2022 Instagram Marketing: Complete Guide + 18 Strategies

What is Instagram marketing?

Instagram marketing is the practice of using Instagram to grow your brand awareness, audience, leads, and sales. As the?favorite social media platform ?of people ages 16-34, Instagram is a highly effective marketing platform for brands, entrepreneurs, and creators.

Instagram marketing strategies include:

• Organic content: Photo, video, or carousel posts, Reels, Stories
• Paid content: Instagram ads, including Stories ads, Shopping ads, and more
• Influencer marketing
• Shopping tools: Shop tab, Product tags and catalog, Live shopping, Instagram Checkout, Shopping ads

How to set up Instagram for marketing

If you’re just starting out, here’s what you need to do to set your company’s Instagram account up for success.

Set up an Instagram Business profile

To use most of the marketing tips featured here, you need an?Instagram Business account . It’s free, and you can create a new one or convert your existing Personal account.

If you have an existing Personal account, skip to Step 3.

Step 1: Download Instagram

You can only create an account using a mobile device.

• Get it for?iOS
• Get it for?Android

Step 2: Create a Personal account

Tap?Create new account. Follow the prompts to enter your email and phone number and choose a username and password. You don’t need to fill out the rest of your profile right now (more on how to optimize it later).

Step 3: Switch your new account to a Business one

Go to your profile and open the menu. Go to?Settings?and choose?Switch to professional account?near the bottom. Select Business as the account type and follow the prompts to convert your account.

Get verified

Most companies aren’t verified. Research shows?73.4% of creators or brands ?with over a million followers are verified, but only 0.87% of those with 1,000-5,000 followers are.

You don’t need that little blue checkmark to be successful on Instagram, but having it can help you earn trust and stand out.

To apply for Instagram verification:

1. In the app, open the menu. Click?Settings, then?Account, then?Request Verification.

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2. Fill out the form.

After submitting the form, you’ll receive the answer as a notification within Instagram in about a week. Instagram will never email you, ask for payment, or contact you any other way.

If your verification request is unsuccessful, you can try again in 30 days. If it’s approved, hooray and welcome to the super-elite Insta club.

The tricky part of getting verified is having enough third-party content to prove you’re well-known enough to warrant needing verification. We cover tips for getting that supporting content in our complete guide to?getting verified on Instagram .

Try Instagram ads

Expanding your marketing strategy with ads can have a big impact. Even simple ads can earn results, like coffee retailer Country Bean’s 3 week campaign which resulted in a?16% sales increase .

There are two ways to get started with Instagram ads:

The easy way: Boost a post

You can turn any existing Instagram post into an ad by clicking the?Boost Post?button. You need to have either a Business or Creator account, though.

As you probably guessed, this is exactly like?Facebook’s “boost” ?feature. Now that Meta owns both companies, you’ll also need to?connect your Instagram account ?to Meta Business Suite.

After clicking?Boost Post, follow the quick prompts to set your budget, narrow your target audience, set a duration, and boom—you now have an Instagram ad.

You can customize the targeting options or have Instagram automatically target your ads. Boosted posts are a good way to dip your toe in the advertising pool, so if this is all new to you, stick to auto mode.

Go big: Launch a full Instagram ad campaign

Step 1: Log in to Meta Business Suite

Click on?Ads?in the left menu, then?Create ad?at the top right.

Step 2: Choose a goal

Remember Choose Your Own Adventure books? It’s like that, but for marketing.

For a first campaign, Automated Ads are a good option. Instagram will try to get you the most results with the least budget possible, and they auto-adjust your targeting and bidding strategy as they learn more from your audience’s reactions. It’s like having a 24/7 robot assistant.

If you want to experiment with ad targeting yourself, or have a specific goal, try out one of the other options, like focusing on leads or traffic.

Step 3: Create your ads

The prompts to complete your ad vary depending on which goal you pick, but generally the next step is to create the ad creative. For example, this is what the next step is for the “Build your business” goal.

For a well-rounded campaign, you should have at least 2-3 ad groups, each containing 3 or more ads.

Most ad formats have an option to allow Instagram to switch out your creative assets automatically to optimize ad performance. It’s like having a real-time, built-in?A/B testing process . Add multiple creative assets for each ad to take advantage of this.

Try to include a mix of photo, video, Stories ads, Reels ads, and Catalog and Shopping ads if you sell products online. Test out different ad copy and calls to action.

And, ensure you have ads for each stage of your buyer’s journey, from consideration all the way to conversion.

Step 4: Define your audience

Take a shot every time you read “define your audience” in a marketing blog.

Targeting is critical to your ad’s success. Meta Business Suite gives you five options:

You can target:

• An Advantage Audience (Recommended for newbies!):?This is Meta’s AI-optimized audience based on your existing account audience, and updates itself automatically as your audience grows or changes. It analyzes what interests and demographics your followers share.
• People you choose:?Create your own audience from scratch, including location, demographics, interests, and more.
• People who’ve previously engaged with posts or ads:?Create a?retargeting campaign ?to remind people who already know you about your offer.
• Page Likes:?Targets your existing Facebook Page and Instagram followers.
• Page Likes and similar:?In addition to your existing audience, this will also expand to target people the algorithm thinks are similar to them to bring in new leads.

If you’re new to ads, use the Advantage audience option. Want to learn more about perfecting your ad targeting? The info in our?Facebook ad targeting guide ?works for your Instagram ads, too.

Step 5: Set your budget

Whichever targeting option you pick, you’ll need to set a budget and duration. You’ll see the predicted results of your choices on the right side in estimated reach and clicks.

Step 6: Launch

Lastly, choose if you want your ad to appear only on Facebook, Instagram, or Messenger, or across all three platforms. We recommend running it across all.

Click?Promote Now?to save and launch your Instagram ad campaign. Woo!

Running a successful ad campaign is a huge undertaking. Check our in-depth?Instagram ads guide ?for tips on creating great ads in 2022.

Add an Instagram Shop to your account

Instagram Shopping tools are a must-have for ecommerce businesses.?44% of Instagram users shop weekly ?on the platform, and 1 in 2 use Instagram to find new brands.

Tips on using Instagram Shopping are in the next section, but you need to add the Shop tab to your Instagram profile first.

This allows you to create a fully shoppable product catalog directly on Instagram, as well as tag and link to products in your posts and Stories, and more.

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Step 1: Ensure you meet Instagram Shopping requirements

Brands using Shopping features must adhere to Meta’s merchant policies. You’re probably doing all these things correctly anyway, but it’s a good idea to review?Meta’s commerce policies ?first before applying.

Step 2: Sign up for Commerce Manager

To create your Instagram Shop, you need to have a?Meta Commerce Manager ?account. You need a Business or Creator Instagram account first, then you can sign up one of two ways:

Through your ecommerce platform

If your website runs on Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, or other major platforms, you may only have to click a button to set up your Instagram Shop.

The process is different for each, so check out?Meta’s list of supported platforms ?to find instructions for yours.

Manually through Commerce Manager

Don’t use one of those? It’s easy to sign up from scratch.

Log in to?Meta Business Suite ?and click on?Commerce?in the left navigation.

Click?Add Account. Click?Next?on the following page to start the manual set up process.

First, choose a checkout method:

1. Checkout on your website.
2. Checkout directly inside Facebook and/or Instagram. (Recommended, but currently only available for U.S.-based companies.)
3. Checkout via direct message on WhatsApp or Messenger.

Select the Facebook and Instagram profiles you want to create your Shop on, then click?Next. Create a new product catalog, and click?Next?again.

It will prompt you to enter your website URL and the countries you ship to. The final page is a summary of all your information. Ensure it’s accurate, then click?Finish Setup.

Step 3: Wait for approval

Instagram reviews new Commerce Manager applications manually, though you should hear back within a few business days.

Eager to learn while you wait? Learn how to?tag products in your scheduled Hootsuite posts , and the next steps to?optimize your Instagram Shop .

18 tips for a winning Instagram marketing strategy

1. Set S.M.A.R.T. social media goals

You know, the specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound?yada yada yada?type goals. What do you want your Instagram account to do for your business?

A few common examples are:

• Lead generation
• Brand awareness
• Recruitment

But, your goals are as unique as your company. The important point? Have some.

For More Instagram Marketing Tips Follow : Shihab Uddin .