How To Use Instagram Stories In Your Marketing Strategy

Using various social media channels in your marketing strategy is not new as it has been occurring for quite a while. Instagram, for example, has been around for 11 years and remains one of the best social media channels out there. 

Created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger in 2010, the app has evolved with various features such as hashtags and geotag. However, one of their most popular features – Instagram Stories, has become a worldwide phenomenon.

Since the launch of Instagram Stories in 2016, many users have been using it with the estimation of 500 million people posting 1 billion Stories on daily basis. Specifically, Instagram Stories makes it less complicated for marketers to engage with users, humanize their brands, create leads, and increase customers on the platform. 

It is undoubtedly an excellent tool for showing potential customers (not forgetting the existing ones) why your brand is relatable or interesting. So let us help you with how to use it in your marketing strategy.

Show that your brand is fun and relatable

Instagram is an excellent platform in terms of engagement. According to Hootsuite, 58% of users have become more interested in a brand or product after seeing it in Instagram Stories. Why? Because features like Instagram Stories make it easy for brands to show themselves in a fun and exciting way. Humanizing a brand has become easier than before.

Chek Hup, a local coffee brand from Ipoh, Perak launched a social media Raya campaign in 2020 involving 51 influencers to promote Coffee Brown using Instagram Stories. The social media space was flooded with the Coffee Brown content throughout this festive period. From this brief campaign, they have managed to gain total impressions of 40,829 which is 10 times more than their current followers of 3,825.

Interact with your audience

Instagram Stories also give marketers multiple options to facilitate easy interaction with users. With features like geographical location tagging, hashtags, polls, gifs, and stickers, growing your following and facilitating brand engagement is simple as long as you have some creativity.

Using Instagram Stories, Dunkin Donuts wanted to connect with more consumers by increasing awareness of its new product. So when Instagram released its new polling sticker feature, the Dunkin’ team quickly moved to test it out, and 20% of people who watched the Instagram Stories voted in the poll.

Host Instagram takeovers with Instagram influencers

Influencers have many followers ranging from thousands to millions depending on how popular they are. Besides appointing them to promote your brands through postings either from your Instagram account or theirs, you can up the game by Instagram takeover: 

1) An influencer (or influencers) to take over your Instagram account for a day 

OR 

2) Your brand can take over their account for the day instead

Leading up to a takeover, both the influencer and your brand regularly remind followers when it will be taking place. This builds anticipation and reminds users where to watch.

As part of a brand-building campaign, Finnair, the largest airline company in Finland, published a series of Instagram takeovers from four of its flight attendants in 2018. Each team member took over the airline’s account for three days sharing Instagram Stories about the life of a flight attendant, places they’ve visited, and some personal details about them. After this campaign, their followers have increased to more than 200K, and their sales have gone up by 30%.

Instagram has continued reinventing itself and evolving over the years by adding great features. Instagram Stories is one of the examples where it’s a weapon you need to have in your social media arsenal. First, take advantage of the ease of engaging with fans by using Instagram Stories to build your brand as one of your marketing strategies. Then, try out other social media channels such as WhatsApp, Telegram, and Facebook to diversify your marketing strategy to another level.

To know more, check out our website at www.avana.asia today!

Categorised in: Facebook Marketing, Marketing Tips

This post was written by AVANA