Increased brand engagement is a common goal for a lot of businesses. You don’t just want people to hear about your brand or visit your website - you actually want them to interact with you in some way, preferably by becoming a customer. There are many ways you can do this on your website, from having a newsletter signup, a live chat feature, or customer surveys.
If you want to increase engagement outside your website, however, you should look to strategies like Instagram influencer marketing. With this marketing method, you hire popular Instagram users to promote your brand. You can then harness their large social following and encourage their audience to engage with you. Here are just a few ways you can use this strategy to increase your brand engagement.
Reach a Wider Audience
If you want more people to engage with your brand, the first thing you need to do is reach a wider audience. The more people you can reach, the larger the pool of potential engagements. For example, let's say you are currently getting 1,000 visitors to your site each month, but only 10 percent of them are engaging with you. If you were to double the number of visitors, while still maintaining the same engagement rate, you would go from 100 to 200 engagements each month.
Instagram is a great tool for reaching that wider audience. As of 2020, there are over 1 billion monthly active users. However, most of these users don't follow your brand's Instagram channel. To reach more people, you have to get other accounts talking about your brand, which is where Instagram influencer marketing comes in.
By partnering with influencers who have substantial followings, or even with smaller micro-influencers, you can instantly get more eyes on your brand. And by choosing influencers who are popular in your niche, you can ensure that the audience you are targeting are the people most likely to engage with your brand.
Market Discounts and Promotions
Another great way to engage more of your audience is through discounts and promotions. Everyone loves when they see an item on sale or some type of promotion, like a Buy One, Get One Free. In fact, according to Shopify, merchants with an active discount code are 8 times more likely to make a sale. But these promotions only help you if your audience knows about them.
The great thing about Instagram is that it is very current. People check it multiple times every day for the latest posts and story updates. According to these Instagram statistics, 42 percent of all users check their accounts multiple times each day. In addition, the average amount of time spent on the platform is about 28 minutes.
If you're having a sale that you want people to know about right away, having an influencer promote it on their Instagram feed is a great way to gain attention. Unlike an email, which might get lost in the spam folder or glossed over among other unread emails, people pay close attention to Instagram updates from the people they follow. In fact, 62 percent of people say they become more interested in a brand after seeing it mentioned in an Instagram Story.
Product Reviews and Comparisons
According to Oberlo, 85 percent of consumers do some kind of online research before buying a product. This means if you want people to buy your product or service, you need to provide them with some helpful information. A good way to do this is by having influencers review your product and compare it to similar ones.
For example, let's say your brand sells smartwatches. These are typically big purchases, so people will want to learn more about their options before making a decision. To help showcase the benefits of your smartwatch over your competitors, you could send some free products to Instagram influencers in the niche you are targeting. You could then ask them to give an honest review of your product and compare it against any other smartwatches they have used.
If you have a good product, then you should have no problem asking influencers for honest reviews. And even if your product isn't better than your competition in every single category, your audience will appreciate knowing the pros and cons of your product. In many cases, for just the cost of a few free products, you can get some great press for your brands by asking Instagram influencers to review and compare what you're selling.
Provide Product Demonstrations
If you have a product that is somewhat hard or complicated to use, it may be helpful to have someone demonstrating how to use it. Instagram is a great place for this, as you can easily post videos of the product in use, showing how it works. By asking the influencers you work with to not just review your product, but to give an in-depth demonstration of how it works, you can give your target audience a better idea of your product.
Depending on your agreement with the influencer, you may even be able to keep the rights to these videos after they are created. Then you can upload them to your website so that future customers can also see how your product works. Many businesses spend money on video marketing and producing demonstration videos for their website. When you do this through an Instagram influencer instead, you not only end up with a great video, but you get the added bonus of engaging a new audience across social media.
Host Giveaways
The last way you can use influencers on Instagram to drive engagement with your brand is by hosting some giveaways. Sometimes, in order to get someone to engage with your brand, you simply need to give them a free sample. If you can create a free trial offer, or put together some sample products, this will encourage people to engage with you, as there is no risk to them.
Once you have this offer or giveaway set up, use your influencers to help promote it. For example, you can give each of your influencers their own special code which grants a free trial. You can then have the influencer share their personal code with their followers across Instagram. Because the code is coming from someone they trust, and because there is no financial risk involved for them, the targeted audience is more likely to engage with you.
How to Get Started with Instagram Influencer Marketing
If you want to start engaging your audience using influencers on Instagram, there are a few steps you’ll need to follow. The first order of business is defining your audience. You may have done this already for your other marketing strategies, but if not, now is the time to do it. Think about exactly who it is you’re trying to target and create a buyer’s persona for them.
The next thing you’ll want to do is find some influencers to work with. Using your buyer’s persona, browse through Instagram and find influential people within that niche. You can do this by searching for keywords related to your niche or using popular hashtags. As you browse through, make a list of potential people you might like to work with.
Once you have this list, you’ll then want to start reaching out to those Instagram users. See if they have any experience in being a paid influencer and if they have any interest in working with you. Some will direct you to their managers, others will work with you directly, and some may not have an interest. Hopefully, after talking to a few influencers, you’ll find one that is interested in setting up a partnership.
From there it’s just a matter of working out the details. During this phase, you should be as specific as you can about what you are looking for. What do you want the influencer to say? How many posts should they create? What are the deadlines? Who keeps the content after it is created? Get everything in writing so that both parties know exactly what is expected.
If you do all this, you should then have an Instagram influencer campaign up and running. However, this process is a lot of work and can be very time-consuming. To save yourself some time, and to find the best possible influencers for your brand, consider using Collabstr. Our service makes it easy for you to connect with influencers and get your campaign started right away. We handle most of the work for you so that you can get back to working on other things.
Final Thoughts
Influencer marketing is a great way to increase brand engagement, especially when you do it through Instagram. Users are already engaged with the app, and you can use this to encourage them to engage with you as well. Hopefully, this guide was able to shed some light on the benefits of Instagram influencer marketing and you’ll be able to find a use for it within your business.
