There was once a time when business owners could only generate traffic and interest through referral marketing. This “word of mouth” strategy used to work for small business owners operating in smaller communities, where customers could be attracted from the same city. But with the shift towards technology, changing businesses and lifestyles, it changed the way people communicated too. Today, people do not even have to leave their homes if they want to find out about something. With people becoming a more visually-dominant society, people are starting to react better to images and videos, rather than text and slogans. Peoples attention spans are also closing, with less energy and time wanting to be spent if it is not necessary. This is where advertising on Instagram is perfect. Instagram is a huge and diverse online community with unlimited marketing potentials. Although other platforms such as Facebook may have more users, today it is shown that Instagram has more active, engaged users compared to the amount of users it has. As well, Instagram is linked with Facebook, so it’s easier to target your audience based on Facebook data. All budgeting and scheduling tasks, the setup and creation of ads are done through Facebook, so you don’t need to start from scratch and learn about Instagram, once you’ve already used its sister platform for marketing and ads.

Refer to our Facebook section on how to set up a Facebook Page for Business if you don’t already have one:

Facebook

Instagram is a good way to advertise your business because their ads are non-intrusive and less likely to annoy your targeted audience. The engagement rate on Instagram is higher than the engagement rate on any other social media platform. Instagram also measures the success of your campaign based on awareness, reach and recall instead of follower counts, likes or comments. Even posting relevant images and videos and build your brand online, and attract more customers and followers.

Continue on with our video to see how you can start advertising through Instagram:

Continue with the next step:

Instagram: Examples