7 Reasons Instagram is the Best Marketing Tool

It continues to baffle lots of people how Instagram marketing maintains a high conversion rate and constant growth for brands. This article provides some insight into how they do it so you can come up with effective strategies to harness the platform’s potential.

This insightful piece will highlight seven important reasons Instagram is currently the best SMM tool out there. (ICYMI: You can tailor it to provide powerful brand awareness and customer loyalty, and more.)

1. The visual engagement of customers

Most people will tell you they seem to recall what they see about something better than what they're told about it. This is often because of the personal and first-hand nature of their experience with the object, person, or place.

With Instagram, you can engage with existing and potential customers in a visually appealing manner that has the potential to leave a long-lasting impression on them. Features like Stories, Reels, Highlights, and Live empower you to connect with your target audience authentically and leave them feeling like they truly know you.

Sharing visuals of your products and services can also help build trust with customers and make them more likely to buy your product or service.

Instagram can be a great way to create brand awareness and spread your business worldwide, and you can do this by including high-quality images in your marketing campaigns.

2. Ability to spy on competitors

In a globalized competitive market, beyond having high-quality products or services, the ability to monitor the activities of your rivals is vital.

Modern market analysis strategies are aimed at monitoring competitor price changes, regulator modifications, and the latest technological innovations. This can provide valuable insight into potential opportunities to further expand your business and grow in the industry.

Understanding the ins and outs of your industry is so important. And luckily, Instagram lets you keep tabs on your competitors and followers for free.

With a simple click, one can keep up with the latest news, topical stories, and industry developments of competitors by viewing their company profiles on the social network. Thus, it’s useful to identify opportunities and trends as well as learn from your competitor's success.

For instance, in the design industry (where a lot of designs get inspiration from previous designs), product designers can simply type #productdesign into their browser, and various designs will pop up.

Once you're familiar with spying on your rivals, you need to stay ahead of them - here's how.

3. Perfect for storytelling

The best brands are the best storytellers because they use the best practices in branding and marketing to tell their stories. Quality storytelling is essential for a brand to be successful, and this success depends on the tools at its disposal. The better your tools, the better your storytelling will be.

On Instagram, brands have the opportunity to tell their story in a wide variety of ways to help them stand out from their competitors. They can post images or videos with engaging captions and relatable hashtags, or leverage their IG stories or highlights.

They could create interactive and engaging content with polls, Q&As, how-to’s, live streams, or share short and sweet Reel videos that give an insight into their daily routine.

These are all ways in which Instagram enables businesses to market themselves to their audience in the most effective way possible, which is one reason why it is the best marketing tool for brands.

4. Harnesses Facebook’s audience

Instagram is owned by Facebook, so they have many similar features and enjoy cooperative benefits.

While it is possible to operate on either platform without having an account on the other, it's possible to link your accounts on both platforms. And linking your business account to your Facebook is beneficial for many reasons:

• Access to target audiences on Facebook, bringing about a wider reach
• Access to advertising platforms
• Addition of shoppable posts
• Integrated messaging
• Saves time as you can keep both accounts active by simultaneously sharing stories and posts

This merger of two of the most powerful social media marketing platforms has provided new opportunities to promote brands globally, targeting audiences in all parts of the world through a single, streamlined toolkit.

5. Suitable for all businesses

Instagram has many advantages and for starters, it’s available to any company regardless of its size, industry, or goals. It’s also popular among the masses and has many features that any company can utilize.

As the range of industries that Instagram can be used for expands, so does the number of people who use the social network. And because Instagrammers are so numerous and diverse, no matter what industry your business is in, you'll be able to find your audience there.

With over a billion users, you'll find that people from all age groups are using the social media platform. Therefore, all you have to do is put your brand in front of the required viewers and wait for them to become customers.

6. Enables businesses to make money directly

Beyond the obvious benefits of brand awareness and customer satisfaction, many entrepreneurs and businesses are now making some of their money from sales on Instagram.

In the same way companies use Facebook as a marketing platform, this photo-sharing social network can be used as an e-commerce tool to upscale sales.

This can be done through clickable links on posts and powered by call-to-actions that direct people to product pages, or through direct conversations in the DM.

We can also generate sales through the use of influencers, Instagram Shops, and Instagram Ads.

While influencers have a large following and are known for posting and talking about products, an Instagram Shop is an online storefront where products can be purchased directly on the platform.

Lastly, Instagram Ads is an advertising network that leverages the platform’s large audience base to deliver campaigns for brands.

7. Ability to track engagement

Instagram analytics allow businesses to track their progress in a short time, by providing in-depth data on reach, impressions, engagement, conversion rates, etc. The detailed analytics are so helpful that they provide information on demographics, followers, views, and more.

The analytics tool enables brands to more effectively strategize their activities in pursuit of their desired goals, which are then reflected by higher engagement rates.

Conclusion

With 90% of the top brands worldwide on Instagram, it's no surprise that many want to get in with the platform.

All sorts of businesses want to attract lots of millennial users to increase their customer base, create a community, improve product sales, and build brand loyalty and advocacy.

So yes, more and more brands will keep turning to Instagram. And don’t forget that 80% of its large number of active followers follow at least one brand!

The Gram is also very mobile-friendly, which is vital in this smartphone era. It also saves time and effort when posting new updates to your customers.

If you once doubted the power of an Instagram marketing campaign, we're sure your stance has changed.

Join now and make sure you explore the different ways Instagram can help your brand.