How To Unleash The Power Of Instagram For Small Businesses & Startups?

Why Instagram? Does my business need an Instagram account? Isn't it too casual an app? If such questions pop in your head, you don't know the importance of Instagram for small businesses and startups.

Instagram is gaining popularity at lightning speed with a whopping 1.082 billion users and 500 million daily active users globally. As it is becoming one of the most popular social media platforms, Instagram has also opened gates for marketing. Yes, the trend of using Instagram for business is gaining popularity, and people are making massive sales using this platform. 

Without proper Instagram tips and Instagram business ideas, it can be tricky 

for a small or growing business to create a huge shoutout on Instagram. 

Recommended:  The Best Instagram Marketing Trends of 2021 & Beyond

So, here are a few actionable Instagram tips on how to use Instagram for small businesses. In this blog you will learn why Instagram is the best small business marketing app. 

8 Reasons to use Instagram for small businesses and startups 

Here are the 8 reasons why Instagram for small businesses is the need of the hour! 

1. Giving A Face To Your Brand

Customers tend to believe what they see visually. And there is no other platform better than Instagram that can portray your brand’s uniqueness visually with your logo (check out this free Instagram logo maker), pictures, videos, and reels. 

It is necessary to form a personal connection with the customers to keep them engaged, which is possible only with a visual platform such as Instagram. 

Strategize and put up a visual feed that can replicate your uniqueness, happy customers, hardworking team, etc., to give user’s a taste of what your brand looks like. 

2. Boosting Sales 

It can greatly benefit if you launch or introduce your new product on Instagram for your followers. 

Here's an Instagram business idea to boost sales: you can run various promotions campaigns, provide special discounts, special promotions, etc., on Instagram to bring more people to your page. 

By such activities, you can regularly update your followers about the new products and drive traffic to your website, which will provide a considerable boost to your sales within a short span. 

3. Building Connections

Instagram is a social media platform like Twitter and Facebook and so, you can leverage its most essential feature of building connections. Networking is a powerful tool that can elevate your business, and with Instagram, you can make connections with thousands of like-minded people sharing similar interests. 

Your brand can get more exposure as you collaborate with influencers, offer them your sponsorship on Instagram, ask them to promote your products and more. This helps to gain massive socialproof on Instagram in no time, eventually leading to massive sales. 

4. Saving Time  

Instagram is all about photos and videos, and these visual elements are easy to create and use, they are also highly captivating to the people. Once you have the right Instagram marketing strategy, you will definitely get instantly big results. 

Within a few hours, you can judge the success or failure of your campaign as compared to other online marketing channels that are time-consuming. Being a visual platform, your Instagram campaigns can be highly effective and fetch you more customers than other means. 

5. Reaching People On-the-go 

In today’s era, not only the gen-Z, but almost everyone has a smartphone, and most have their Instagram accounts. So, the best way to reach customers is to pop up into their smartphones via Instagram and showcase your products. 

You get a chance to feature in their personal space in their Instagram feeds to flaunt your products. What better way do you need to market a product? Instagram is the only platform that can leverage the user’s attention and turn into your sales. 

6. Integrating Shopify To Sell Your Products 

If you are not willing to take the hassle of listing your products, managing the sales, etc., you can simply and easily integrate it with Shopify and thus sell your products instantly. 

Shopify integration with your Instagram account is not a humongous task at all. It is pretty quick and easy to integrate Shopify with your Instagram account. You can save yourself from the product sales and management task by effectively monitoring everything with this integration.

7. Instagram is Linked to Facebook

You might be aware that Instagram is owned by the social media giant Facebook. But Instagram and Facebook are two different platforms with different formats. Now, the catch here is that even though Facebook and Instagram are two different social media platforms, you can link them together. 

Thus, by advertising on Instagram, you can reach your Facebook audience along with your Instagram audience. Linking both accounts is beneficial in many ways. When you share a post on Instagram, you get an option to share it on Facebook as well directly. 

Similarly, any ad running on Facebook can also be run on the linked Instagram account. So, save time and expand your reach. 

8. The engagement rate on Instagram is higher compared to other platforms.

One of the significant reasons for Instagram ads and promotional campaigns to be highly effective is the higher engagement rate compared to other platforms. Being a visual platform, you can get a slightly higher engagement as the photos and videos can stretch the engagement level to its maximum capacity. 

When you compare the advertising cost of Instagram to other platforms, you can observe that it is more. The engagement rate of Instagram is 2.261% which is higher compared to Facebook’s 0.21% and Twitter’s 0.027%.

How to use Instagram for business? Instagram tips for SMBs and startups to get started. 

Here are the best actionable Instagram marketing tips to leverage the power of Instagram for small businesses and startups to answer the most common question "how to use Instagram for business?" 

Recommended: How to Monetize Instagram WITHOUT Having Followers? Know the Fastest Ways

1. Switch to a business account

The first thing you need to do before starting your business on Instagram is switching to a business account. The major benefits of doing so include creating and publishing ads without using any Facebook advertising tools. 

You can allow your followers to directly contact you with a contact button on your profile, and you can also manage the statistics of your posts on your own. 

With a business account, you get access to the Instagram analytics tools which allows you to get insights of the stats, impressions on each post, etc. So, switch now and avail the benefits. 

2. Integrate Instagram, Facebook, and Shopify and instantly sell to your followers.

To make your marketing journey on Instagram easier, it is better if you integrate Instagram, Facebook, and Shopify beforehand. This can smoothen and speed up your selling process without any ambiguity or hassle. With this integration, you can directly sell your products from your posts. 

You can sync your entire product catalog from Shopify products to Facebook and Instagram, which allows you to create and run shoppable ads easily. Shopify can be used effectively to create, track, and manage all your ad campaigns, orders, etc. from Instagram and Facebook. 

3. Photo and Video Ads

When you are thinking about photo and video ads, you have a huge opportunity to show creativity and play with the features, filters, effects, etc. provided by Instagram. You can share insights, tell your story, post engaging images and videos, or simply sell a product through these photo and video ads. 

You are free to select your audience, whether you want to market your product to a huge audience or keep it limited to a particular geography, it's up to you. 

You can create videos upto 60 seconds to post on Instagram, and you can get the desired attention of your customers in this short span. Photo ads are more effective in increasing the reach, while video ads are more likely to go viral. 

4. Carousel Ads

If you are looking forward to a campaign that can provide information along with the product ad, then carousel ads are the best choice. With these ads, the user can swipe to see more photos of the product, find additional information, similar products, or land on a CTA to your website. 

Generally, the main focus laid by a carousel ad is to ultimately land your user on your website, once you are able to attract them. So, the more attractive each part of the carousel is, the better your chances are of the customers landing on your website.  

5. Instagram Stories Ads

If your focus is on lead generation, then Instagram Stories are perfect for you. Instagram stories can portray many aspects of your business and you don’t have to worry much about the aesthetics. 

Also, you get a wide variety of options in posting the stories such as photos, short videos, reels, slo-mo videos, boomerangs, IGTV video, rewind video, and so on. You can be as creative as you want with numerous filters, effects, tagging other accounts, etc. People can even share Instagram stories in their direct messages which makes it even more likable. 

6. Use of Augmented filters

One of the major benefits of using augmented filters on Instagram for small businesses is to increase awareness of the brand or product. Out of the many examples, let's say you can give users a chance to try on your new hair color product, lipstick, or clothes. 

This can attract users, thereby increasing your brand’s awareness, and ultimately increasing traffic. You can stand out of the crowd with these kinds of ads that feature augmented filters and can even increase your engagement. 

7. Collaborate with Influencers

If you are thinking to expand your reach, then the best way is to collaborate with influencers who already have a large following audience. Whatever influential people share on their feed, people are more likely to buy or at least have a look at those products. 

So, if you find the apt influencers from your industry, then you can obviously get a wider reach. You need to make sure that you collaborate only with the influencers whose followers are your target audience.

By building a healthy relationship with influencers, you are surely opening gates to a long-term benefit and even more lasting brand awareness. 

8. Affiliate Marketing

Regardless of what your product or service is, affiliate marketing acts as one of the best tools to elevate your brand’s awareness and gives a kick to soar your sales up. 

Customers nowadays rely more on the brand’s social reputation, and affiliate marketing is the key to get that social proof for your business. Small businesses can use affiliate marketing to tap on the audience of the affiliates to increase their audience reach. 

Get all the customer information, track them, and analyze the customer base with affiliate marketing. 

Now that you have gone through the actionable Instagram marketing tips to start using the power of Instagram for small businesses and startups here are some good examples of businesses who have gotten their Instagram marketing game right!

Famous Instagram Case Studies 

Let’s have a look at a few business giants using Instagram to give their brand value a boost. 

1. Sephora

Sephora, a cosmetics and beauty supply brand, uses Instagram to elevate its brand position by smartly using the white spaces to pop the colors to attract customers. 

2. Starbucks

To connect more with its customers and promote the products, Starbucks uses Instagram. It is well known for posting stories and images of followers on a regular basis to increase engagement.

3. Intel

Intel, the tech giant has filled its Instagram account with images and videos of the techies working behind the scenes to give customers a closer look at their brand.

4. Taco Bell

Being guilty of having a promising Instagram account to attract users, Taco Bell ensures that all the posts are fun and colorful. Their product promotions are more of a magazine shoot quality.  

5. Ikea

Ikea, the well-known home goods and furniture brand, with a global presence uses Instagram to show off how the customers can use their furnishings in their own houses. 

Instagram - the best small businesses marketing app 

Now, you might be quite clear on why you should use Instagram for small business, and how can you do it, right? Well, Instagram is a huge pool for potential customers, and you can definitely use it in the way you want to enhance your business and take it to another level. 

You can utilize Instagram to promote your product, show your services, or even share real-time user experiences. We hope you now know why Instagram is the best small business marketing app. And now that you've known some good Instagram tips to get massive shoutouts on Instagram.