8 Best Instagram Marketing Tips for Businesses in 2024

Planning to promote your business on social media? Then Instagram marketing is a great place to start. Why? Because Instagram isn’t just a platform to share visual content–it’s a powerhouse for brands both large and small to connect with a huge audience.

Consider these Instagram stats:

• Instagram has 1.35 billion users as of 2023
• 71% of Instagram users are young adults
• 90% of Instagram accounts follow at least one business profile
• 71% of U.S. businesses have an Instagram profile
• 83% of Instagram users discover a new product via the app
• Businesses have a 15% post reach rate and 2% Stories reach rate on Instagram

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As you know, statistics don’t lie, so it wouldn’t be wrong to say that Instagram marketing is booming right now. Today, using the right Instagram marketing tips, you can easily increase awareness for your business and increase your revenue.

So, let’s not waste any more time! Check out the best Instagram marketing tips for businesses in 2024.

8 top Instagram marketing tips for businesses in 2024

These are not just random Instagram marketing tips but the ones that are actually working GREAT for businesses right now.

1. Create an Instagram business account (if you don’t have one already)

Before moving forward with your Instagram marketing strategies, switch to an IG business account if you haven’t already. Instagram has developed many awesome marketing features for businesses, such as:

• Instagram Insights
• Shopping feature
• CTA buttons
• Ads
• And so much more!

By default, Instagram only allows you to create a personal account, but you can switch to a business account later on. And switching from your personal Instagram account to a business account is pretty simple.

Here’s what to do:

• Go to your profile
• Tap the hamburger icon at the top right corner
• Tap Settings > Account > Switch to professional account
• Just tap on Business and follow on-screen prompts

Your Instagram business account will be ready to use.

(PS: Make sure to protect your Instagram account from hackers. We share how to do it right here.)

Don’t have an account yet? Here’s how to create a new Instagram account.

2. Plan your Instagram marketing approach

Once you have created your Instagram business profile, you should start working on your Instagram branding strategies. This is the most crucial point that many businesses miss out on. They simply start posting random things on Instagram, which gives them no results.

Therefore, one should think about the following things before marketing on Instagram:

• Define your goals: Why are you marketing on Instagram? Do you want more leads? Followers? Brand awareness?

• Define your audience profiles: Who do you want to target on Instagram?

For example, if you are selling baby products online, your target audience is new parents between 25 to 40 years of age. On the contrary, if you sell anti-aging products for women, your audience is women, above 35 years of age.

This women-focused investment app posts content its audience would like. 

• Set goals: Set small and feasible marketing goals. In the beginning, set monthly goals and closely monitor them.

• Performance metrics: Don’t get disheartened if your Instagram posts don’t get the desired number of likes, comments, and shares, especially right off the bat. Instagram’s algorithm reacts differently to each post. So, don’t use the same metrics to measure the performance of each post. Generally, engagement, conversion rate, awareness, and customers are the main performance metrics.

3. Remember that engaging content is king on Instagram

For Instagram marketing success, you should create content that can engage and encourage your audience to take action.

Sounds simple, right? But anyone who’s tried to develop a social media calendar can tell you it’s not that simple! This is because your brand value, goals, target audience, and many other factors contribute to your Instagram content strategy.

Based on marketing research, here are few Instagram marketing post ideas that work for almost every brand:

• Infographics: You can give a new dimension to your content syndication and repurposing strategies with attractive infographics on Instagram. With this content idea, you can present your old content in front of a new audience.

• Videos: As Facebook says, video content is the next big thing. This is why they have given multiple opportunities for businesses on Instagram to promote video content through Instagram Reels, IGTV videos, Instagram ads, and more.

Instagram Reels are so powerful that professional sports leagues are seeing substantially more engagement than average after using Reels.

• Giveaways: Giveaway posts are highly engaging because who wouldn’t like to receive free things? Plus, there are so many different ways to create giveaways posts like post your own picture + tag, repost + tag, tag a friend, like and win, etc.

• Behind-the-scenes shots: People always like to know what’s behind their favorite brand’s success. So share interviews with your team, product-making processes, and other behind-the-scenes content with your audience.

• Social proof: Use your Instagram posts to give social proof about your brand’s good points. You can visually present your customer testimonials in both image and video formats to target different audience groups.

4. Optimize your Instagram business profile

Instagram gives you a small but effective space to optimize your profile for better reach. So you should take advantage of all of the available profile optimization techniques. Here are some tips for optimizing your Instagram business profile:

Create a crisp bio

Your bio is the first thing a new user views when they visit your profile. It is the place where you greet your potential followers. So you should write a bio in a simple, interactive, and informative way geared toward your audience. (We detailed how to write a business description you can use in your Instagram bio here.)

Your Instagram bios can be 150 characters or less, so you need to use your creativity to write a short yet impactful Instagram bio for your business.

Here’s a great example by Microsoft:

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Within just ten words, they tried to spike users’ interest to scroll down through their profile.

You might also want to add your business location to your Instagram bio so users can get directions right from the app.

Use a sharp profile picture

Instagram is an aesthetically driven platform. Thus, your profile picture should reflect your brand identity perfectly. Here are some suggestions:

• Use your company logo as the profile picture.
• Use the same profile picture across all social media platforms to maintain consistency.
• Instagram profile picture displays as 110 x 110 pixels so if you have a large image, reduce it to 310 x 310 pixels.

Include a (wisely-chosen) link in your bio

Instagram lets you display only one link in your bio. It is the perfect place for you to redirect Instagram users to your site or landing pages. So use this option wisely.

Add relevant contact details

Whether you have a physical business address or not, you should add relevant contact details on your profile so that people can easily contact you. In contact details, add your phone number, email address, business address, etc.

Configure an action button

In the first Instagram marketing tip, we have already mentioned that Instagram business account users can add an action button to their profiles. This button is the easiest way to drive traffic and leads your way. So, configure it properly.

Go to your profile > Edit Profile > scroll down to the Action button.

Instagram allows you to add three types of call-to-action (CTA) buttons:

Source: Instagram

These three options have further sub-options that you can select as per your business requirements.

For example:

Beyond Meat sells mock meat products. So, they have used the View Shop button to redirect users to their shop.

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Add Story Highlights

Story Highlights are one of the best Instagram features that let you make your page more attractive and salesy. You can highlight your top Instagram Stories in a creative way to promote your best services. Since an Instagram bio won’t let you talk much about your products or services thus, it is the best place to tell users about your business.

Look at these Story Highlights by Salesforce (below). From a vaccine drive campaign to introducing new events, Salesforce uses Highlights to capture users’ attention.

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5. Run ads on Instagram

Like all other leading social media platforms, Instagram also allows you to run paid ads. This is a highly effective way to get more customers and reach more people on the app. Instagram ads have a 1.08%, which is greater than 0.77% for Twitter Ads and 0.54% for Pinterest Ads.

In Q1 2020, Instagram Ads impressions were better than that of other social media platforms. On top of amazing results, Instagram let you run ads in many different ways, such as:

Image and video ads

You can create a featured image or video ad on Instagram based on your target audience’s demographics, location, and other custom settings. These ads come with a strong CTA that directly lands new users on your targeted page.

Here’s a good image ad example by DataStax with a strong and clear CTA:

Source: Instagram

Story ads

One benchmark report for 2021 stated that Instagram Story’s reach is between 1.5% to 6.2%. And you can use this reach rate in your favor by creating attractive Story Ads.

Bloomberg Businessweek ran a great Story Ad (image below) which included a bright background, well-placed illustrations, and a clear CTA.

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Shoppable ads and posts

In 2018, Instagram launched a great feature for businesses that lets them tag their products on the image or video they post.

Whenever a user taps over a photo, Instagram will take them to the product page on the company’s website. Today, you can run Shoppable posts as Ads too.

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6. Build your brand identity across Instagram

Never forget that Instagram is a visual-based platform. So, no matter which Instagram growth hack you follow, if your posts aren’t visually aligned with your brand’s identity, you may be set to doom.

You have to establish brand consistency over your posts so users can recognize your posts without even reading the content. Simply adding your company’s logo isn’t enough, people! You’ve got to capture the same look, color scheme, and feel through all of your Instagram posts.

Take a look at Lay’s Instagram to see how bright, color-coordinated, and energetic their posts look.

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7. Use tags the right way

Instagram offers two types of tags–hashtags and people tags. Both of these tags help it easier for people to find your content on Instagram.

Let’s first talk about hashtags. These are basically synonyms of relevant words to your brand or post content. They are simply prefixed with the “#” sign.

For example, when we searched for “#healthyfood” on Instagram, we got the results below.

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So, using relevant hashtags make your post easily visible to the right people. Usually, it is recommended to use hashtags according to your post’s content, as Instagram also follows the “search by intent” formula.

However, you can target some common hashtags on Instagram like “#love,” “#photooftheday,” “#happy,” “#quoteoftheday,” and holiday hashtags.

Note that hashtags are the best way to increase your post’s reach organically, but don’t flood your posts with them. Instagram allows a maximum of 30 hashtags per post, but you should stick to 5-10 most relevant ones.

Now, let’s discuss people tags, which means tagging people (Instagram accounts) in your posts. You can also make popular people tag your brand’s account in your post.

But how?

By partnering with Instagram influencers relevant to your niche.

It has helped many new businesses increase their reach and exposure in the last few years.

In fact, 17% of companies have dedicated over half of their marketing budgets to influencer marketing.

However, you need to:

• Make sure that the influencer’s and your core values are the same
• Check the authenticity and content quality of influencers
• Ensure that they have genuine followers, not fake ones

Audible partnered with tech influencer, @thetrendytechie, to promote audiobooks among tech users.

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8. Pre-plan your posts

The best Instagram marketing tip is to plan your monthly posting calendar. Don’t just go and post anything on your Instagram page. To maintain aesthetics and hashtag consistency, you should plan your posts in advance.

If you don’t know how to create an Instagram post calendar, these tips might help you:

• Define your post content and visual strategies
• Create an inspiration library
• Mark important events coming in the next month
• Write creative content for images and descriptions
• Monitor the performance of your posts published in the last month

Instagram marketing: Bonus tip for 2024

The top eight Instagram marketing tips shared in this post are just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many other different ways to increase the exposure of your brand on Instagram that you could end up spending all your time testing new strategies and tips before you find the magic formula that works for your business.

So our bonus tip here is to try combinations of different features on Instagram and analyze which method works the best for you. And simply keep on repeating it.

Here are the top 8 Instagram marketing tips for businesses in 2024:

1. Create an Instagram business account (if you don’t have one already)
2. Plan your Instagram marketing approach
3. Remember that engaging content is king on Instagram
4. Optimize your Instagram business profile
5. Run Instagram ads
6. Build your brand identity across Instagram
7. Use tags the right way
8. Pre-plan your posts

 

About the author

Sumeet Anand is a B2B Marketing Expert skilled in SEO, social media marketing, and content marketing. He helps brands and businesses out there generate leads with his top-notch content strategies and is featured on various major media publications across the globe. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.