick your desired audience. The platform tracks the interactions on each promotion you run, helping you develop highly successful campaigns in the future.

Celebrate business milestones
Highlight company milestones and celebrate anniversaries on Facebook. These posts usually engage your audience and will make you seem more personable. If you’re offering special promotions for milestones or anniversaries, promote them on your Page as well.