What do Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo, Kylie and Kendall Jenner, Selena Gomez, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, the older Kardashian women Kim, Khloe and Kourtney; Ariana Grande, Beyonce, Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift, Nike, and National Geographic ? They are all leading influencers on Instagram , with their millions of fans and followers.
Influencer marketing has been shown to be one of the best ways to grow your business on Instagram.
And it's not just for huge brands. Small businesses can use influencer marketing to take their campaigns to a whole new level, build brand awareness, and reach new audiences without going over budget.
Recent influencer marketing surveys report that 90% said that influencer marketing is a good way to market, with more influencer marketing campaigns staged in the last two years. Surveys also showed that 63% of marketers were planning to increase their budget for influencer marketing this year, and 84% of businesses expressed interest in working with a social media star in 2022.
Instagram For The Win In Influencer Marketing
Why would influencers and digital marketing enthusiasts ignore Instagram, now with more than one billion monthly active users worldwide? As social media analysts observe, Instagram is among the top social media platforms for marketers to reach the people they want to talk to. Surprisingly, India edged out everyone as the country with the most Instagram users that can be reached by ads (180 million), followed by the US (170 million) and Brazil (100 million) (110 million).
28.88% of the 4.8 billion people who use the internet regularly around the world use Instagram, which is used by 26.3% of the world's 5.27 billion active mobile phone users.
Statistical reports further show that of the 4.48 billion active social media users in the world, 30.94% regularly use Instagram. Meanwhile, out of 7.9 billion people worldwide, 17.84% are monthly active users of the platform.
Even though this user base isn't as big as Facebook's – numbering to more than two billion-- observers affirm that Instagram is much more active, which makes it a better way for brands to get their message out. “We looked at more than one million influencer profiles from the top influencer marketing platforms and found that Instagram has the highest interaction rate compared to other social media sites,” observers contended.
According to the State of Influencer Marketing 2021 Benchmark Report, Instagram is used by 68 percent of channels. On the other hand, only 43% of people use Facebook, and only 36% use YouTube.
In another survey done by Bloglovin' about micro-influencers, Instagram again seemed to be a favorite. According to 59 percent of those polled, the platform is the best way to reach their target audience on social media.
Furthermore, 65 percent of the most popular Instagram posts are about products, which is an interesting fact. This says a lot about how users of the platform react to sponsored posts. People don't seem to have any trouble responding to posts by other users (called "influencers") that promote products. This is especially true in Instagram's popular niches. For example, 25% of all brand interactions on Instagram are about fashion.
Fashion Nova, a leading Los Angeles-based fast fashion retail company with worldwide clients, reportedly splurged some $40 million on influencers of the platform in 2019 alone.
This may be why influencers seem to love the platform so much.
Working with Instagram influencers, however, may be overwhelming – not only must you discover the ideal influencers for your company, but you must also define campaign goals and deadlines, track and measure your progress, and manage the money all at the same time.
Influencers are speaking up on why Instagram brings out the best results for influencer marketing.
1. Instagram Is A Good Venue To Grow Your Audience
Instagram helps your business expand by allowing you to target the exact people you want to reach. Because Instagram’s ad manager lets you choose how to target your ads, you can do this. With them, you can find the best audience based on demographics, interests, behavior, and other things.
Even better, its ad manager gives you a lot of options for retargeting. When you combine targeting and retargeting, you can not only get more qualified leads from Instagram, but you can also move leads from other channels further down the sales funnel.
You can see how well your ads are doing with the Instagram analytics tool. You can keep track of the number of people you reach out to, how much you spend on the campaign as a whole, the number of sales, the cost per sale, conversions, and more.
2. Strengthening brand awareness and customer engagement
Marketing on Instagram is a great way to spread the word about a brand. Users of this social network report that it helps them find new products or services 83% of the time. Even better, when people see brands on Instagram, they trust them more.
74% of Instagram users think that brands with accounts are important, and 78% think that brands with accounts are popular. On the other hand, brands that don't have an Instagram account are likely to lose customers.
The platform is also one of the best ways to stay in touch with your customers. You can get feedback from your audience through likes and comments, keep them interested with interesting content, tell them about special offers, and more.
3. Instagram Is An Effective Avenue For Increased Sales For Startups And Influencer’s Endorsed Brands
Instagram is an important part of the marketing plans of many influencers and small businesses. Overall engagement is astoundingly high, given its large and varied audience that is happy to interact with brands.
Case studies and research have shown that these benefits are clear and that they can directly lead to sales and leads.
In new Shopify reports, it noted that 80 percent of Instagram users follow at least one brand, and sixty percent of these people say they've learned about new products or services through Instagram.
At least 30% of the people who use Instagram have bought something they saw on Instagram, and that 65 percent of the best Instagram posts are clearly about products.
Furthermore, “people are happy to follow brands on Instagram, and they use the platform to find and buy products. That's a huge victory,” Shopify pointed out.
The ecommerce giant also said that with Instagram ads doing very well and getting a lot of attention, Instagram shopping makes it easier for people to buy things on the popular social media avenue. In addition, business Instagram profiles with more than 10,000 followers get "Swipe Up" links which they can add to Instagram Stories to drive traffic directly to their website, which was hard to do before on the platform.
“The platform keeps growing, which makes it more useful for merchants and ecommerce businesses, especially those with products that look good,” observed Shopify.
Is Instagram The Best Choice For Influencer Marketing ?
Instagram marketing, experts note, is one kind of social media marketing that involves brand promotions on the popular platform. This social media venue plays a major role in making brands connect with a huge number of online audiences from different demographics, raise awareness of their brand, and increase sales.
Check out these Instagram statistics as reported by Hootsuite.com :
Every month, 1.22 billion people use Instagram, with the social media platform coming on strong after Facebook and YouTube. Statistics also show that majority of Instagram users are from Generation Z -- with ages 18 and 34 -- comprising about 60 percent of the platform’s users.
“Instagram is the place to be, preferred by Gen Z compared to other social media platforms , including Tiktok, if you want to reach people in that age group,” the reports affirmed.
And it shows that not just the younger set are into Instagram: even the male Generation Xers who use Instagram grew by an astounding 63.6% in the past year.
“Sure, it’s the social media channel where the kids hang out, but don’t forget that there are also people from other generations who are here,” reports further said.
Instagram’s audience, as per Facebook’s reporting tools, show that 50.8 percent of its online users is female, while 49.2 percent is male.
Why is Instagram a big favorite for marketers, especially influencer marketers?
“Instagram makes it easier to keep in touch with customers and potential customers. People like being able to connect with brands through this network. In fact, 90% of Instagram users follow at least one brand,” digital marketing experts observe.
Furthermore, they also pointed out that one of the best things about Instagram marketing is that it gives brands access to a large audience that interacts with them and wants to buy from them, making the platform a big favorite by influencers.
Influencers are also very much aware of how Instagram can help them with faster sales for their endorsements. Another thing to think about is how Instagram can help you sell faster. 65 percent of the people polled by Facebook in 2019 went to a brand's website or app after seeing it on Instagram. 46 percent of the people interviewed had bought from a brand either online or in person.
Get Started With Influencer Marketing Via Instagram
With Instagram highly-regarded as such a good place to work with influencers, it’s two thumbs up to be used for your influencer marketing campaigns.
Instagram veteran marketers suggest that before you start a campaign, you need to be sure of one thing: what do you want to get out of it? It's very important that you answer this question, because the whole campaign will depend on what you say.
With Instagram influencer marketing, be clear on your goals and objectives
What are the goals of your campaign? Do you want more people to know about your brand? Do you want to get the word out about a new product? Do you want more people to visit your site? Or would you like to sell more?
You probably know that you have potential customers at different stages of the marketing funnel. Some people are already looking to buy something like what you sell and just need a little push in your direction.
While some of your leads may be near the top of your marketing funnel, they may not even be aware of your product , and aren't thinking about buying anything right now. The last group will be somewhere in the middle of these two. For people near the bottom of the funnel, it's a good idea to set the goal of increasing sales and work with influencers to help you reach this goal. But your goals for people near the top of the funnel should be more about making them aware of your product and brand.
“No matter what the end goal is, you need to be clear about it so you can know how to run your campaign. Also, having a clear goal will help you figure out which performance metrics are important for the campaign. “For example, if your goal is to make more people aware of your brand, you would be interested in metrics like reach, impressions, engagement, among others,” the marketing veterans advised.
As for your competitors, Instagram marketing experts further advise that you should look at how your competitors measure how well their campaigns are doing. This will help you figure out what kind of metrics you might want to use.
Instagram influencer marketing, obviously, also needs a good budget to work. Before you do anything else, you should make sure you have enough money saved to pay for your influencer campaign. Don't count on influencers to work for you if you offer them free or cheap products.
“Influencer marketing is a real part of marketing, so you should plan for it in the same way you plan for other types of marketing. Your budget will determine which types of influencers you can ask to join your campaign and whether or not you can expect to reach your goals.”
Instagram stories can be instrumental in your influencer marketing campaign's success.
On August 2, 2016, Instagram added a feature called "Stories," which lets users post photo and video sequences that disappear after 24 hours, just like Snapchat. In October 2016, just two months later, 100 million people used their "new stories" feature every day.
Instagram's parent company Facebook flexed Instagram Stories' important growth milestones. After the Stories' launch in eight months, Facebook announced that the Stories had overtaken Snapchat's 150 million daily users, having bigger numbers by April 2017.
Instagram Stories' milestones:
* 100 million daily active users used Instagram Stories on October 2016
* 250 million daily active users used Instragram Stories in June 2017
* 500 million daily active users used Instagram Stories in January 2019
Starting as a video experiment inspired by SnapChat, Instagram Stories became a mainstay of the platform, giving brands a lot of room to get creative.
In a statement, Instagram said that as it reached 500 million daily active users by the start of 2019, " It took four years for almost all of the people who use Instagram every day to also use stories every day."
Instagram Stories have a good reason to keep their constantly growing following: 58 percent of users say seeing a brand in a story makes them more interested in that brand, and another 50% of Instagram users say they go to a website to make a purchase after seeing something in a story.
The statistical reports are far from surprising:
Half billion Instagram users are using Instagram stories everyday, which would be 86.6% of the time.US companies are taking advantage of the social media platform’s gargantuan growth,as they spend31% of their Instagram budget on ads that appear in Instagram Stories.
While insiders note that even though these Stories’ads may not be able to reach as many people as pots,they are expected to bring in nearly %16 billion in net global advertising revenue in 2022.
Growing your Insta-ecommerce empire
“Are you ready to jump in the bandwagon and grow your Insta-ecommerce empire,” coos one influencer on Instagram. Almost all Instagram users -- 90% of them -- follow at least one business.
Instagram influencers give their advice. “Don't be afraid to get your brand involved in social media, because everyone does it. Instagram says that it is a place to grow your community and deepen your connection with current and future customers. It is always adding new business tools, like the ability to shop and Instagram Live, to help businesses.”
Recent reports further showed that the social media platform’s advertising reach has grown faster than Facebook’s, so influencers and marketing experts are suggesting that Instagram is the place to be. 2022 figures showed that Facebook's advertising reach around the world only grew by 6.5%, while Instagram's grew by 20.5%. Analysts noted that the online audience who follow the average Instagram business account grows by 1.69 percent each month.
“Even though every business account and brand is different, it's helpful to know the general benchmark for growth, especially if that's a key part of your brand's social media goals,” analysts observed. On average, business accounts post 1.6 times a day. To break that down even more, the average Instagram Business account's main feed has 62.7 percent photos, 16.3 percent videos, and 21 percent photo carousels. Again, every brand is different, but it's helpful to see that (on average) the competition posts a variety of content types. If all you've ever done is take photos, maybe now is the time to start doing other things.
Furthermore, a survey by Instagram for Business found that 44% of Instagram users use the shopping tags and the Shop tag to shop every week.
Even though Instagram's shopping feature has only been around for a few years, it has already taken the ecommerce world by storm. 34.4% of Instagram users buy something every week.
Meanwhile, Instagram influencer marketing experts also revealed that 57% of Instagram users like it when brands post polls and quizzes. Quizzes and polls from brands are more popular on the platform than on other platforms, and they're easy to add with Stories. “So go ahead and speak up: ask your customers what they want,” pointed out the experts. “These polls and quizzes make them feel like you're paying attention to them, and at the same time give you confidence in your business decisions. It’s a win-win,” the experts pointed out.
Cashing in on Instagram’s popularity, influencers are on a roll in promoting their business clients with their branding strategies. New studies show that one in two people have found new brands on the platform.
“It's a great way to find out about new brands, products, or services—50% of people use it to do this. And two out of three people say that the network helps them connect with brands in a meaningful way,” they affirmed. “Just around the corner could be your next customer... ready to fall in love with you.”
Other reports also showed that the average number of people who interact with posts from Instagram business accounts is 0.83 percent, which is a little bit higher for carousel posts and a little bit lower for video, “but if you get more than 0.83 percent, you should be proud of yourself.”
Fascinatingly, engagement rates tend to drop as a brand gains more followers.
New digital trends reports showed that business accounts with less than 10,000 followers got more interaction than brands with 100,000 followers.
In other words, less is more sometimes.
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