11 Innovative Ways to Make Your Next Instagram Marketing Campaign Dazzle

Article Note: This article “11 Innovative Ways to Make Your Next Instagram Marketing Campaign Dazzle” was first published on 21st September 2016. We have last updated this article on 8th July 2020 with fresh information.

Of all social media platforms, you can consider Instagram the most ideal platform for brands to promote their business, engage with their target audience, and also gain new customers. It is like a large marketing cake and every marketer has to try to cut their share of the cake. So, first of all, it is important that you have a content strategy for your Instagram marketing. In comparison to other social media platforms, brand contents attract up to 15x more engagement on Instagram than popular platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. But if you really want to achieve your goal, especially when running an Instagram marketing campaign, you need to put in some extra work.

Marketers all over the world are grappling with the opportunities available on social media to enhance their brand presence, engage with customers more effectively, enable sales conversions, and develop customer loyalty. Social media concepts and practices have also been in a state of dynamic flux with new platforms coming up regularly and customer preferences changing almost overnight. Just when marketers were getting used to the idea of establishing a brand presence on Facebook, Instagram with its focus on visual content has changed the rules of the game. It has taken on an almost universal appeal; there are now more than 500 million monthly users who upload a mind-boggling 70 million photos daily.

Running a marketing campaign on Instagram

With opportunities for marketing expanding at such a scorching pace, businesses are falling over themselves to include Instagram in their social media marketing initiatives. Marketers need to appreciate that brand building on social media cannot be done by creativity alone. They need to work out an Instagram marketing campaign that is innovative as well as effective.

When running a marketing campaign on Instagram, you have a set of strategic goals that you are trying to achieve over a specific period of time that the campaign runs. Your content for that period is structured towards your campaign in order to hit your target (which has to be measurable and specific). You have to understand that marketing campaigns are sprints; you have to put in a lot of effort to generate the result that you need over a short period of time. Adopting a marathon-style, slow, and steady method might work for the regular Instagram posts. But, this will not work for a marketing campaign.

Are you planning your next Instagram marketing campaign? Are you looking for ways to make it dazzle? Here are 11 ways on how to achieve this.

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1. Set a target for your Instagram campaign

This is an undebatable part of your Instagram marketing campaigns. You need to have goals and objectives that you are looking to accomplish. But more important than just setting those goals is to ensure that they are SMART goals.

Smart Goals:

The first thing is to ensure that you are precise with your goals and ideas. Who is your target audience? What do you expect of them? Make sure that your goal is single and precise and your campaign pursues this goal.

The only way to find out the success of your campaign is for you to measure it. So, if your goals are not measurable, you will not be able to define whether or not your marketing campaign was a success. Before you start your campaign, you should have a baseline for your engagement and current followers. This is the least you can do to track your growth during or after the marketing campaign.

The attainability of your goal is also very important. Although, you should set goals that will push you to work harder and are probably hard to achieve. They should not be totally out of reach. You have to consider such things as your budget, length of the campaign, and your current growth rate when deciding your goals for the campaign. You have to do your research and be realistic with your target for the campaign.

Marketing campaigns also run over a period of time; so you have to ensure that your goal is time-based and fits into or is achievable in the timeframe that the marketing campaign runs. The shorter the timeframe, the better. You lose the steam when you drag the campaign for too long. Remember that the marketing campaigns are sprints and not marathons.

2. Plan your content

After deciding on what your campaign goals are, the next thing is to plan the content that you would be posting for your campaign. You should have an Instagram content calendar that covers the duration of your marketing campaign. The individual post should be unique but pass the same message you are trying to get across with the campaign. Campaigns will require a lot from you. So, it is important that you have it all planned out before you launch. You do not want to get stuck somewhere in-between.

3. Do not leave out Instagram stories

Many people run their Instagram ads on their news feed only. But they are missing out on the unmined treasure in the Instagram stories. Every day, 500 million Instagram stories are watched worldwide, however, only half of those are used for business. You can definitely make use of your stories to complement your news feed. This way you are reaching out to more people and can have a more fulfilling marketing campaign.

4. Try different types of content

There are different types of content that can be posted on Instagram; you should try to use all of these contents during a marketing campaign. The Instagram stories are definitely a format that you have to try out. But other formats and content types that you have to try out include videos, traditional photos, and other carousel content that might have worked wonders for other brands previously. Then there is Instagram Live which has also proven to be popular among the younger generations. Perhaps giving your followers a little hint of what goes on behind the scene will help put the spotlight on you, especially during a campaign.

5. Incorporate general hashtags

You should manage every hit of the Instagram photo as a show for growth. Adding some commander Hashtags to your captions gave a pink slip and will earn you preferably exposure – period. It’s like stealing candy from a baby, it’s inconsequential, and it adds honesty to your photo.

General hashtag fixed attitude is not by way of explanation abstracts yesterday those tips. Follow the outstrip Instagram Hashtags as guidelines consequently phrases are over typed by Instagram users. Anyhow don’t bring to a meet solely on the cut a track, as total and their pigs in a blanket are by it as a resource, making it difficult for you to end out.

6. Track your Instagram campaign metrics & analytics

It is easy to doubt the impact of your campaign if it goes through and there is no way to measure its impacts. Before you kick off your campaign, there should be a pretty good of what you consider key metrics which you will use in evaluating the success of the campaign. If you are running an awareness campaign, for instance, the key metric you will pay attention to is your reach, audience growth, and engagements.

The goal of your campaign will decide what metric you are to measure as the yardstick for success. There are a number of trackable metrics and analytics on social media and Instagram. But outside Instagram, you could also use trackable links to track some metrics outside of those on Instagram.

Instagram was originally developed as a personal photo-sharing app. It has taken it some time to appreciate that its massive following has attracted a lot of commercial users. Consequently, Instagram analytics has made a rather slow start and there is, relatively speaking, fewer analytic platforms. Even among the ones that are available many of them suffer from a lot of limitations.

High up on the list of recommendations is Minter.io, which can monitor your Instagram account and identify the best times for you to post on your account, profile the demographics of your Instagram followers as well as analyze Hashtags. As every marketer knows, Hashtags are critical to effective marketing and customer engagement.

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7. Make use of influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is a big thing on social media these days. Influencers have a large number of organic audience and followers on Instagram that believe they are trustworthy and following the recommendations and opinions. You can make use of this to your advantage by partnering with these people. These influencers can bring you more audience and loyal followers, making your Instagram marketing campaign gain more trust and authenticity.

It is left for you to decide and identify the influencer that is best for your brand and your campaign. You should go for people that share similar values and aesthetics as your brand. Their sphere of influence also has to be within your industry. That’s how they can reach out to your target audience.

8. Budget for success

The budget is an important part of your marketing campaign. In simple and clear terms, the size of your budget can determine the success of your campaign. Your budget should be one that gives room for success, so nothing looks forced into the budget. When developing the budget for your campaign, there are certain things that you have to consider such as the best strategy for your campaign.

You also have to cover for the cost of your promoted content, as well as your partnership with influencers. If you will be running an online contest in the cause of the campaign, you have to include that in your budget as well. You should have a budget for everything and work within the means of your budget.

9. Interview some of your target audience

This might not sound like a very popular strategy. But it helps you to understand the online habits of your target audience. If you are going to develop a service or product that is good enough to meet the needs of your customer, then you have to understand them first. The same is true if you are going to have an excellent marketing campaign on Instagram.

While developing your campaign, be sure to interview some of your audience. This gives you a good idea of how they make use of Instagram and will consequently help you to develop the right campaign strategy that suits them.

10. Make use of Instagram photos as reviews by customers

One of the most credible ways of showing how happy your existing customers are and convert traffic into buyers is customer reviews and testimonials. Because they are usually authentic and easy to verify, customer reviews appear to be legitimate. Reviews on social media can be taken to the next level by Instagram. They can be depicted in pictures that can communicate much more than mere text.

You can use tools like Yotpo to curate customer reviews and publish them on Instagram with just a single click. The chosen photographs can be displayed on the product pages of your website. This engages customers and trigger sales as well as encourage more customer reviews with the hashtag being displayed.

11. Wait for the right time to launch your campaign

For social media marketing to be effective to the degree that every marketer wants, it is necessary that the account is continually refreshed with new content that holds the attention of users. Instead of leaving content posting to whims and fancies of the day, marketers should take time out to plan and schedule the visual content that is required to be posted.

You can take a look at a tool called “Later” that offers a collaboration feature that allows the entire content team to contribute to the Instagram account, conduct reviews, and slot it into a defined schedule for posting. Later also acts as a content storage app that enables you to keep all your visual content in a single place that your entire team can then access.

Timing is very important to have a successful marketing campaign. Firstly, you have to be sure that the time is right from within your company. It is important that you are not launching a marketing campaign at the same time the company is dealing with other bigger goals. This means that it will receive lesser attention from the upper ups, and this might also mean a smaller budget. Then check the Instagram space to be sure that it is set for your marketing campaign. Being strategic with your timing will determine how much attention your campaign gets from inside and outside your company. This will invariably decide its success.

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Conclusion

A number of businesses already fighting it out in the same space on Instagram for customer attention. Marketers need to increasingly focus on sustained innovation for keeping the engagement level of their customers high. Creativity and innovation, in addition to a refined content distribution strategy built on reliable customer analytics, are the only ways that a brand can stay ahead in the pulsating social media environment of Instagram.

Well planned and well-executed Instagram marketing campaign can only mean well for the company or brand. It can have a very large financial impact on the business in terms of sales. So, you have to put a lot of attention in planning and executing marketing campaigns.

We have written this article in association with David Collins and Evans Walsh.

David Collins is a professional writer and blogger from Virginia. He is considered a top writer and was rated one of the most professional essay writers by Nerdy Writers in acknowledgment of his work.

Evans Walsh is a social media branding consultant at Instamacro who helps her clients to raise the profile of their Instagram accounts and increase engagement with Instagram followers. A keen follower of social media trends, Cynthia is a prolific blogger on the subject.