Instagram has a huge base of engaged users spanning generations who increasingly scroll their feeds to discover new brands, products, and services. It’s no surprise that millions of businesses use Instagram marketing to find new customers.
But here’s the best part. You don’t need a bloated budget or content creation studio to reach your ideal audience. In fact, what scrollers crave most is authenticity. And that’s why so many small businesses are absolutely crushing it there.
If you’ve thought about trying Instagram, consider this your introduction to Instagram marketing for small businesses. We’ll cover organic strategies and paid ads, and show you how to get started, what to post, when to post it, and how to turn views into visits, bookings, and sales.
Contents
- What is Instagram marketing? (+How it works)
- Why market on Instagram?
- How do you get started with Instagram marketing?
- 5 Instagram tools for creating, planning, and tracking
- 13 Instagram marketing ideas (with small business examples)
What is Instagram marketing, and how does it work?
Instagram marketing blends organic content (Reels, Stories, carousels, etc.) and paid ads to reach a target audience, earn attention via the Instagram algorithm, and drive actions like follows, site visits, and sales.
This strategy works best when you pair clear positioning with consistent posting, strong hooks, and simple calls to action.
The three facets of Instagram marketing success include:
- Attract: Target the right people (by interests, geography, etc.), then use keywords, hashtags, and compelling visuals.
- Engage: Deliver value (think: tips, new ideas, behind-the-scenes videos) to invite likes, shares, and comments.
- Convert: Add links strategically in your bio, stickers, and product tags, then retarget with ads and track results in Insights.
Instagram marketing works best when you combine eye-catching visuals with strong calls to action.
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Why market on Instagram?
Instagram isn’t just a platform to share family photos and fun travel pics. It’s a full-funnel marketing platform brands use to generate awareness, interest, leads, and sales.
Would Instagram marketing work for you? Consider these Instagram stats:
- Instagram has roughly 2 billion monthly users.
- Over 60% of Instagram users are 18 to 34 years old.
- It’s the second most used social media platform by marketers worldwide.
- Over 50% of Instagram users interact with at least one brand every day.
- 61% of social media users turn to Instagram to find their next purchase.
- 44% of Instagram users say they wish brands used the platform even more.
A well-crafted and tended Instagram account offers many ways to attract new customers.
How do you get started with Instagram marketing?
Instagram marketing, especially for a small business, can feel like a huge endeavor. Let’s go over a few straightforward steps that’ll make it easier to launch and start you off with a solid foundation for success.
Create an Instagram business account
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 from there. 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.
- Scroll down and tap Account type and tools
- Tap Switch to professional account.
You’ll answer a handful of questions about your business and then, bingo! You have a shiny new Instagram account ready to capture the attention of your next best customer.
Set clear goals
Every great marketing strategy starts with a clear objective that’s tangible and trackable. That benchmark becomes the waypoint you’ll use to decide everything from content ideas to calls to action.
First and foremost, your goal should be SMART:
- Specific: Clear and detailed to eliminate ambiguity and provide direction.
- Measurable: You need a way to track progress and determine success.
- Achievable: Your goals need to be realistic, given your bandwidth.
- Relevant: Aligned with your broader objectives and long-term business goals.
- Time-bound: Have a deadline or time frame to encourage accountability.
Using the SMART framework, you can create your Instagram-specific goals. Tie them to business growth and set a time frame. And of course…
Pick which Instagram metrics you’ll track
The measurable portion of your goal needs a marketing metric. There are many to choose from, and they support different business goals. Let’s break down the list by engagement, awareness, and conversion goals so you can pick the right ones.
These engagement metrics are good indicators of how much people enjoy your content and how often the Instagram algorithm shows it:
- Likes: Total number of users who clicked the “heart” button on your post.
- Comments: Total number of users who commented on your post.
- Shares: Total number of times a user sent your post to other users via Instagram direct messages.
- Saves: Total number of users who saved your content to their archives.
- Views: The number of times your post or Reel was displayed on a user’s screen.
- Reach: Total number of unique accounts that saw your Instagram content at least once.
This list of awareness metrics tells you if people are actually interested in your brand beyond just content:
- Profile visits: Total number of times users visited your business’s Instagram profile.
- Follower count: The number of accounts that follow your business’s page.
- Website visits: The number of people who click from Instagram into your website.
These conversion metrics let you know how often people who connect with your brand move through the marketing funnel to become a lead or customer.
- Leads generated: The total number of leads you’ve generated directly from Instagram activity (leads are often defined as someone who has provided a way to market to them directly, like giving their email address or signing up for a free demo).
- Sales converted: The golden metric! This is how many people came to your business through Instagram and made a purchase.
Of course, more sales are the ultimate goal for most small businesses. But if you’re early in your Instagram journey, or if you want to take advantage of the network effect on social media to grow an audience, you’ll target awareness and engagement metrics.
Confirm your target Instagram audience
With your goals in mind, think about which segment of Instagram’s giant user base you want to reach.
That question might be simple. Say you provide prenatal yoga for expecting women. You’d simply target women in your area who are of child-bearing age, especially those who have shown interest in parenting content.
Know your audience so you can create content they’ll find helpful and relevant.
But say you sell a range of inexpensive office furniture. Your target buyer may be college kids, work-from-home professionals, or even real estate developers who focus on building office suites.
In this case, you need to decide which of your target audiences your content reaches so you can double down on that success or pivot to engage with a different segment.
Luckily, Instagram tells you who your audience is, what kind of content they like, and when they are active on the app. Simply open the Insights tab and scroll down to “Your Audience.” Here, you can learn a lot about the people who currently follow you.
If you notice that your audience skews college age and you want to reach people established in the workforce, you’ll want to adjust your content strategy and possibly your ad targeting.
Plan for engagement
Getting views on your content is a great start. But in order to really accelerate your reach on Instagram, you need people to start tapping the little heart, dropping comments, and sharing what you post.
When that happens, the Instagram algorithm notices all those interactions and starts placing your content on more users’ screens. Then they engage with it, and the virality—or at least a reasonable version of it—begins.
Sometimes things just take off on their own. But if you include a plan in your strategy to help nudge it along, you’ll get better results more often.
For example, your strategy should include steps to check and reply to comments, engage with other accounts, and share content from complementary brands. All of these actions will boost interactions with your account.
A simple reply goes a long way to improving engagement on Instagram.
Know your Instagram image sizes
Instagram is primarily a visual platform. So getting your images and videos just right is crucial to your success. One important aspect of that is to use the correct image and video sizes in your posts.
Here are the Instagram sizing specifications you need to know:
- Instagram profile photo: 320 x 320 px
- Instagram image posts: 1080 x 1440 px (or a ratio of 3:4)
- Instagram landscape image posts: 1080 x 566 px
- Instagram portrait image posts: 1080 x 1350 px
- Instagram Stories and Reels: 1080 x 1920 px
- Instagram Reel cover image size: 420 x 654 px
Build an Instagram content calendar and schedule out posts
Consistency is key to Instagram marketing success. Over time, it’ll feel like a grind to pump out post after post. When you use a content calendar and schedule out posts, you can create them in batches to ease the burden. You’ll also get a better feel for how your various posts work cohesively (or see if they don’t).
A visual calendar helps you see the big picture of your Instagram strategy.
Try planning out a general quarterly schedule and then filling it in with more detail at the beginning of each month. That’ll make it easier to account for holidays, seasonal business shifts, upcoming events, and limited-time promotions.
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5 Instagram tools for creating, planning, and tracking
Instagram marketing will deliver results, but it can be a bit cumbersome for a small biz to tackle. The following social media tools will help you create, publish, and track more great content faster.
Meta Instagram Creator hub for native Instagram tools
Meta (the umbrella corporation behind Facebook and Instagram) offers a suite of educational and production tools called Instagram Marketing Hub.
In the hub, you’ll find tips from experienced content creators, access to Meta’s creation tools, and loads of inspiration for your next marketing campaign. There’s even a native scheduling tool to help you stay on top of your plan.
Sprout Social for overall Instagram management
Sprout Social is an all-in-one platform for your social media management. It includes everything you need from engagement tools to easy publishing management and comprehensive analytics.
Sprout lets you seamlessly manage multiple Instagram accounts to publish and monitor your brand’s presence throughout the platform.
Instasize for image resizing
Instasize helps you perfect your pics for Instagram posts. You can use it to resize images, compress them, remove backgrounds, and more.
There’s even an Instagram-specific resizer that’ll prep your pics for the different placement options.
Canva for content creation
Canva is an all-around design hub with dozens of tools for producing visually stunning creative. The platform offers ready-made Instagram templates and features for creating almost any type of entertaining, educational, or promotional post you can imagine.
Here’s a handy guide to help you get started with Canva.
Linktree for additional linking opportunities
Instagram limits where you can add a link to your website and landing pages. Linktree lets you use one of those linking locations (usually the one in your bio) to present a customizable menu of links.
Linktree also offers a link shortener, QR code generator, and a bunch of other useful social media tools.
13 Instagram marketing ideas (with small business examples)
You’ve got a business account, a plan, and a toolkit. Now for the fun part. Let’s look at ways to get more visibility, engagement, and customers from everything you post on Instagram.
1. Optimize your Instagram 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 your Instagram 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.)
A great Instagram bio says what you do, gives contact details, and has a clear CTA.
Besides the verbiage, make sure your bio has:
- A sharp profile image.
- A link to at least the homepage of your website (ideally a Linktree with several links).
- Contact details.
- Relevant keywords (more on Instagram SEO in a bit).
- A map pin and link to maps if you’re a local business.
- A call to action.
2. Post engaging and relevant content
This may seem like a no-brainer. But it’s easy to fall into the trap of posting content you like, without thinking about your audience (it happens to all of us!).
When you’re filling out your content calendar, ask yourself, “Which segment of my audience will benefit from this post?”
Post content that speaks to your niche audience.
That’ll help get you in the mindset of your target customer. They’ll feel seen, love what you share, and reward you with engagement.
3. Use hashtags for greater discoverability
Hashtags are the filing system of social media sites. They help users and algorithms find content by category. And they help you get more of your content discovered.
There are a few tricks to using hashtags effectively:
- Don’t overdo it: Use one to three hashtags in your caption and add additional hashtags in the first comment.
- Be strategic: Use only hashtags relevant to your content, but add everything that may help you get found.
- Try geo hashtags: If your business is location-based, use geo hashtags like #denverrealestate or #chicagoplumber.
- Use popular hashtags: Look up the hashtags in your industry to see which have the most posts and which have posts with the most engagement.
Don’t forget to use seasonal hashtags.
Here’s a huge collection of hashtag ideas to get you started.
4. Invest in Instagram ads
You can do a lot by posting great content organically. But if you have the budget, running Instagram ads will help you get more reach way faster. Plus, you can hyper-target those ads to find people who are very likely to want what you sell.
Instagram ads are an excellent lead generation tactic.
There are several types of Instagram ads, including:
- Image and video ads: The ads you see as you scroll through your feed.
- Story Ads: Full-screen ads that show up in between organic Stories.
- Carousel ads: A series of images or videos users can swipe through.
- Explore ads: Ads that show up intermittently in the Instagram Explore feed.
- Shopping ads: Ads that let users click on and purchase products without leaving Instagram.
Instagram Story ads catch people when they’re paying attention.
5. Play to the Instagram algorithm
The Instagram algorithm is a set of instructions, code, and, increasingly, AI that decides what content each user sees.
It’s important to note that on Instagram, the algorithm doesn’t just show us content from accounts we follow. It helps us discover new brands and creators by suggesting content in our feeds, on the Discovery page, and through hashtag searches.
Instagram tags content from new-to-you accounts with “Suggested for you.”
Work with the Instagram algorithm, and it’ll suggest your content in more feeds.
Here’s the cool part: you can influence the algorithm so it shows your content to more people.
Many of the tips on this list will help you do it, but these actions have some of the biggest influence on the algo:
- Posting at the right time
- Getting more engagement
- Creating shareable content
- Leveraging Instagram SEO
6. Leverage Instagram SEO
Applying SEO best practices to your Instagram account and content gives you two big benefits. First, it’ll help Instagram’s algorithm understand what your content is about so it can match it to more users.
Second, Instagram content is now showing up in Google search pages.
So when you find the right keywords and use them strategically, you can get in front of potential customers on Instagram and Google!
Strategic use means putting those keywords into your post captions, bio, and video scripts.
Let’s say you’re a dentist in North Texas. This is how you’d pepper keywords into your bio and post captions.
7. Post at the right frequency and time
While Instagram’s algorithm likes to show newer content, there’s another reason why posting at the right time helps.
It’s because when you publish a post right when most of your audience is online, there’s a better chance of getting a little early engagement. That’ll trigger the algorithm to show it to more people, you’ll get even more engagement, and so on.
To find your best time to post, head into your Instagram analytics and look for the chart that shows when your followers are most active on the app.
Start at the most popular times and test a few others to see which nets the best result.
8. Try various types of Instagram posts
One of the strengths of Instagram for users is that it offers several types of posts to keep the app feeling fresh. When you post a rotation of these different post types, interacting with your brand will feel the same way.
Here are the types of Instagram posts to consider:
- Standard Instagram image posts: Static images with captions that people see as they scroll their feed.
- Instagram video posts: Similar to image posts, but they feature videos instead of static images.
- Instagram Reels: Short-form videos similar to YouTube Shorts or TikToks, up to three minutes long, that can appear in the feed and when you use the search feature.
There’s a search tab specifically for Reels, so you want to have some content that’ll show up there.
- Carousel posts: This post type can be a combination of up to 20 different images and videos in a row that viewers can swipe through.
- Stories: Stories are temporary image or video posts that last only 24 hours and appear at the top of a user’s screen. Note that you can also save a story as a “highlight” that stays at the top of your page.
9. Work with micro-influencers
Working with influencers can be a very effective Instagram growth hack. Not only do they help you create content, but they also bring an attentive audience with them that’ll be introduced to your brand.
Influencer marketing isn’t just for big brands. Small businesses can work with micro-influencers—people with a few hundred or a few thousand followers—without breaking the bank.
This strategy also has the benefit of addressing a niche market. Most micro-influencers post content that is focused on one or two very specific interests. Because their content is specialized, it appeals to a small but passionate fanbase. If a micro-influencer’s interests overlap with your product or service, it’s likely their fans’ interests will as well.
The right influencer can jumpstart your Instagram marketing success in a hurry.
10. Add UGC to your Instagram strategy
User-generated content refers to posts that your brand fans create to show off your products or services. Like influencer marketing, UGC is a content creation hack that gets you in front of new audiences.
UGC is a great way to collab with other businesses, like how this BBQ restaurant tagged a local brewery.
Some UGC will just happen—like when a customer posts about a great experience at a nail salon or dentist’s office. But you can instigate UGC creation by asking followers to tag photos of your product with a branded hashtag.
When you see a tagged post, share it on your account. Make sure to tag the follower to give them credit and increase exposure for your brand.
11. Launch contests and giveaways for growth
Contests and giveaways are a Swiss Army knife of Instagram growth. You can use them to engage your current audience, get more followers, generate leads, and more. And it only costs you the price of a prize.
Ask people to share, tag, and like to enter a giveaway for extra reach.
Use the rules of your giveaway to help achieve your specific Instagram goals. If you’re looking to grow your reach, ask people to tag a friend to enter.
12. Ask questions and conduct polls
Here’s another engagement-generating tip: ask your followers questions in some of your posts. Every time they answer, you’ll get an engagement boost.
You can use polls in Instagram’s Story Ads. But you can also just post a list of options and ask people to vote.
This is a great tactic to gather follower feedback. You could also try a thought-provoking question to strike up some conversation in the comments.
13. Test, track, and iterate
Let’s bookend this discussion with a mention of tracking. We talked about setting measurable goals. This is where you track the progress against them.
Instagram gives you a lot of data in your creator dashboard.
See which posts get the best results and if you’re audience demographics are skewing the way you hope.
Set a regular interval to check on your progress. Compare your success to competing brands in your niche. And use what you learn to guide your next round of content creation.
Try Instagram marketing for your small business
Instagram marketing is effective and efficient for brands of all sizes. That’s why you see so many small businesses represented when you scroll.
You can find new customers on Instagram, too. Just remember that consistency and relevancy beat complexity. Share your message in a way that feels authentic, and your audience will follow.
And if you’d like to take your digital marketing even farther, contact us and we’ll show you how our solutions can help.
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