The Marketing Power of Instagram

Marketing over the years, has been a major contributing factor to the growth of every businesses. It determines how far your product will reach its consumers/customers, hence the major reason why businesses depend on it for success.

Instagram as a trending social media platform has a lot of marketing power/strategies which we shall be looking at in this article to reveal the awesome marketing power of Instagram.

When Instagram started, it was a mere photo sharing app but now it has grown to leaps and bounds. According to research, there are over 500millions of Instagram users globally, which is still increasing on a daily basis. The thing about Instagram is that it gives the world what it wants to see by the sharing of photos and videos. Earlier, Individuals just use the app to share their personal pictures, but today businesses have started using Instagram to share all their update. This trend has increased as Instagram marketing represents a brand through pictures and celebrates its uniqueness with its audience.

Below is a chart showing a brief history of Instagram and its growth over the years.

If you are still wondering how powerful this platform is, well here are some statistics that will make you understand how powerful this platform has become.

Branded hashtags: 

An evidence that Instagram users are extremely receptive to business and advertising content is the fact that approximately 70 percent of hashtags on Instagram are branded. The use of strong hashtags and stories is one of the marketing powers of Instagram. It has made Instagram one of the most powerful social media platforms. To increase the engagement rate of brands, users are encouraged to add hashtags to their posts and stories, as one recent study revealed that Instagram posts with at least one hashtag boast 12.6 percent more engagement than those without it.

It is possible to add up to 30 hashtags to each post, but brands should be careful not to overdo it, with up to 10 hashtags per post usually considered the optimum number. Brands should also take time to choose the most relevant hashtags, instead of just picking the most popular ones, because their posts could end up getting lost in a sea of other content. Also, if you include hashtags in your posts it will allow your brand to reach even those users who are not your followers. Another useful tool to use to make your audience grow is the Geo-tagging. With Geo-tagging, posts receiving 79 percent more engagements will be achievable.

Unending Increase of monthly users:

The total number of monthly Instagram users continues to grow at a steady rate of about 5 percent per quarter, even with more than 1 billion users as at june,2018, this platform still has more room for growth. Its users are growing more than Facebook and twitter whose monthly user base growth is just 3 percent and 1 percent respectively. This growth in Instagram users may continue until 2021, where user growth will later slow down after 2021 as the supply of potential new users will decline.

High engagement rate:

Instagram has engagement rates 15 times higher than Facebook and 20 times higher than twitter. Most business owners know that getting people to engage with your content is more important than simply having views. For them to have this high engagement they do that using Instagram, and that is by having an Instagram account and advertising most, if not all their products on Instagram.

Business Inclined:

80% of Instagram users follow at least one business. One of the major challenges of modern digital advertising is that most consumers, particularly younger ones are getting tired of having ads served to them on social media. This kind of experience is not observed on Instagram because 80 percent of accounts follow one or more businesses.

 Beautiful and Attractive images:

Instagram allows users to edit photographs with a variety of different filters. Currently, twenty distinct filters are offered and they all produce distinct visual effects from cooling to desaturation to extreme contrast. Because of these beautiful pictures created on Instagram, it helps the user to gain more attention on their pages than they get while using other platforms. Also, with the introduction of carousel to Instagram, posting of images on Instagram is now more creative and more attractive

Easy to use:

Instagram is very simple to use and has the potentials to get your name and links from millions of potential customers very quickly. When you first set up your account, you are allowed to include one link in your profile. Be sure to list your main website here because your user name will hyperlink to your profile page where your main website is prominently displayed. You choose your user name carefully because you cannot change it if you make a mistake.

Connection with other platforms:

When you are about to post or share a post, you have the option to have it automatically posted immediately to Facebook and twitter as well. Here is where the power of social media can really explode your visibility and business. Statistics has shown that no doubt Instagram has a very strong marketing and hence, the reason why its most used by consumers, and from all that has been explained above we now know the reason why.

This also will be further explained in the chart below:

You can observe from the chart the high number of users, the level of engagements, the increase in the number of likes, time spent on Instagram by the users which is very much compared to users of other social media platforms. Even with these achievements, the marketing power and the growth of Instagram seems not to be ending or taking a turn, therefore I will advise you tap into this wonderful social media giant of our time and apply its marketing strategies in your businesses. We have talked about these strategies and marketing hacks in previous articles on our page, read them and apply them in your business so you too can share your own success story in years to come.