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5 minutes readDevising a promotion strategy
A social media promotion strategy can only be based on a complete understanding of the brand’s global mission, its values, and priorities. Make sure that your company already has these things figured out.
Next, you need to determine why your brand needs to be on Instagram. Perhaps your main goal is to increase sales, or maybe increase and/or expand your target audience. Your goal will dictate a certain pool of tasks and the tools that will help to accomplish these tasks.
The next step is to study your target audience. If your company develops a high-quality promotion strategy, but directs it at the wrong group of customers, the result will not meet expectations and the resources invested will not pay off.
Your company needs to clearly define its target audience and create a portrait of its ideal customer. It’s important to consider the needs, desires, and interests of the target audience.
Finally, the brand needs to analyze the environment on Instagram: study the social networks of competitors to identify their advantages and disadvantages, and the uniqueness of their selling proposition. After that, you need to form your own USP (unique selling proposition), relying on internal (the company’s mission and values) and external factors (competitor analysis).
What to pay attention to
For several years now, the main task of Instagram accounts is not to collect likes, but to engage customers. It became necessary to build gamified content. In other words, brands need to make posts that customers can respond to.
Engage followers in communication
A modern Instagram toolkit allows you to create interactive content, especially in Stories. You can create Stories with quizzes, polls, sliders with quick response emojis, etc.
These tools don’t just help you to maintain engagement, but also to collect feedback. For example, by using a poll or a free response box, followers can tell you what the account is missing or which offers they find particularly useful and interesting.
Gamified content does not only help keep your followers engaged, but also helps to collect feedback.
Share useful and interesting content
Users may look at Instagram not just for entertainment, but to learn something useful. In this case, you can publish posts with tips or amusing information. Practice has shown that an Instagram account that only contains direct sales will never be able to hold customers’ attention.
Don’t forget about variety and look for new topics
You should think about what will be in your account besides offers for tours. If you provide additional services (for example, visa processing), dedicate a post to them. If you know everything about excursions in a particular city, then tell all you know. If, during real life, you tell a tourist which beach is the best to relax at with children, then tell this to your followers as well. Get them “hooked” on your Instagram.
Design a visual style
Don’t forget that Instagram is primarily a visual social network. The quality of photo content plays one of the key roles here. Companies should stick to a consistent design, preferably in the brand’s color palette.
The gallery should catch the eye and make you want to take a closer look at the photos and captions—this will set the account apart from competitors and increase traffic to the page.
The company should develop a consistent visual style for the account in order to stand out from the competition and grab users’ attention.
Be prepared to communicate
Instagram is a living social network where communication with people is paramount. Interaction with followers should be conducted not only through gamified content, but also in the comments—via private messages in Direct and under posts. Questions can be asked anywhere, and you must be prepared to answer them.
Remember to keep content fresh
A content plan and delayed posting services will partially help you manage regular posting. If you have content ready for a week and your posts are planned in advance, you can safely deal with texts and photos for the next posts.
However, it takes time throughout the day to create Stories and respond to comments and incoming requests, so think about which employee can devote at least 1/2-1 hour a day to the account.
Which promotion methods are available
All promotion methods can be divided into three main groups.
Free
This is the nicest for the brand because it does not require any expenses. Among the free tools, hashtags especially stand out. You need to determine which tags are close in subject and scope of activity, since correctly selected tags can attract the target audience to the posts.
Simplified account navigation
Even if you use captions on photos (posts containing text on photos), it takes a lot of time to find the post you want. Add custom hashtags that match each category. For example, #*name of travel agency*_beaches. Anchor the list of existing hashtags in your highlights to make it easier for your followers to navigate your account.
Yet another tool is geolocation. Many users indicate their location when uploading a photo. Users will most likely search for a travel agency in the city where they live. Geotags will represent the brand on the search page according to location.
Add custom hashtags that match each category to make it easier for your followers to navigate your account.
Collaboration
Collaboration can be a relatively inexpensive method of promoting a brand (for example, if you negotiate on mutually beneficial terms), but requires the careful selection of a partner. Among the available tools are joint live broadcasts, and contests with companies, experts, and bloggers. The main condition is that the partner must be connected with the brand’s target audience.
Paid advertising
Paid advertising is certainly much more efficient than free advertising. The quality and cost of promotion depends on which method you choose. One of the most effective methods is targeting. The main characteristic of targeted advertising on Instagram is that it’s possible to choose the audience that you show messages to.
Advertisements on blogs and in public groups also stand out among the paid advertising tools.
Be patient
“Gray” promotion methods have long been recognized by the social network as spam and are immediately blocked. A company will not be able to buy loyal and engaged followers overnight. For these purposes, the brand needs to plan an Instagram marketing strategy.
Those who are planning to sell trips should not neglect a powerful tool like Instagram. The use of promotional tools will help to attract the target audience, but a consistent visual style, regular posting, competent targeting, and interesting partnerships can ensure an account has stable growth even with a small budget.
