Digital marketing is one of the less expensive marketing techniques to enhance business revenue. Successful brand equity relies on communication with customers, customer experience, and the perception of those customers towards the products/services. Communication is the basic essence of brand equity and that’s why top brands like Amazon, Netflix and Dove ranked highly among customers.

A study performed by Anules and Ingales revealed that audience-targeted marketing strategies focusing on customer service have a strong influence on promoting brand awareness, image, and products/services. According to an article published in Forbes magazine about top marketing strategies this year, investing in social media will be a necessity, and no longer be a luxury, for businesses. This leads us to an interesting question.

Do all digital marketing techniques lead to sales?

Applying random digital marketing methods, and anticipating them to work, is an utter waste of energy and time. These strategies should be aligned specifically to businesses to attract the customers and, thus, to increase sales. Speaking of specific marketing plan development, it is important to decide on a suitable digital platform to begin with. Instagram is one of the leading platforms among other social media. An published in the International Journal of Data and Network Science suggested that 90% of top brands use Instagram as a top marketing tool to increase their sales, with the highest user engagement rate than other platforms. The below section throws light on a few Instagram marketing tips.

Use a business (not personal) account
An Instagram business account allows you to access some of the cool features that are uniquely designed for businesses. You can add links, stories, run ads, boost posts, and also gain access from the analytics. It will help you to set new goals to increase your page visibility, and to achieve more views/clicks from users.

Define goals
Define your goals based on your brand, buyer persona, and your niche. In case your niche is travel writing, then decide what kind of travel readers you are aiming for. For example, is your target audience into backpacking and experiencing countries, or they are focusing on scenery, or only experiencing luxurious getaways. These three are totally different niches, and entirely different brands, as well as different people. Humans are quite naturally gravitated to storytelling. So, engaging customers through IG stories (Instagram Stories) and reels are the optimal ways to deliver your brand stories, visions, and values to the customers.

Post regularly but uniquely
It is important to post regularly to attract your customers. The optimum number of posts per day is 1-3. Ensure that all posts and marketing content you develop are carrying a message about the brand’s mission, vision, product/service, and value proposition. This is a major tip to build a strong brand using your Instagram account as a specific digital marketing strategy. Posts with unclear mission or vision will eventually ruin your marketing. Worse are the Instagram accounts with generic posts. For example, travel business Instagram accounts posting a picture of hikers in the mountains, and followed by a club night, would render it as generic. It is vital to hone in what makes your Instagram account unique among your niche.

Avoid using too many filters
Instagram is all about photos and videos. However, adding filters to every single image posted with plenty of edits will, unfortunately, result in images that look cheap. You might lose some quality/information by adding more filters than you took originally. When a customer looks at your Instagram page, it might look incongruous.

Batch up photos
Always take extra photos and videos to use for future posts. This will save you time later. You should seize each opportunity to get useful images for future topics. If you are taking scenic photos, it would be a great chance to take photos of not only the view, but you doing something related to your book, or having your book in front of the view. Think of every angle and version of the shot that could possibly use in future. You can also sign up for a stock photography account, and edit those images by adding text to promote your brand.

Repost old images/videos
Throwback Thursday is one of the rising trends in the social platform. This allows you to repost your old posts. Engaging the customers who loved or commented on the posts is well appreciated. This will increase your user engagement rate.

Effective hash tagging for brand promotion
Nothing has such an instant and profound impact among targeted customers like using unique hashtags. A hashtag is a keyword (or a phrase with no spaces) which is prefixed by the “#” symbol. The concept of a hashtag is to make your content searchable by customers. Instagram can recommend your posts with the right hashtags to the targeted audience in the discover badge. Posts lacking hashtags will be impossible to find. With accurate hashtags, your posts can potentially reach millions.

Use lots of hashtags
Instagram allows you to use 30 hashtags for any post. You should use as many of them as you can every time to reach your potential customers. It will maximize your chance to reach new users.

Identify your sweet spot
Many new Instagram marketers make the mistake of using only popular hashtags. This will result in your post getting quickly drowned among thousands of others. Instead, pick hashtags having around 30 to 300,000 posts to achieve maximum impact.

Use a variety
There are some merits to using hashtags that are much more or less popular. There is no drawback in adding a couple of such hashtags at the end of each post, too.

Geotagging
By turning on the Geotagging option in the Instagram account, people will be able to search for images or videos by location. This brings more viewers from nearby locations from the same place. This is beneficial if, for example, you have giveaways or any other big event. You can include hashtags with place names to draw local customers. However, if your promotion is not location-specific, and if you value your privacy, do not use Geotagging.

News jacking
News jacking is a current strategy of using hashtags that are currently on trending or breaking news. Google Trends is a useful for finding words and terms that many people are using at any given moment. Using those can give your promotions  positive to make a big impact very rapidly. If you follow these five tips, you will start to see make your Instagram posts very popular.

Ruby Immaculate is a full-time freelance writer and editor. She earned a Postgraduate degree in Marketing Management and Biomedical Sciences from University of Madras. She is currently pursuing a Doctoral degree in the field of Business Administration. Ruby has been writing and editing marketing articles since 2013 with marketing research scholars from Australia, Canada and the United States. She regularly writes for high grade publishers in the field of management, health, alternative medicine, environmental science and biotechnology.