Being the fourth most used social platform, seventh most visited website, and ninth most searched term in Google, Instagram has come quite far since its launch in 2010. It has transformed from a photo-sharing platform (as it was known initially) to a core root in business marketing and growth since the launch of business features in 2016. The features like Business profiles, Contact Buttons, Call-to-actions, instagram promotions have made it an irresistible platform for businesses and others seeking to establish identity. 

While features like contact buttons develop direct access between audience and a business more accessible, IG promotions replace traditional marketing modes and ensure it is cheaper and more effective. So if you are a business looking to spread its message worldwide and not considering Instagram promotions, you are missing out on a lot. Wait! What? Don’t you know how Instagram promotions work? Well, don’t worry! I have briefed down everything you need to know about it. So keep reading to uncover all you should know to grow your business.

Instagram Promotions:

Instagram promotion is an effective feature that allows you to convert your posts, stories, or highlights into sponsored for payment, to grow your audience or increase content’s visibility. As they are not much different from regular Instagram stories and posts, you can recognize them through the

• Tag saying sponsored below the Instagram handle.
• Clickable call-to-action button in them, saying Learn More, Shop Now, Watch More, Book Now, Sign Up, etc.

The sole purpose of such publications is to increase brand visibility and awareness as they ensure heightened engagement and outreach.

Do Instagram Promotions Work?

If you are wondering, does the Instagram promotion work? It’s high time you should accept that it does. But if you still don’t believe it, multiple stats confirm it.

60 out of 100 people on Instagram confirm that Instagram aids them in learning new/ trending products and services.

Over 75% of users claim that they are more likely to take action (Buying, contacting, or engaging_ when they see a specific thing on social media.

Other than these, Ig promotions help

• Attract more followers and customers
• Boost brand recognition and awareness
• Develop community
• Increase sales

4 Incredible Benefits Of Instagram Promotions:

Want more convincing to believe the answer to the question “Do Instagram promotions work?” Here are four benefits that will make it impossible to deny or doubt the Ig promotions’ effectiveness.

1. Instagram promotions enhance your brand’s social proof. That means it helps develop higher engagements such as likes, comments, shares, reviews, which is essential to elevate your brand’s reputation. This reputation further attracts more people because seeing people interested in something trick others into doing the same.

2. Competition on Instagram is high, which requires higher engagement to make room for your brand to appear in the Instagram News Feed. Instagram promotions are the best way to boost engagement to appear in the newsfeed for getting wider recognition.

3. As Instagram helps you promote posts that already have better engagement, it boosts more likes and engagements. Because as previously said, people tend to do something when they see the majority doing it.

4. When we advertise with traditional modes, we never know if it works? However, after developing an initial audience through Ig promotions, your account’s reach, visibility, and recognition keep increasing on Instagram, as you keep posting regularly, signalling your promotion’s success.

How To Set Up An Instagram Promotion?

1. Set Up A Business Profile:

To set up an Instagram promotion, you need to have a business profile; if you don’t have one, you need to set it up, Or you can switch your existing profile to business through settings.

 Then set up a contact button to your profile such as Contact us, Order Now, Message, etc. Finally, add a link to directly access your website if you don’t add it already.

2. Create A Post To Promote:

Select the Promotion button to find promotion options.

Select a post you want to promote or haven’t posted anything on your feed, first publish, and then move to the promotion steps. You can set up a post for promotion in more than one way.

1. Go to promotion options and select a post. Selecting will further take you to see insights and promote buttons. Insights will tell you how well your post can perform or if you should be promoting it or choosing some other.

1. You can directly promote posts from your business profile through the boost post button beneath each post.

 3. Choose Your Goal:

Here you get to choose what you want from Ig promotions. It can be boosting website or profile visits to gain increased brand awareness. Instagram offers you three goals to pick from that are

1. More Profile Visits:

You can pick this goal if you want more people to visit your profile and know your Ig presence. Then, Instagram will show your post to people interested in it and see your profile.

2. More Website Traffic:

Picking this goal is helpful if you want to boost your website’s traffic. It tells Instagram to use an algorithm to show your post to people who are likely or usually click.

3. More Views:

This goal is specifically designed to boost brand awareness and not necessarily bring engagements. So if you pick this one, Instagram will put your post in front of as many people as possible. 

4. Select Your Target Audience:

You cannot reach out to millions of IG users around the globe, so you should be very specific and clear about the audience you want to target. Instagram eases the choosing process by providing three options that are mentioned below.

1. Automatic Audience:

This option is the best to explore if you want to attract users who have previously shown an interest in your content. That means these options put your content in front of people similar to your followers in terms of demographics. But if you want to attract new people or strangers who don’t even know you exist, then this option is not for you.

2. Local Audience:

This option helps you target people of a specific location. Like its name, it helps target similar people to your followers, considering the location. 

So this option is helpful if you want to attract the local audience’s attention toward a store, an event, or anything operating in a particular area.

3. Manual Audience:

This option gives you complete control as it lets you manually create an audience.

It allows you to define age, location, interests, and more to match the audience you want to target. However, pick this only if you are glass-clear and confident about what type of people will take an interest in your profile or content. Because if you are unsure of it, you are only going to waste your money and marketing efforts.

5. Set Your Budget And Duration:

As is mentioned above, you will be paying for Instagram promotions; they are not free, you will have to decide your budget and duration. This part is relatively easy as Instagram provides a price for each chosen duration along a sliding scale. So for starting, you can set $5 a day for a week and check if it works? But the higher your budget, the more accounts you reach. So it is all about your budget. But if you are trying Instagram promotion for the first time, it is preferable to choose a lower budget; if the promotion you choose works better, you can further increase your budget next time.

6. Pre-publication Review:

Before you finally hit Create promotion, you get to see

• Your selected post for promotion
• The destination you provided to direct the traffic
• The method you choose to target audience
• The calling on your action button
• Your fixed budget and duration 

Once you make your peace with all the details, you are set to hit Create promotion.

Types of Post Content To Make Instagram Promotions Work:

1:Product Post:

The end goal of, no doubt, each business is to boost revenue; product posts are the best choice to meet this goal. So first, you can design a post featuring a good quality yet an eye-catching photo of your product that stands out from the post to make people stop to look at it. Then the most crucial thing to do is add a clickable CTA to direct the audience to the website or purchase page.

2. Events or Discount Offers Post:

Instagram promotions work better than your expectation when it comes to posts that announce discount offers, sales, or an upcoming event. Such things are the best to spread your word and trick people into buying products because they are cheaper than usual or purchase tickets to an event because it’s fun. But make sure to add a clickable CTA to direct the audience into making an instant decision.

3. Post Introducing Brand:

 Posts that introduce your brand are another practical choice for Instagram promotions. Instagram Stats suggests that over 50% of users develop an interest in the brand or business after seeing it on Instagram. So putting your brand introduction in front of people increases the chances of attracting new customers and boosting brand awareness and recognition.

4. Giveaways Post:

There is no doubt in the influencing power of words as it is estimated that people tend to take an interest if someone recommends them. So a post that offers a chance to get freebies to winners and the participation includes tagging a certain number of people, sharing posts, following Instagram profiles, etc. So as everyone loves free things, people engage with such things readily; you can boost engagements, audience, and more in an effortless manner.

5. Collaborations Post:

Collaborating with bloggers or influencers is the best way to monetize their audience. As influencers have a considerable and, most of the time, potential and engaging audience, this can help you increase your audience, engagements, and revenue as well. Moreover, promoting a post announcing your collaboration with a famous influencer increases the chances of people following you and taking action just because they are familiar with or like that influencer.

But it would help if you chose an influencer wisely. It is essential to select someone related to your niche and has the same demographics as your target audience. Just considering a certain number of followers will not benefit you anyway.

6. Instagram Stories:

Instagram stories are the best way to keep your audience engaged while equally attracting new people. The best thing about Instagram stories is they only stay for 24 hours, so you can share various content, including behind-the-scenes, interactive polls, questionnaires, and more, to keep people coming without worrying about maintaining a particular theme like feed. 

Moreover, Instagram stories support clickable links, unlike feed posts that help you, direct people to your website, details about specific products, or any action you want them to take through Learn more, Watch more, or Swipe up like CTA’s. Other than this, Stories have an increased chance to reach more people as they appear at the top of each user’s home and keep attracting attention until users watch them, unlike feed posts that only appear once.

Things To Do To Get Maximum Results From Instagram Promotions:

Since Instagram promotions are the ideal solution to boost your brand visibility and recognition, here are some things you can do to double up the output of your Ig promotion.

1. Publish Eye-Catching And Relevant Content:

With millions of users posting thousands of posts a day on Instagram, a user barely have a minute to catch the audience’s attention. So it is preferable to post content that is eye-catching enough to stop the viewer from scrolling to look. And since promotions put your content in front of your target audience, your content should be relevant enough to interest them into taking action. So the visuals and content are equally important to make people stop and click. 

2. Add Call-To-Actions Button:

The best way to make users take immediate action and not procrastinate is to add CTAs such as Buy Now, Learn More, Message, Visit Site, etc. These buttons increase the conversion rate. Also, the more accessible details and purchase options make people decisions like buying, subscribing, etc.

3. Leverage Instagram Insights:

As Instagram provides detailed insight like( shares, profile visits, follows, replies, etc.)into each post of your business profile, you can leverage that to analyze which post has worked better in the past and got the most engagements. Promoting such posts has a good chance of attracting more users or getting a wider reach.

4. Try Targetting Audience Manually:

As we already know, Instagram offers three options to target audiences Automatic, Local, and Manual. Of course, it is better to target the audience manually, but only if you are entirely sure of them. That means if you are clear about the location, gender, age-range, and interests of the audience you want to target, Manually targeting options is good as it puts the control in your hands. Moreover, if you’re going to attract new people who are unlike your followers, this option works wonders.

 5. Try Multiple Sponsored Posts:

If you are new to Instagram promotions and are unsure of what type of content to promote or what audience to target, try to promote multiple types of posts to see which one is working the best. That means you try multiple themes, visuals, videos, texts, or an experiment with various options while targetting the audience. Doing this will give you a good knowledge of what is working and what is not, which will help you bring your promotion game to the next level.

6. Be Consistent:

As Instagram has defined an Algorithm that works on certain factors, another factor is consistency. Users who post consistently tend to get more organic reach than those who don’t. So if you want to expedite your promotions output, you need to be consistent as it will favour you in multiple ways. 

• Getting organic reach further helps your promotions work better.
• Posting more content helps you analyze how are your followers and visitors interacting with your particular content, which will help you align your content in the direction of more engagements.
• Posting more helps you test multiple times. That means you can see at what time in the day or night you get more engagements by posting at different times.

 7. Make Sure Your Landing Pages Are Mobile Friendly:

Reading this, you may be thinking that Instagram is a mobile app, so what’s the point? When you promote especially to direct traffic to your website, no one will open the laptop to reach your website. That means if your target audience is mobile-users, you need to make sure your site opens fast and works perfectly well for mobiles. Otherwise, you will only get an increased bounce rate and decreased return on ad spend. There are a few things you can do to enhance the user experience at your site 

• Your layout should be easy to understand and navigate.
• Use a font that is easily readable images that are attractive and aesthetically appealing.
• Avoid using too many graphics or videos.
• Keep your text short, precise, and readable.

8. Keep your Profile And Landing Pages Ready:

If you don’t have your website ready and polished or have only one post on your Instagram, there is no point creating a promotion. You might drive traffic, profile visits, messages, etc., but what is the end if you don’t have products’ services or any other thing to offer. That means you are spending money to direct people to nothing. 

The best thing we can advise here is to create Instagram promotions only if you have a solid goal in your head. That means if you want to convert people to a website(ready and polished), grow your business, increase visibility to drive revenue, etc., then you should do it. 

But if the purpose of promotion is not professional or you want more followers to boast in front of your friends or get more messages etc., you can

• Develop an appealing Instagram grid, detailed Bio, contact information, etc
• Add a questionnaire to get notifications or get more people to talk to you. 

But if the goal is professional and there is business attached to it, first plan and execute everything, then go for promotion.

Do Instagram Promotions Same As Instagram Ads?

You may have heard the two terms Instagram promotions, and Instagram ads and chances are you would be wondering are these two are different names for one thing? But to clear your confusion, they are not the same; here are some key differences between the two.

• Instagram promotions promote the existing post through the Instagram app to increase visibility and generate leads. On the other hand, Instagram Ads are published and then promoted through the Facebook ad manager to spread a message and are a part of the campaign.
• Instagram promotions provide you control over factors like defining the age, locality, and interests of the audience to target. At the same time, Instagram ads offer more options to refine your target audience further. These options include sub-categories under demographics, interests, and more. That means, with Instagram ads, you can completely customize your ad and also have full control over its functionality.
• Instagram promotions are the best option to get an immediate audience; however, Instagram ads are a better option if you are looking for long-term success.

Conclusion:

Social media is the present and future of marketing. It is like oxygen for a business’s success and growth, with Instagram being the main catalyzer for a business’s success with features like business profiles and Ig promotions etc. Instagram promotions are the best way to increase your brand’s visibility and recognition to drive conversions further.

However, you get those conversions by paying for Instagram promotions, so you should be very clear about your goal before creating a promotion. That means staying one step ahead of promotion. Keep your profile, Bio, website, and stores up-to-date and polished. This approach will boost the chances of visitors turning to customers and expedite your promotion’s effectiveness.