Instagram has changed significantly over the past years. New advertising opportunities have appeared, the audience has changed. If earlier the core of users used to be women under 35, now the audience has matured and expanded, so now it’s a perfect time to buy followers on Instagram https://howsociable.com/buy-instagram-followers/ and improve your strategy.

Instagram is doing really well in sales. There are many examples when a company created only an Instagram page and made money on it. Like any other promotion tool, Instagram requires complex, well-coordinated actions, and a well-thought-out approach. This is a lot of work. But you will not notice how fast you can get the first results. Include Instagram in your marketing strategy, make it a full-fledged sales channel, monetize your blogs, grow, and let it work out for you.

     1.  Find your goals

Before starting work, we recommend you correctly determine the goals of your Instagram presence. Set goals after understanding where you are at the moment on Instagram.

The strategy is based on four levels of goals: business goals, marketing goals, communication goals, and media goals. The examples of them may be the following:

Business goals:

     •   Increase profit by 20%;

     •   Take a leading position in the market in its segment;

     •   Return of old clients;

     •   Opening of new centers.

Marketing goals:

     •   More followers on social media;

     •   Increase in customer base;

     •   Sales via social media;

     •   Presence, status support;

     •   Increase the % of repeat purchases.

Communication goals:

     •   Increase the number of positive reviews about the company;

     •   Distribution of the branded hashtag on social networks;

     •   Increase brand awareness on social media.

Media goals:

     •   Increase coverage among the target audience;

     •   Enter new channels of customer acquisition.

Try to think about this table after reading the article to the end and answer two main questions. What business challenges do you have? Have you identified your communication goals?

These are all different goals. Therefore, the path to them will differ in the tools that you can use in your work.

     2.  Competitor analysis

The next thing to do is to analyze your competitors.

Competitors are divided into direct - those who sell the same product as you, and indirect - their customers can theoretically be yours.

Select from 10 to 15 competitive blogs and analyze them according to the following parameters:

     •   visual analysis;

     •   content;

     •   interaction with the target audience;

     •   the tone of communication with the audience (TOV or brand voice);

     •   traffic analysis;

     •   analysis of advertising strategy;

     •   product analysis.

Choose exactly the companies that you can compete with. If you decide to promote a bistro cafe, you don't need to analyze McDonald's. This is not your direct competitor, although it is also fighting for your target audience's attention.

Competitors should be monitored constantly, their promotions and news feeds can be used to do successful marketing within a city or even a country.

As a result of competitor analysis, you should clearly understand your competitor's traffic, advertising campaigns, and audience. Perhaps several competitors will disappear at this stage because you will know that their audience is not your target audience.

     3.  Audience study

Remember, your target audience on Instagram is those who already have a formed need for a product. They are ready to buy your product/service, and they already know its value. The main marketing efforts will be directed at them.

These people can be related by demographic characteristics (gender/age/city), shared fears and desires, or motivation to buy. Formulate a clear customer avatar.

Try to understand your audience as deeply as possible. You can write a separate article about each of these methods of studying the target. But the main thing is to study them, to understand what is closer to you and which method will give you an understanding of the client's pains, desires and motives. This method should be applied. And after you have roughly understood who your client is, in what language you need to speak with him, in what tone, then you will have a conversion dialogue.

     4.  Sherrington’s 5W method

Using the 5W technique, you can compose a psychological portrait of both the existing and target audiences. The methodology is based on five questions:

1. What?  - what product do you offer?  It will help you segment your audience by the type of products that interest them. 

2. Who?  - who buys the product?  Here you can choose the types of audience - gender, age, and other differences, which we talked about above. 

3. Why?  - why should users buy from you?  So you will find out what motivates your customers have and what problem your product will solve. 

4. When?  - when will customers need your product?  Divide the audience according to the needs and circumstances that arise.

 5. Where?  - where do people decide to buy from you?  Each segment has its points of contact with you, where you can influence the purchasing decision.

     5.  Let's start packing the product

Everything in this article that you read before was in the preparation stage.

1. Decide on the positioning of your product. It is advisable to narrow the target audience as much as possible: men's manicure, yoga coach for pregnant women, family photo sessions.

2. Do a SWOT analysis.

S (Strengths) - characteristics of a business that distinguish it from its competitors.

W (Weaknesses) - weaknesses that make the company vulnerable to other players.

O (Opportunities) - elements of the environment that a company can use for development.

T (Threats) - elements of the environment that can harm a business.

3. Do you have a unique selling proposition - USP? If not, read the article and get started. This must be done without fail. USP should be reflected in the profile header.

4. Prepare offers for each category of buyers. For example three days 8% discount for students, free consultation for new clients.

5. Choose the tone of voice with customers in social networks and advertising messengers (light with humor or business) and think over triggers - clues that will work in advertisements.

How to measuring success with the metrics

KPIs, of course, depends on the goals set.

     •   Subscribers. Measure ad subscriber value and budget. Don't forget to unsubscribe. In the classical sense, a set of followers on Instagram makes sense only for a blogger. The business needs applications with previous sales, so working with a goal only to increase subscribers is ineffective.

     •   Coverage. You need to understand the amount of coverage per month.

     •   Transitions to the site can be measured in the advertising office and using metrics on the site.

     •   The targeted action (application/lead) cost - you can calculate this after launching test advertising campaigns.