Right now, almost every brand, label, business or project is being advertised through Instagram. So, having your marketing plan include Instagram advertisement may not be a bad idea at all.
Here are the top ways you can advertise your brand through Instagram.
1. Show your business in a natural way
The end-goal for advertising through Instagram is making your post seem as natural as possible, and least like an actual advertisement. Using Instagram stories in a constructive way, you can easily show your audience the everyday happenings of your business.
Union Fare is a NYC restaurant that has Instagram stories which include attractive videos and photos of their day-to-day restaurant functions, casually showing the delicious foods they have to offer. Often uploading during lunch time, any hungry guy near that restaurant is sure to arrive and grab some grub.
2. Show off your product in action
The goal for any advertisement campaign is to sell a product; when you provide the inner workings of a product in a relevant manner, it gives people ideas, and incentivizes them to actually buy the product just by seeing it in action.
This idea is actually brilliant, especially if you have physical products –makeup, cooking products, tech items, gadgets, interesting toys etc. – to sell. A great example would be to have to show a kick-ass skateboard stunt in order to advertise a skateboarding company.
You can also use the hue feature on Instagram to embellish your post; if you offer a seasonal item such as a pumpkin caramel latte, adding an orange hue to the post will make it seem much more festive and interesting.
3. Break the third wall
Just like how people are surprised when the 3rd wall is broken in movies, creating posts which give the audience something personal, while being surprising, makes them much more interested in the post.
You can make references to the audience directly; for example, if you make a post about food during peak lunch hours which says “You know who’d like a sandwich right now? The guy staring at his phone” or something like that, this will get someone more interested in getting that sandwich.
You can also make interactive pictures and videos which “interact” with the audience, this will keep them on your post for the full length of the photo or video, and make them pay attention to any advertisement you have to put at the end, the middle or the beginning.
Remember, keeping it interesting and unique is important.
4. Place your product in relevant locations.
Sometimes, you just need a cool, refreshing drink; most people won’t be sitting in a desert being thirsty for a beverage, they’re most likely at home or at work. Give people what they want, and make it relevant.
A great example for that would be take a picture of your beverage in a cool mini-fridge in the garage as someone is fixing a car, sweating. Or in case of a hot beverage, like a coffee, you can advertise it relating to a freezing air conditioner.
You can use this tactic for almost every single product, from food, clothes to technology, gadgets and more. It’s a simple idea which brands often avoid doing which may make it seem that they’re “overdoing it”.
5. The “Blend in” technique
Keep it natural, you don’t have open up your product and make the audience count the screws it has. Simply put, blend your product into the post and don’t flaunt it exclusively. For a lot of people, strict advertisement posts may be a nuisance, where as an interactive, or actually useful “advertisement” can be interesting.
For instance, instead of directly getting to your product, make the people get interested in the post first. Maybe plug in a few jokes, some facts or figures, add captions which covers the whole product without making it seem unnatural.
Posting multiple times, and building up the audience with each one is also an option for advertising; for instance, if you offer some healthy dieting food, make one post which shows the calories in let’s say a typical burger, afterwards, make a post showing the number of calories in a pizza, and then selflessly plug in an attractive picture of your own food, and caption it accordingly.
Remember, it doesn’t matter what kind of product you show off on Instagram, you need to be innovative and make the “advert” simple, both at the same time. Your product, brand or project can easily and seamlessly be plugged into posts without having it seem unnatural, you just need to know your product and know your audience.
