All You Need To Know: Digital Business and Instagram Marketing Growth Hack Strategies

Digital marketing is an umbrella term that includes promoting a brand on Social Media, especially Instagram. In this blog, I will solely focus on Instagram, a social media with almost 2 billion monthly active users. It is one of the most used social media platforms after Facebook. It is a platform that helps users share content with their peers.

Over the years, Instagram has evolved from being a place for sharing pictures to flexing wealth/achievements and also has proven to become an effective, helpful, and go-to platform for all types of businesses and brands. Everyone across the world is leveraging Instagram to its fullest potential to engage with their community, push creativity and keep up with culture.

It allows businesses/brands to humanize their content, recruit new talent, showcase products, service and inspire the audience. It helps them connect with alot of people, increase brand awareness, boost sales, build customer relationships and post regular updates about their offerings. Small businesses often spend a lot of their marketing budget on social media, wherein fact, some of the best and most rewarding techniques are free!

Some of the Marketing Growth hacks that you might have already heard are consistent posting, creating content that resonates with the target audience and creating trending reels. But the secret ingredient lies in the content that we post. That is why I recommend creating a strong pillar of content and listening to what your target audience is saying.

Growing your following takes serious time and energy. Many people get tempted to take the easy path and buy followers/impressions/likes. Never do this! Instead, make sure your username is recognizable and searchable. If users cannot find you, they will not follow you! Fill in your bio section with relevant keywords. It is the last thing anyone sees before they decide to follow, so always include who you are and what you do.

After profile optimization, Begin your first post. It is always good to post some content in your feed with 10 to 15 high-quality content before you start engaging and building relationships with other Instagrammers. If they visit your profile and find it empty, It is a red flag. 🚩

Start following top accounts that provide the same product and services that you have to offer and relate to their content. Think of Instagram as a natural habitat and look for other creatures (businesses) in your area or influencers who might enjoy or take advantage of your products or services and are trending. As you follow accounts, Instagram will automatically suggest other accounts that you can follow, and you will also get a hint on what to create.

After following an account, make sure you interact with their posts. It is a natural way to draw some attention to your account without feeling like you are spamming. When you engage and interact with their content, the owner of that account will get a notification. These actions will prompt them to check your profile. Always build relationships with your followers by engaging with their content and responding to their comments.

A Better and more Intuitive approach would be to follow these steps:

1.) Understand your audience so you can better serve them and Know your Goals/Objectives

Learn about your community through Business Profile insights. Learning about your follower demographics and when they are most active on Instagram helps us understand which content resonates best with the audience. Insights allow you to get to know your community and help you learn how you can best serve them in the future.

2.) Stories are the new posts. Interact, Engage people in Aesthetic and Creative ways

Interactive features in Stories like the question sticker and poll sticker are easy tools to help you hear feedback from your audience and include them in the daily moments of your business. #Didyouknow According to Instagram, When people interact with the poll sticker in stories ads, they spend 3x more time on an ad compared with those without the poll stickers.

TIPS FOR INSTAGRAM STORIES:

» Think of Stories like a diary for your business. Take your community behind the scenes and share moments as they happen to foster deeper relationships.

» Boost engagement with interactivity by using stickers like polls and questions to get feedback from your community.

» Think mobile-first. Leverage the full vertical screen to tell your brand story and play with native Stories behavior like ‘tap and hold to pause’ and ‘swipe up’ to inspire action.

TIPS FOR POLL STICKERS IN STORIES:

» Invite your audience to participate with an engaging question. Keep it concise and compelling.

» Use relevant imagery that represents the poll choices. Make it easier to choose with visual cues.

» Respond with a follow-up message or call to action on the poll question. Introduce the response at the 4th/5th second

3.) Ramp up with Instagram Live

It is another feature that you should include in your marketing strategy. Invite real-time interaction by hosting a Live. With Live Rooms, your brand can go live with up to three other accounts, enabling you to engage fans at the moment.

» Create a dialogue with your audience using features like Live Rooms, Media Sharing, and Q&A. The main power of going live lies in its interactivity.

» Different Accounts tune in at various times, so help them add context by creating interesting titles and periodically reintroduce what topic you are discussing.

» Promote your Live ahead of time. Before you go live, use stories to promote your upcoming stream so your audience won’t miss it.

4.) Participate in Viral Trends with Reels

Instagram is a top place to keep up with trends compared to other platforms. A Reel is an opportunity for your business to put its creative signature on cultural trends, start new movements, collaborate with the community, and discover new ideas.

Reels are short, entertaining videos on Instagram, where you can express your creativity and bring your brand to life with creative tools such as AR effects, music, and text overlays. Your brands can create videos just like influencers, and other users do.

TIPS FOR REELS:

» Collaborate with creators and tap into their unique style to build content that is native to Reels.

» Amplify your brand with Reels ads. Use sound as a creative element, keep attention to motion and transitions, and avoid using a swipe-up call to action.

» Participate in trends or create your own. Use Remix to put your business’s creative signature on trending Reels or invite your community to Remix your Reels.

5.) Last but not the least is to create an editorial Social Media Calendar, Content Bucket, and Content Pillars.

A Social Media Calendar can be Monthly, Quarterly, or even yearly based on the bandwidth and resources. Think of it as a Normal Calendar; the difference is that on a particular day, there can be many contents that will go particular at a one-time frame. We recommended posting at intervals, and not posting one after another.

Timing is the key, and the consistency of the number of posts going live should be intact according to your objectives and goals. One more thing to keep in mind is the different types of posts that Instagram provides, for example, Single Images, Carousels, videos, Reels, Stories, and gifs.

The concept of Content pillars is necessary when creating a Calendar. The Pillars should contain the information on what type of post should go on a particular week of the day.

Hypothetically speaking, People would love to see Fun and entertaining content as they approach the weekends, like on a Thursday evening, Friday morning, or Saturday, Sunday, for that matter. The users might be looking for rich content/information on a Monday Morning, motivated to hit the targets in the week, or Midweek Motivation like on a Wednesday evening.

Another concept w.r.t Content Pillars and Calendar is the type of Content buckets; that every brand should have.

Some buckets, called Browse/Research content buckets, where people are unaware of the content or are just looking for information, that they might be facing a problem. For such type of bucket, the content types that work are How to carousels, Informational content, List post (Top, Best, Best X for Y), FAQ, Problem Solution, Ultimate Guide, News/TrendPost.

After educating the users about the business’s products/services. Consideration bucket comes to play, it consists of content such as Comparison and Reviews, Win stories, Branding, and values, Worth it (content that shows why it is worth the investment), Thought leadership (challenge, issue, industry news), Entertain (story post, satire, meme, cartoon), and Product pitches (soft sell).

When the customer is warm and almost ready to pull the trigger on their purchase decision at this stage is where the Decision (product pitch) Bucket is needed. Customers want specific and targeted information when making a decision. White papers, Case studies, project showcases, and so on are perfect for this stage. Always make use of the user-generated content like reviews, testimonials, and Behind the scenes, Employee spotlight in this content bucket.

The Retention/Upsell bucket is one such bucket where we know that it is easier and more cost-effective to keep your existing customer than to acquire a new one. It is great to have fans, but bringing on new customers and providing bad-quality products/services is a complete NO.

Some of the content types that work best for this bucket are Customer special freebies, Appreciation, Spread the word (to promote referral), Events, Training and support, Interview, and Branding and values.

Conclusion:

One more bonus point to creating a 100% Instagram Growth Hacking Marketing Strategy is Conducting a competitive analysis. We are sure that the idea you have on your mind is not the one of a kind idea; it has already been thought about and been done by many, so check out your competitors on how they are doing it if they are doing great, try to imitate, if they are not, try to learn from their mistakes.

I hope you loved this. To read more exciting updates, Follow this page, and Happy Learning!