You’re running a nicely designed email marketing campaign — as well as Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin campaigns—but still, your customer base isn’t growing at the rate you’d like it to. On the other hand, it seems your competitors are winning new customers left and right—as if they know a marketing secret you don’t.
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Social media marketing doesn’t finish on Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin. A new kid on the block is winning a lot of attention, and for good reason, too. Maybe what’s really happening is you have no presence on Instagram Stories.
Launched in 2016, Instagram Stories is fast becoming a favorite social media marketing tool among smart internet marketers. Read on to find out why and, more importantly, how can you leverage it to the hilt and race past your competition.
What Makes Instagram Stories a Powerful Social Media Marketing Tool?
Here are three reasons why you must market your brand on Instagram Stories.
- 400 Million Users – As of now, Stories has 400 million users. Moreover, you can use Instagram Stories for free for marketing. So without a lot of money (though the platform is free, creating a Stories campaign might entail some expenditures), you can reach out to a large number of users and improve brand awareness.
- Improve Customer Engagement – Statistics collected up until now clearly show that Instagram users are willing to engage with brands. For instance, one in three of the most popular stories is a business story. But that’s not all. Instagram users don’t just view business stories, they also interact with brands. For instance, 59% of brands are successful in taking viewers to their shoppable page.
- Smart Online Marketers Already Use It – More than half of businesses with an Instagram account have a presence on Instagram Stories. Chances are some, if not all, of your direct competitors, might already be using the medium to good effect. The longer you delay joining the platform, the harder it will be to win new customers faster than they do.
How Can You Make Instagram Stories Work for You?
Without a doubt, Instagram Stories is a powerful marketing tool. That said, how much traction you generate from it depends largely on how you use it.
There’s only one thing worse than not having a presence on Instagram Stories, and that’s using it badly. A poorly designed Stories campaign can dent your brand image faster and worse than you can imagine.
Here are two tips to create an effective Stories marketing campaign.
1. Create Campaigns that Have Proven to Work
Retrospective analysis shows that some types of campaigns, such as those listed below, usually work better than others. Depending on your product, budget, and marketing goal, pick one or more among these to gain the maximum benefits.
- Special-Offer Campaign – Giving consumers an incentive to act the way you want them to is a time-tested marketing strategy. And guess what? It works just as smoothly on digital media platforms, like Instagram Stories, as on conventional marketing mediums. For instance, a popular brand increased their leads by 3 times through a “special offer” campaign.
- Video-Based Stories – Have you just launched a new product? Do you want to reveal recently added features in an existing product? Do you want to show consumers behind-the-scenes footage? If yes, you should insert videos into your stories.
- App-Install Campaign – Campaigns that offer mobile apps for installation are also very successful on Instagram Stories, particularly when the targeted customers are under 25. That said, you must have a well-designed, fast, user-friendly app. With so many mobile apps to choose from, consumers are not likely to use mediocre apps more than once.
2. Make Your Business Stories Easy to Search
There’s hardly any point in designing a great Stories campaign if users can’t find it. Many people use Instagram to search for local businesses, so why don’t you add location stickers to your business stories?
Hashtags are just about as effective as location stickers in helping you to become more searchable. The most popular hashtags include, among others, #GoodMorning, #Work, and #GoodNight. That said, you should always use hashtags that are relevant to your business, not the most popular ones.
What other tips can help you create a strong presence on Stories? Check out this great infographic, which offers tons of information about Instagram Stories, including some great tips.
