10 Innovative Pocket-friendly Ways for Promoting Your Instagram Business Page

Are you wondering if your shoestring budget can accommodate successful marketing strategies for your Instagram Business page? Setting up a business account is always free on Instagram, and it comes with several unique features that you can use at little or no cost to boost your business page. With a bit of careful planning, it is indeed possible to successfully promote your business on Instagram with a small budget.

Image by Megan Rexazin from Pixabay

Instagram’s success is heavily dependent on account visibility and active audience engagement. So how can you set yourself up in a way that the social media platform’s algorithms run in your favor? On average, new accounts need days to happen organically, as building a substantial active follower count takes time. If you wish to speed up the process, several affordable social media services can be used to give your account a boost. You can, for instance, buy Instagram like. However, even if you purchase hearts, saves, and followers periodically, you still need a good marketing and promotional strategy to keep your followers interested enough to engage with your content and grow your real-time follower count further.

How Can You Select Your Instagram Marketing and Promotional Strategy?

Your end goals will determine how you wish to get there — in other words, planning an Instagram marketing and promotional strategy requires you to set specific end goals for your Instagram presence first. Instagram has billions of daily users. Being able to navigate this sea of people and socially interact with the right audience to create a market base for your products requires much research and planning on your part. Keep in mind that your business account competes with many others from your niche who wish to gain loyalty from the same audience base as you. To get an edge over this pool of competitors, you must first discover what your USP is. What sets you apart from the rest? What can convince your target audience to place their trust in your business and its products?

Selecting the right promotional strategy is hence a two-fold approach:

A: Know Your Agenda in and Out

For this you must ask yourself some key questions. Think in terms of questions like:

What are your micro-goals? Are you currently aiming for an engagement rate increase or reaching a follower count milestone? By when do you aim to achieve this target?
What kinds of Instagram posts are you going to create, and at what frequency? Are you posting daily Stories and Reels? Will you be going live every two weeks? Are you planning on creating an IGTV series?
How do you plan to schedule your posting to build consistency and audience expectation? Are you doing it manually, or are you auto-scheduling them?
Are you planning to create an identifiable visual template for your content? What style, color, theme, font, or theme would be best suited for your business?
How much can you spend in terms of time, money, and effort? Budget all your available resources and not just your financial ones.
What features of Instagram can you legally use in your country? Study the terms and policies of the platform in your country. This will help maximize the benefits of having an Instagram business account.

B: Use Instagram in Innovative and Creative Ways

Once you have the answers to the above, it is time to get your creative juices to work. Being unique and authentic does not require much financial investment. It just requires you to think out of the box. For guidance, especially if you have budget constraints, you can use the following to help you get started on the right track.

10 Tried and Tested Innovative Promotional Ideas Which are Easy on your Budget

1. Maximize on IG Story Content

Instagram Stories are a great marketing option. Although they remain visible only for 24 hours, they are trendy because of their fun interactive potential. Use Ig Stories to build brand awareness and audience relationships. Stories are visible only to followers of your account. Update them regularly. In fun ways, connect with your market.

Use Stickers. You can choose from a range of them, including slide-on stickers, emojis, smileys weather and location stickers, and several others. Call to action for leaving reactions to your Stories.
Create mini polls and quizzes for your audience. You can let them choose from multiple options or drop-down lists. You can even provide them with a slider for giving a rating response on a scale. This is a great way to initiate and sustain conversations with your followers.
Create trivia games to keep your audience interactive.
Use the space to create teasers as well as to ask for feedback. Involve your active audience and consider their opinions in your business decisions.
Create live broadcasts. These are sure to create a high engagement rate as more followers tend to engage with such content. Going live lets you have direct interactions with your audience and answer questions and comments in real-time. It is also an excellent means of building credibility and trust for your brand.

2. Periodically Create Contests, Giveaways, and Sweepstakes

Free stuff is a great crowd puller. Besides, it lets your audience have a try-before-you-buy opportunity. This is especially useful when your target audience is still not familiar with your products and services. Even if you have a tight budget and must spend some money, it is good to set aside some of it for organizing Instagram giveaways and contests. You can have simple rules of participation like asking your audience for a tag or a follow to be eligible as a contender for the prize. Your prize can range from a discount to a mail-in product. You can conduct live raffles and winner announcements. Such activities draw more viewers and are likely to give your existing audience an immense boost. With greater visibility comes the more significant potential for roping in organic followers and even having direct sales.

Image by 200 Degrees from Pixabay

To publicize your events, use Stories and cross-post across other social pages. You can do count-downs and teasers to generate maximum audience interest. Well-planned and executed contests and giveaways can do wonders for building brand awareness and generating audience responses.

3. Create Product-centric Content

It does not matter if you make one product or ten, create content centered around what you sell. Great posts do not simply advertise products. They introduce and endear the product to the audience. Post creatively and consistently about your services and products but do so in a way that you can communicate with your audience. This is a great way to convert viewers into loyal returning followers and buyers.

Post videos of the product as it is being used.
Create posts that highlight the making of the product focusing on details like raw materials, manufacturing process, people behind its creation, and so on.
Concentrate on why your customers should buy your product rather than those by your competitors.
Humanize your business.
Organize your Instagram display like a display to highlight your best foot forward.
Create tutorials and review videos.
Post user experience and customer responses.
Be prompt in responding to any engagement posts our posts receive.

4. Celebrate Customer Led Social Proof

There can be no better brand advocate than loyal and happy returning customers. Let your brand establish itself on user social proof. When satisfied buyers appreciate your services and professionalism, they pave the way for others to try you out. You will grow an organic follower base and customer base if your current customers are genuinely happy. Even though you cannot directly collect reviews on Instagram, you can create posts about these and tag your users with their permission. Let your users tag you on individual posts about their experience with your company too. Create appreciation posts and exclusively thank customers for taking time out to share their valuable feedback.

5. Keep in Sync with Trends

Instagram algorithms give trending topics visibility preferences. Hence if you wish to be on top of user feeds, consider actively engaging in trends that can be creatively incorporated into your marketing and promotional strategy. Use relevant hashtags to broaden the reach of your business page. Trending posts get many visitors, and each can potentially turn into your follower if you have used the trend skillfully enough to capture the audience’s attention. Consider ways to make trends blend into your niche rather than looking for trends that are strictly from your place. Build strong brand awareness by participating in social movements.

6. Ace the Hashtags Game

Hashtags are the power tools that can bring your content to a broader range of audiences on Instagram. They are to Instagram what SEO words are for search engines. Use tags relevant to your business as well as to your caption. Although you can use 30 hashtags on a post and 10 on a Story, do not overuse tags. Try incorporating a few trending tags along with a few unique personal tags that include your brand name or motto. Keep the tags specific to get your target audience to view your content. Use hashtag campaigns to promote your brand creatively.

7. Use Influencers

Influencers create trust and credibility for your brand, in addition to widening your audience reach. The platform has influencers that cater to all kinds of businesses. Find someone who suits your budget as well as your marketing needs. For instance, if you are a brand that follows an environmentally conscious business ethic, investing in an influencer who endorses non-biodegradable merchandise of other companies would be unwise. A trusted source for your customers. Influencers are a good investment as they create brand awareness and authenticate your product in a casual communicative manner. Find the perfect influencer for your business by researching potential influencers before partnering up with anyone.

8. Collaborate with Other Businesses for Mutual Promotions

Save up on the big bucks by joining hands with fellow businesses and creating joint promotions for your brands. You can organize competitions, sponsor events or hold live (or pre-recorded) joint sessions. You could even partner up together with influencers to create collaborative posts that showcase both your products. This is an excellent cost-effective means of advertising. Besides, when you co-create posts, you automatically widen your reach to include each other’s followers. Such collaborative ventures are mutually beneficial and significant for anyone on tight advertising budgets.

9. Use Shoppable Tags

Does your country allow for Shoppable posts? If possible, tag your products in your publications for direct sales opportunities. When clicked upon, Shoppable tags take your viewers to your seller’s catalog and allow them to make direct purchases from you. The checkout process is very convenient, and many IG users prefer shopping on Instagram because of the ease of navigation and transaction process involved. All you need to do is connect your Instagram Business account to your Facebook business page and sync the transaction channels. You may have to provide Instagram and Facebook-specific legal details based on which country you are in.

Image by Irfan Ahmad from Pixabay

10. Concentrate on Making CTA Posts

When you want your viewers to do something, it is best to ask for it directly. CTA is good for improving ROI and generating sales. Incorporate CTA posts in your marketing strategy to direct audience traffic to the desired destination. Ask your audience to swipe on Story links or check the URL in your bio when you write a caption for a post. Include shoppable tags and CTA buttons if your country allows these Instagram features. Call to action posts and requests can also be made as part of contests and giveaways. These posts are great for building audience engagement rates and acquainting the audience with your official site and merchandise.

Conclusion

With the tips mentioned above, you can get your brand promoted to the right target audience effectively without burning a big hole in your pocket. Instagram is one of the most business-friendly social platforms for those with a small budget. Plan your presence on the platform well and gain the brand growth you are aiming for. As long as you are consistent and aiming for organic growth, you will achieve your goals. So, concentrate on being professional and responsive and keep your eyes on the target you have set. With a bit of fore planning and skillful execution, you will be able to promote your business on Instagram and achieve success soon!