7 Effective Ways to Promote your Businesses on Instagram

Social media has proven to be the most effective channel to drive sales and promote businesses in this era. According to research conducted by Ikenna Franklin Eze and Chux Gervase Iwu, social media has 54.2% effectiveness in enhancing small business growth. According to the study, Instagram is the most effective social network platform with 63.3%, followed by Facebook at 55.5%, and Twitter at 45.6% in 2021.

Likewise, in a Databox 2020 report, Instagram ranked third as an effective social media platform mainly used to promote businesses. Over 200 million Instagram users visit at least one business profile per day. Using Instagram to promote your product or service will undoubtedly multiply your sales. However, there is a right and wrong way to do it.

Here are five practical and effective ways to promote your businesses on Instagram.

Switch to Instagram business profile

Did you know that about 25 million Instagram profiles are business profiles? Switching to a business account gives you access to some features that will help promote your business. Some of these features are sharable links, running Instagram ads, tracking content performance, action, analytical tools (insights), and so on. 

Be an active participant

The first rule of social media is to engage with people on the platform constantly. This means you must follow other people – influencers and brands. Participate in discussions of your own and other people’s posts. And publish content created by potential customers (user-generated content). According to a report, 81% of users use the platform to research products and brands, 80% use it to make buying decisions, and 83% to discover new products.

Post unique contents

Content is king. Therefore, ensure that your business content, whether videos, quotes, captions, etc., is creative, appealing, and attractive. People will naturally gravitate towards your business page and patronize you because you give them value. The keyword here is VALUE. 

Use testimonials

Customer testimonials go a long way in advertising your business and generating leads for you. This is because people find user-generated content more authentic than the content created by a brand. Essentially, they trust what your customer says about you rather than what you say about your brand. 

Use free Instagram marketing tool

Through the analytical feature on Instagram (insights), you get feedback on your business statistics, like impressions, engagement data, and more. You can also break down your followers’ demographics, age, gender, location, and most active hours. With these tools, you can access specific information about your business posts. This will let you know how your followers interact with your content and plan strategies to improve and better your business.

Run sponsored ads

There are no two ways about it; if you want your business to drive sales faster through Instagram or any other social media platforms for that matter, you have to invest in paid advertising. 

According to Hootsuite, Instagram advertising can reach over 1.2 billion people or 20% of the world’s population over age 13. The report says 27% of users say they find new products and brands through paid social ads.

Using Instagram ads will therefore help you reach a wider audience. This will allow you to target your audience in a new way. 

#Hashtags

A hashtag is not just a tool to help you find potential customers. It’s, more importantly, a way your target audience can find you. But there is more to it than this. With over 95 million photos posted on Instagram every day, it’s hard for Instagram to deliver the right content to the right people without hashtags. So, Instagram uses hashtags to help the right people discover your post. 

The maximum number of hashtags you can use per post is 30. Depending on your marketing goals, you can use as many as 30 or fewer hashtags on your posts but ensure to use hashtags narrow to your niche. The chances of being discovered by more people interested in your product or service are higher with hashtags with less volume of posts.

What you must, however, not do is repeat the same hashtags on every post. Instagram’s algorithm may penalize you for this. It may push your posts to the bottom, so they don’t appear for those hashtags. Instagram may even deactivate your account as this may look like you’re spamming users.

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