With over 1 billion users, Instagram marketing is an effective way to grow your business. This article offers a quick and easy guide on how to increase brand awareness with Instagram, using our 3 essential tips.

1. Use Instagram ads

Advertising is one of the most fundamental ways to enhance brand awareness on Instagram. Before you can create an Instagram ad, your account must be switched to a business profile. You can add call-to-actions to your ad, such as ‘Learn More’ or ‘Buy Now’, to reach your campaign goal. Once your ad is posted, you can use Instagram Insights to analyze its performance and see how users are engaging with it.

What are the different types of Instagram ads?

• Image: These ads can be shown on your target audience’s story or feed. Image ads are suitable for when you are focusing on one particular product, service, or promotion.
• Video: Video ads can also be displayed through the user’s story or feed. Instagram video ads receive over 38% more engagement than image ads.
• Story: Story ads organically blend into a user’s story content and do not feel like an obvious advertisement.
• Carousel: These ads allow you to show up to 10 scrollable images or videos on your target audiences’ feed. With carousel ads, you can show a range of content. These are best suited for building brand awareness, as you can provide potential consumers with a taste of your brand.

How can you create an Instagram ad?

1. Promote existing content. You can promote a previous post or story by simply clicking the ‘Promote’ button under the post and following the steps.
2. Use Facebook Ads Manager. This tool allows you to create an advertisement from Facebook. To promote these ads, your Facebook account must be linked to your Instagram business profile.
3. Promote Facebook ads. You can also promote your Facebook advertisements on Instagram once the two profiles are linked. To do so, check the ‘Instagram’ box under the ad sets placement section.

2. Collaborate with influencers

Influencer marketing is one of the most effective ways of enhancing brand awareness with Instagram. Influencers can create engaging content for your brand, to show to their audience. There are three steps to follow before engaging in influencer marketing.

Step 1: Set your budget

The cost of collaborating with an influencer can be quite expensive. This price can vary depending on their number of followers, engagement rate and the industry. It is important to set your budget before contacting an Influencer.

Step 2: Search for influencers

Next you should search for influencers within your industry. You can find them by simply scrolling through the ‘Explore’ page or relevant hashtags. For example, if you are a clothing brand, you might leverage through the #ootd and #fashion hashtags. Other ways of discovering influencers include influencer platforms and agencies.

Step 3: Choose the right influencer

Once you have discovered potential influencers within your industry, it is important to select the right one. This means choosing an influencer who aligns with your brand image, has followers who meet your target demographic and has a sufficient number of followers to reach your campaign goals.

When you can find the right influencers to match your brand, it can give you a serious boost in followers, sales and overall brand recognition. The key here is that it’s imperative to find the right influencers.

3. Run a giveaway

What is a giveaway?

An Instagram giveaway is a limited-time promotion where brands give free products or services away to one of the entrants who has followed the required steps.

What can you gain from a giveaway?

Instagram giveaways have been described as the nuclear weapon to brand awareness. If successful, giveaways can increase engagement with your Instagram page, boost brand awareness and attract new consumers. So how can you run a successful giveaway?

Running a successful giveaway

1. Offer an enticing prize

Offering an expensive or limited product or service is usually more effective than a prize that consumers can easily purchase themselves. Expensive or in-demand prizes are better at enticing users, which will lead to a higher volume of entrants, more engagement and increased brand awareness. If you cannot afford to give an expensive product or service away for free, partner with other brands to make the prize more desirable for potential entrants.  

2. Set the correct steps

In a giveaway, entrants have to follow a set number of steps for their entry to be valid. It is important that you set the correct steps that will help you to meet your campaign goal.

To increase brand awareness, it is important that you require entrants to share the giveaway post. This will increase the reach of the post, attracting more entrants and ultimately increasing brand awareness.  You could also instruct entrants to follow your profile to grow your following, or like and comment on the post to boost engagement.

3. Partner with an influencer

Partnering with an influencer can serve as social proof for your brand and the giveaway. It can also cause the giveaway to reach a higher number of people, therefore, building brand awareness. This is mutually beneficial for your brand and the influencer, as you both gain from increased engagement and awareness.

Regulations to follow

There are a set number of guidelines that Instagram requires you to follow when running giveaways. It is also important to comply with any regulations within your area, such as GDPR if you are located within the EU. Read more about GDPR regulations.

Sources

Cronin, N (2021) https://www.hopperhq.com/blog/instagram-influencer-marketing-2020/

Estay, B (2020) https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/instagram-influencer-marketing/#where-can-i-find-influencers

Liarokapi, T (2020) https://moosend.com/blog/instagram-giveaway/

Whitney, M (2017) https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2017/11/20/instagram-advertising