Instagram Marketing Strategies: What Marketers Need to Know

Instagram has gone from strength to strength over the years, thereby growing a stronger following of loyal users. It's arguably the most favored photo and video sharing platform today.

In 2018, the social network reached about one billion monthly active users—a significant increase from the 800 million recorded in 2017. These figures only tell us one thing: Instagram is a vast marketplace for any business to thrive.

Of course, you cannot just leverage this opportunity by sporadically posting pictures and clips; you'll need a marketing strategy to back up your content. And with a precise plan, you can become a prominent brand in no time.

Why you should have an Instagram marketing strategy

Every business, whether big or small, should have a powerful and elaborate marketing strategy. Similar to how you plan and carry out your daily life, your business should follow a plan with consistency and confidence.

A marketing strategy is a long-term plan of careful goals, metrics, and approaches that differentiates two or more competitors. One’s marketing plan could contain business ethics premises, customer information, and other crucial points.

So, why precisely is a marketing strategy vital? The answer is easy - without one, your business can waste leads, discourage prospects, and lose customers, thereby slowing its growth and reducing engagement rates.

To sum it all up, the purpose of a marketing plan is to help you and your business supervise roles and resources and also give you a planned-out scheme to gain an edge over your peers.

Top 7 Instagram marketing trends to watch

As an Instagram marketer, you must follow up on all the latest trends because the platform has a massive audience of over 500 million daily users and is volatile to change.

And with that vast user base, one can lose focus when keeping track of these trends. Still, by taking a look at our top seven Instagram marketing trends, you’ll be able to draft an efficient strategy for your business or creator page.

• 1. Branded AR effects

  

  The use of Augmented Reality effects dates back to the introduction of Instagram Stories, along with its face filters, in 2017.

  Not only can these effects be an exciting way for brands to engage their audience, but they can also be a tool for marketing products to prospective shoppers. And with the inception of the Spark AR Studio, anyone can create their custom AR filters for Stories.

  Whenever you create a branded AR filter, you attach your account and brand name to it. Anyone using your custom filters will see your brand's information instantly. This act already makes for a smooth, cost-effective marketing scheme.

  These branded/custom AR effects have users in different industries and niches. For instance, an eyewear brand can allow its audience to try on diverse sunglasses to see which looks good on them.

  Plus, with how Instagram is gradually becoming an online abode for shoppers, branded AR effects look to play an integral marketing role in the future of e-commerce.

• 2. The Explore tab

  This tab is popular amongst all users, allowing anyone to discover and search for fresh content.

  From the tab, you can even see exciting but not-so-popular content. And as one of the most used features on Instagram, the Explore tab has constantly been improving in UI/UX designs and algorithms.

  For brands, this news can serve as an advantage because such modifications may make appearing on the specialized page easier. It may even lead to a potential increase in reach and impressions.

• 3. In-app shopping

  

  Seeing as more than 60% of online shoppers use Instagram to find products and services they’re about to buy, the idea that Instagram itself should become an online store is very logical. Users can then purchase whatever they want easily, without leaving the social media platform.

  The initiative of in-app shopping opens opportunities for revenue generation and traffic for both Instagram and the shop owner.

• 4. Instagram Reels

  Just like TikTok, Instagram Reels is a feature that allows users to create, edit, and share short-form videos, usually 15 or 30 seconds long. And with TikTok and Reels sharing lots of similarities, the popular trends and challenges performed on the former are also possible with the latter.

  Reels saw a significant boom in usage during the controversial near-banning of TikTok in the United States. Since then, many users have decided that the feature was a great alternative to leverage TikTok-style content.

• 5. Third-party tools

  

  With these marketing extensions, you can get insights into engagement rates, impressions, the reach of your posts, and a lot more data.

  If you can get these details about your audience, planning your marketing strategy will be less tedious. So, whether it's free or not, you should work with one or more reliable third-party tools.

• 6. Sponsored ads

  How else can your targeted market hear or know about your brand?

  Sponsored ads give businesses the ability to target an audience from a different perspective. These ads work wonders as long as you create content that is engaging and relevant to the target viewers.

  You'll always find a type of sponsored ad within your advertising budget. With this, you just need to spend money to make more money.

• 7. Influencer marketing

  

  Contacting and collaborating with influencers is one of the fastest ways to expose your account and content to a vast audience. These creators should already have an engaged follower base relevant to your industry.

  When partnering with very influential individuals, such collaborations hardly fail because many people purchase things based on what they see or hear from their role models.