Businesses are constantly on the hunt for different ways to outwit search engines, one-up competitors, and just show up where their customers are hanging out online. Well, one of the best ways to do all three is with Instagram influencer marketing.
In this post, we want to highlight a few important things to remember about Instagram, influencer marketing, and partnering with Instagram influencers to boost your visibility, drive engagement, and draw customers.
What Is Instagram Influencer Marketing?
Instagram influencer marketing is a word-of-mouth marketing tactic in which brands collaborate with popular Instagram creators to promote the brand’s products and increase a brand’s visibility among targeted audiences. Brands hire influencers to help them turn scrollers into clickers.
Influencer marketing isn’t new. Back in the day, Liberace – a stylishly-dressed, prodigious “pop” pianist who was basically the 1950s version of Elton John – helped a national bank get thousands of dollars in new deposits just by mentioning the bank on his variety show. Influencer marketing can occur just about anywhere an audience exists. This most recent iteration of influencer marketing grew alongside the popularity of Instagram influencers. Hence, Instagram influencer marketing.
Today, when most people think of influencer marketing, they think of Instagram, and with good reason. Instagram is the most popular platform for running influencer campaigns by a long shot, with 79 percent of brands using Instagram for influencer campaigns, compared with Facebook (46 percent), YouTube (36 percent), Twitter (24 percent), and LinkedIn (12 percent), according to Influencer Marketing Hub.
Why Choose Instagram for Influencer Marketing?
Well, there are several really good reasons to launch an influencer campaign on Instagram. A whopping 79 percent of brands use Instagram for influencer (or word-of-mouth) marketing. And it makes sense why – Instagram is the 7th most visited site in the world. 59 percent of American adults use Instagram daily. And brands are benefitting.
- 44 percent of Instagrammers use the app to shop weekly
- Instagram’s ad reach grew by 20.5 percent last year
- 50 percent of Instagram users have discovered a new brand on the app
- Brand Stories have an average 86 percent completion rate
- 90 percent of users follow at least one business account
Instagram influencer marketing pays off
The first, and most important, reason for choosing Instagram for your influencer marketing efforts is because Instagram is one of the most active and profitable marketing channels for brands. Working with Instagram influencers to promote products is a proven way to reach new audiences.
Grammers don’t mind branded content
Believe it or not, most Instagram users don’t mind seeing sponsored content from their favorite influencers. Legitimate influencers tend to be very particular about the types of brand collabs they accept. In fact, influencers are more likely to turn down an opportunity than to accept it if they don’t believe the brand would be of interest to their followers.
It’s how they keep their sway, their credibility, their followers. In that way, professional Instagram influencers follow influencer marketing best practices.
Instagram users are accustomed to seeing brands in their feeds. In fact, 200 million Instagram users visit at least one business profile every day. About 8 in 10 Instagrammers use the platform to research products and services.
Users rely on Instagram for product discovery
Instagram’s also emerged as an important marketing channel for reaching consumers at a time when they don’t mind being approached by brands. That’s worth mentioning because that’s not always the case, right? If you’ve ever let your finger hover over the countdown to YouTube’s Skip Ad button, you understand what we mean.
According to a Bustle survey, 81 percent of millennial women polled say their time on social media is the best time for brands to reach them. For Gen Zers, 73 percent of teens say Instagram is the best way for brands to reach them.
Instagram Influencer marketing could end up being a great opportunity for you to find the right target audience for your brand and increase your visibility and conversions during the holiday season. Here’s a stepwise guide to get you started –
Brands can reach their customers on Instagram (and influencers are EXPERTS at getting organic reach)
Over 1 billion people use Instagram every month, and spend around 53 minutes every day browsing through the app.
Now, it’s true that Instagram reaches approximately 20 percent of the global population. But it’s also true that organic reach is down to its lowest ever, with the average post from an Average Joe reaching less than 1 percent of Joe’s audience.
That leaves the 71 percent of US businesses currently using Instagram as a marketing channel needing a legitimate plan to get eyes on their products.
Part of what makes influencers so valuable to brands is the fact influencers are really great at getting people to engage with their content. The more engaging a social media creator’s content is, the more the Instagram algorithm will favor their content and show it to wider and wider audiences. That’s how brands are able to solve the organic reach problem.
Tips for Building Your Influencer Campaign on Instagram
The logistics of building an influencer marketing campaign are actually pretty simple IF you understand that there are lots of moving parts. If you are not working with an influencer marketing agency and you don’t have an in-house influencer marketing team, think of these tips as good advice for building strong influencer campaigns that will help you hit some of your most important campaign KPIs.
Set realistic campaign goals
Determine first what you want your influencer campaign to accomplish and that will determine whether you build a brand awareness campaign, a clicks-focused campaign, or a content-focused campaign. Know your goals also determines which metrics you’ll track to determine the ROI of your influencer campaign.
Plan your campaign early
The “lotta moving parts” thing? Not an exaggeration. So, give your team plenty of time to plan and execute an Instagram influencer marketing strategy that will be successful. Planning ahead will help to ensure the most important aspects of running a successful influencer campaign are handled without making the process unnecessarily stressful or unfruitful.
The average influencer campaign takes anywhere from 10 to 16 weeks to go from signed contracts to campaign results, with 12 weeks being the sweet spot. If you’ve run campaigns in previous years, plan a little extra time because one of the influencer marketing trends The Shelf team has seen is that it’s taking longer to get contracts signed. This is true of micro influencers and nano influencers as well. So, you’ll need to work in a little extra time to find relevant influencers for your campaigns.
Identify your target audience BEFORE you contact influencers
Instagram influencers are awesome, but they’re not psychic. So, identify your target audience so you know exactly who you’re trying to reach before you start the influencer selection process.
Here’s something a lot of agencies skip: Finding the right influencers for your campaign means figuring out which potential influencer partners have followers who most closely resemble your ideal customer. Remember, the whole point of running an Instagram influencer marketing campaign is to get in front of your customers. So, it’s crucial that you have a method in place for analyzing an influencer’s followers.
Use creative concepts to keep content interesting
Social media influencers are experts at creating compelling content, sure. But it’s okay to provide them with a framework of different campaign concepts they can use to generate influencer content.
This all sounds fantastic, but that means there needs to be someone on your team or a strategist within the influencer marketing agency that’s managing our influencer campaign who can dream up these creative concepts.
Amplify your campaign with cross-channel marketing
Most Instagram users are active on other social media platforms as well. So, it may make sense to amplify your campaign by cross-promoting to other social media channels. And this doesn’t necessarily have to put a huge dent in your marketing budget.
Often, content creators will use social media scheduling tools that allow them to auto-post a single piece of content to multiple social networks with a single click. So, someone can post the same video to Instagram Stories to reach their Instagram audience while posting the same content as a Pinterest Story Pin to reach a wider audience on Pinterest. We call those value-adds, and they usually won’t cost much more than what you’ve already negotiated.
Yes, most influencer marketing strategies are Instagram-based, but if the audience you’re targeting also spends a good amount of time listening to podcasts or minding their Pinterest boards, you can boost your campaign results by looping in podcast influencers and other platforms into your social media marketing.
Monitor and optimize campaign performance
The Shelf influencer marketing platform includes a dashboard that allows our team and our clients to monitor the performance of each influencer’s content. This way, we get a sense of the kind of Instagram posts and messaging that resonates with the target audience in real-time. Ideally, you could optimize underperforming content to get more engagement, thus making it more visible since Instagram’s algorithm favors popular content.
We also make it a point to launch a whitelisting campaign to run paid social ads alongside the primary Instagram influencer campaign. Whitelisting is turning an influencer’s organic posts into a paid ad and running it through the influencer’s account (instead of running an ad/dark post through your brand’s account).
Whitelisting is a really effective way to boost the visibility and engagement of your marketing campaigns so that you can get better and better ROI over the course of your campaign.
Instagram Marketing: The How
When it comes to the how of Instagram marketing, you’re in the right place. Influencer marketing on Instagram is our bread and butter. We’ve got plenty of resources to get you started.
Whether you want to increase your brand awareness, launch a product or promote a sale, Instagram is the perfect app for influencer marketing. Learn how to:
- Set campaign goals
- Find the right influencers
- Make money as a content creator
- Write kickass influencer briefs
- Make the most of your content
- And more on our blog!
Instagram Marketing Examples
Now that you’ve got the basic guide to Instagram statistics, let’s take a look at brands and users that are already making the most of the platform. Check out these Instagram marketing examples and get inspired to create your own.
EOS REELS
One of our clients, evolution of smooth (eos), is ch-ch-chugging along on the Reels train. They know how to get creative, capitalize on trends, and engage wider audiences using the Instagram Reels feature.
For example, this Reel transforms their eos lip balm products into Stranger Things characters. This engages the Stranger Things fandom, which overlaps with their target demographic. And they were able to garner even more engagement on the post because they used the viral song “Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)” by Kate Bush. The start of the fourth season of the show kept this post going strong with engagement and visibiity, too. 
Instagram Reel from @eosproducts.
Remember, Reels are a place to get reel creative!
INFLUENCER PRODUCT TAGS
The best Instagram features aren’t just for brands. Remember creators, influencers, and regular users can all use these capabilities as well. Influencer Elyse Meyers is a TikTok and Instagram Reel queen, but she also utilizes Instagram features like Product Tags, and she has her own Instagram Shop to sell her merch.
Instagram Post and Shop from @elyse_meyers.
Clicking the Product Tag in her feed post takes you directly to her Instagram Shop where you can buy the t-shirt directly in the app. Talk about seamless!
Conclusion
The influencer marketing industry is replete with agencies that will Instagram provide influencer marketing services. But there is a method to what seems like the madness of partnering with social media creators to promote your brand and products. Hopefully, this post has been useful in helping you to forge a general path forward.
We have published influencer marketing guides on a wide range of topics, from conducting influencer outreach to auditing the influencer marketing agency running your campaigns. They’re free and you can use these guides to help you map out a fortified influencer campaign that will help you reach your marketing goals.
