Following the popularity of social media championed by Facebook since 2004, online businesses have increased drastically. The world continues to witness a large turnout for social media marketing.
By the end of the year 2018, almost half of the world’s population will come online to buy or sell.
With the use of social media, you have the opportunity to promote your business to millions of people without the need to pay for advertisements on a television or radio station.
Instagram has more than 800 million potential users with numerous advanced features.
With that very large user base and functionality, the sky isn’t your limit.
You have the opportunity to connect and convert as many IG users as possible and promote your business without any limit.
But because you don’t know the trick, your marketing effort on IG hasn’t recorded any success.
You’re not the only entrepreneur at this crossroads.
In fact, out of the 800 million Instagram users, just only a few know how to use the platform to promote their businesses.
Some have more than a hundred of thousand followers but don’t know how to convert them into potential customers, while it’s even difficult for others to get followers.
This post will guide you on how to promote your business on Instagram and increase your ROI.
How to Promote your Business on IG
I want to assume you have an active Instagram account.
Good, if you do!
But in case you don’t know whether your current account is properly set up or not, read the steps to create a new Instagram account to review your account.
To promote your business on Instagram successfully depends on how you set up your account. So trust, that this guide will help you start well.
1. Understand IG User’s Behaviors
Instagrammers don’t behave in any special way than to keep coming back to the platform for more and more stuff they like. So take the advantage of how users behave on Instagram to promote your business.
According to Neil Patel, the majority of people on Instagram are for business.
When users visit IG, they either look for what to buy or what to sell. A 2015 finding reveals that 70% of those on Instagram are mainly for business, whether to sell or to buy.
However, 62% of the users follow and like brands they favor.
2. Choose the Right Business
Choosing a specific business to promote on Instagram can be a bit difficult if you have many ideas going on in your head.
The implication is that if you don’t know what people want to buy, you won’t know what to sell.
When all your IDEAS say “PICK ME…. PICK ME”, it won’t be easy to know the one to pick.
A solution to that is to rather pick a business that has a high market share or high demand rate.
Study different marketing platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and online stores like eBay, Amazon, Jumia, or Konga and find what people are buying most.
Any product that people buy most can be the best shot to deal in.
So, go for the best.
Your business may not necessarily be what you want or need. Inasmuch as you’re not going to be the one buying from yourself, you MUST choose your business based on what people want.
Choose a business that will constantly solve a problem in other people’s life.
Since people consume social media for reference purposes, the more people your products help, the more customers you make.
3. Get Customers on Instagram
Getting your customers won’t be a problem if you work very well in choosing your business.
Let’s say you eventually choose to sell sports gear, it means your customers are business owners.
That’s so simple, you can see.
Or if you choose to deal in fabrics, just ensure your target customers are FASHION ADDICTS. They won’t mind spending their last money on your products.
If you eventually choose to sell toys, children may not be your targets because they won’t buy directly from you. It’s better you focus on parents, lively families – those that like to CATCH FUN at any cost.
Whatever category of people you’re targeting, ensure what you promote isn’t different from what the people need. Always have your customers on your mind to stay focused.
4. Promote Your Business to the Right Customers
You can promote your business with the right use of Tags and Hashtags.
a. By Using Tags
You can use tags to directly call the attention of specific individuals to your posts.
It doesn’t matter if you personally know people you tag or not. What matters is to ensure the post is relevant to them.
By so doing, you catch their attention and they become your potential customers.
All you have to do is to survey other businesses on Instagram and steal their tags.
Don’t feel bad about the word steal. Because in the real sense of “stealing tags”, you’re not stealing. You just need to find relevant IG users and begin tagging them to your posts.
So if you really want the people you tag to your posts to show interest in your business, it means you must offer them products or services that are better than what they are used to on the other businesses you’re bringing them from.
This is just a way of saying: I’M BETTER THAN MY COMPETITORS.
But if the people you tag don’t check you out, you don’t lose anything. Your brand gains more exposure.
b. By Using Hashtags
Hashtags can be used to target a specific group of users on social media.
It allows your posts to gain a massive outreach when you include a series of relevant hashtags in your posts.
While you’re doing your findings to identify which customers to target, look for related tags and hashtags to use. Make a list for them so that you can have easy access anytime you want to publish a post.
Copy and paste the list in your posts whenever you want to promote your business.
Let’s say your business is offering business solutions to young entrepreneurs, your posts can travel far with the following hashtags:
#smallbusinessowners, #smallbusinesses, #businessideas, and so on.
You can get good hashtags that are related to your business from other people in your industry. When you read their posts, extract relevant hashtags you find at the bottom of their post to compile your own list.
5. Publish Posts that Have Good Photos or Info-Graphics
If you really want to promote your business on IG, let your post contain relevant photos or infographics. Then add a few texts, tags, and hashtags to it before publishing.
The logic is that when your post comes with a user-friendly graphic, the people you target will have a great affinity for the post. And they’ll keep coming back for more and more of your stuff.
By so doing, you can make them build confidence in your business.
Consequently, user engagement increases. And when that happens, you have the chance to convert the engagement into passive sales.
6. Boost Your Post’s Shelf Life to Promote Your Business
Findings show that posts that have hashtags with low posts have a longer shelf life than posts that contain hashtags that have high posts.
However, experts agree that when you combine both hashtags with high and low posts in your posts, you get the best result.
7. Use Smileys to Promote Your Business
Smiley has powerful effects that attract attention to your post. It serves as a great aesthetic advantage that makes your posts attract a high impression.
Your post becomes attractive when you add smileys to it. The beauty which smileys add to your post fascinates readers.
Instagram comes with many great smileys you can use to your advantage. Explore the feature and use any smiley applicable to your post based on its content.
8. Engage Your Customers when You Promote Your Business
Follow those who follow you and reply to comments with a deep sense of appreciation.
A common “THANK YOU” can help you convert an audience into a potential customer.
In fact, those who are reading your manners and responses will admire and follow you.
When you publish a post and someone only likes it, go to the person’s profile and like some of his posts too. He’ll be excited you trace him back to his page.
Don’t follow him yet if he’s not followed you. Though no offence if you follow.
But for a better result – looking for a trick to increase your followers, there’s a way around it.
You have to engage him indirectly. Write down his or her handle and keep tagging him in your subsequent posts. This will make him follow you after a few posts.
9 Use Follow for Follow Strategy to Promote Your Business
Follow for follow (FFF) or I Follow Back (IFB) is a strategy developed by some individual users on Instagram to encourage others to follow anyone showing interest in their posts. And it works fine for all participants.
The trick is that when someone follows you, you follow the person back. That can make you increase the number of your followers.
There’re some existing users on IG who promote FFF and IFB. To benefit from them, follow these hashtags:
#followforfollow, #follow4follow #ifollowbak #advertise_9ja and #hustlersquare and so on.
Other entrepreneurs like you have been taking the advantage of these behaviors to promote their businesses on Instagram.
Who says you can’t do the same?
It’s high time you change your approach and start experiencing the boom your business deserves.
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