Integrating Instagram With Your Larger Marketing Strategy

 Integrating Instagram With Your Larger Marketing Strategy

The key to success when it comes to Instagram marketing and indeed any social media campaign, is integration. That means that you need to think about how all the difference facets of your business are going to work together. In turn, that means thinking about your blog or website, Facebook account, Twitter and more. Because on its own, Instagram doesn’t typically make much money. We’ll see some ways it can in a moment, but for the most part, building an audience alone is not enough to run a business.

The true measure of success when it comes to your Instagram account, is how many people you can direct from there to your online store in order to sell to. This requires you to have a large enough audience, but also an engaged audience filled with people who actually like your brand and want to buy your products. Therefore, you will at least need a website and ideally a checkout in order to sell your products if you’re going to capitalize on the traction you build via Instagram. You should make sure this uses a consistent branding with the same name and logo as your social accounts. This way, you’ll also be able to engage with the same audience between channels and ensure that you are on their radar. The worst thing you can do is to be forgotten for months at a time. Remember: the aim with social media marketing is to be everywhere.

But at the same time, you can also use your website to promote your Instagram, thereby cross-ligating the two. One great way to do this is by installing a widget on your website which will show your Instagram feed in the sidebar on every page. This way, people who enjoy reading your website regularly will be prompted to check out your Instagram and will be able to see precisely the kind of thing you post there.

Linking your social accounts is a good idea too. You can do this automatically with Facebook, seeing as Facebook actually owns Instagram. But you can also automatically post your Instagram posts to Twitter and other platforms using tools like IFTTT (If This Then That – ifttt.com). This allows you to create relationships so that posting with a certain hashtag for example will automatically post your Instagram images and text to other accounts.

Again, this cross-pollination means that anyone who adds you on one account is more likely to see you on others – and therefore more likely to follow you in multiple places and increase their engagement over time. This also maximizes your output on each platform, while minimizing the amount of content you need to create.

You can even try sharing short snippets from YouTube videos on your Instagram if you have an account!

Monetization

The last piece of the puzzle is to monetize Instagram directly. As mentioned in the last chapter, the true barometer of success on Instagram is profit. While that might sound a little cynical, this is the truest indicator of real engagement, reach, AND persuasion. And after all, if you are investing time and money into your Instagram marketing, then it is only right that you get something back. Here’s how.

Shopping on Instagram

Shopping on Instagram is a tool that will allow you to tag items in your post with a price that will then link directly to your store. If a user clicks on that tag, then they’ll be taken to a listing page where they can learn more or follow another link to go ahead and buy. This is a relatively new feature and it is game changing for Instagram marketers, as they no longer need to awkwardly direct buyers to their bio, or get them to copy and paste URLs into their address bar (the limitation being that there’s no way to add a live link to an Instagram post).

The rub is that your business will need to be approved, and not all regions are viable (the US is good to go though!). To get started, you’ll need an Instagram Business Account, you’ll need to connect your Facebook Page with a Shop and Facebook Catalog. These can be created using the Facebook manager, or via Shopify or Big Commerce. Your Instagram account also needs to be primarily a business that sells goods in order to qualify – so lifestyle bloggers aren’t quite catered to just yet.

Bio

For those not able to set up shopping yet – or who aren’t selling physical goods – the other way to monetize your account or to direct your traffic is to place a link in your bio using a URL shortened as described in an earlier chapter. Some creators will place links for their products in their bios and constantly update these. Each new post then promotes a specific item with the words ‘Link in the Bio’ in the text. Alternatively, this could link to an online catalogue, which means you don’t need to constantly update your link.

Another option is to sell a service this way. This works extremely well for counsellors, coaches, personal trainers, website designers and more. Show your ethos and your expertise in your posts and then let visitors follow the link in your description to get buying!

Instagram Stories

As mentioned, you can also use an Instagram story to link someone directly to a website, article, or product – as long as you have 10,000 subscribers or a verified account. This is another easy way to generate direct traffic for a product, though it does of course have its limitations.

Sponsors

Finally, you can also make money from Instagram by promoting sponsored goods. As mentioned, the going rate for this is $1,000 per 10,000 followers, meaning this has the potential to be extremely profitable. For some, this is the business model. There’s no need to create an additional website or to sell a product – the aim is to become a successful Instagram celebrity and then to make money by wearing nice clothes and getting paid to wear them. It’s a dream for many, but it takes a long time and a lot of savvy marketing to accomplish – hopefully this book has given you all the tools you need. For the rest of us, it’s important to weigh up the pros and cons of sponsored posts. While this is a useful additional source of revenue, it also potentially means stabilizing your own sales with competing services and products. What’s more, is that it could harm the trust you’ve built in your audience if they think you have ‘sold out’.

Conclusion

So there it is: everything you need to know to get started with Instagram marketing! There’s so much to unpack here that in all likelihood, you’ll probably need to do some more reading and experimenting before you find a set-up that works for you. There are countless tools you can use to generate more clicks. There’s lots more to unpack when it comes to ads and promoted posts…

But the most important thing is your value proposition and your brand. You need to be consistent with high quality images that speak to your audience and that make them feel something. Aspirational, inspirational, motivational, or moving content will speak for itself and if you can get your audience to feel something with each picture – they’ll start to follow you.

It's about what your images say then, more so than how they look. You don’t really need the best quality camera in the world, or even paid ads. You just need a message and a strong brand identity. Couple that with consistency and patience and the momentum will come with time.

From there, if you are consistently impressing with your imagery and inspiring those followers, it will be relatively simple to grow further, to convert your audience into paying customers, or to monetize your page directly. And the best part? It’s actually a very rewarding and fun process! So get your camera out and ask: what inspires you?