Do you have a brand that needs to reach its niche audience in a quick, cost-effective, and impactful way? Collaborating with influencers to endorse a brand or promote a product is one of the most effective ways to achieve a significant return on investment in a short period.
Hence, Influencer Marketing on Instagram is the way to go, and here’s all you need to know about it!
What is Influencer Marketing on Instagram?
To put it simply, Instagram Influencer Marketing is a form of digital advertising that uses ‘influencers’ to promote a brand or a product. Influencers are users on Instagram who have gained a large number of followers, share a strong and trustworthy relationship with their audience, and consequently, influence their marketing decisions. In total, there are five categories of influencers, which are:
- Nano Influencers: 1,000–10,000 followers
- Micro-Influencers: 10,000–100,000 followers
- Mid-tier Influencers: 100,000–500,000 followers
- Macro Influencers: 500,000–1 million followers
- Mega Influencers: More than 1 million followers
According to the recent report of Influencer Marketing Hub, brands now prefer to work with Nano and Micro influencers rather than celebrities. This gives the brand a more authentic, engaging, and inexpensive exposure, which is especially important for recently launched MVPs, as it is now a norm to pay influencers for promotion rather than giving them free products. Influencers can also be divided thematically with beauty, travel, sports, nature, literature, cinema, comedy, and music as their niches. Hence, quitting the hassle of making direct sales, brands can now find compatible influencers, establish a professional relationship with them, and have them promote and sell their products. Instagram currently has over 2.35 billion active users, making it a perfect platform for Influencer Marketing.
One of the most vital elements of digital marketing is SEO, which is a process of optimizing one’s profile and content in such a way as to increase its visibility to users. With the right SEO tactics, brands can reach a larger audience; making SEO a powerful tool to increase business on a platform as competitive as Instagram. Even for the right strategy you can choose to embed Instagram Reels on website for free with a platform like Tagbox Widget. Some effective Instagram SEO tactics include:
- Name, Username, and Bio: It is essential to incorporate primary keywords in these sections to show up in relevant search results.
- Captions: Keyword-optimized captions are highly encouraged as they increase the chances of showing the account on the Explore Page.
- Hashtags: Hashtags on Instagram are the equivalent of keywords in regular search engines. Hence, the use of appropriate and trending hashtags directs the users to find relevant content.
- Alt Text: Alt Text in images is yet another SEO tactic that helps the Instagram algorithm to understand the content of the image and direct it toward the target audience.
- Tagging: Getting tagged on other user’s posts or stories enables a larger audience to click on your profile, therefore increasing your exposure.
Instagram as a Digital Marketing Platform
Instagram being the second most accessed network (after Facebook) is a key global platform for digital marketing. About 59% of its users are not only active but also engage in posts, spending at least over 7 hours per week on the app. Moreover, around 130 million Instagram users interact with shopping content every single month. With videos and images, Instagram helps to grow brand awareness, making it a vital facet of the e-commerce strategy.
Moreover, having a well-organized Instagram account keeps the audience wanting more. According to Bulk.ly, “These accounts have something that draws followers in, posting regular updates that you look forward to seeing in your daily feed. Unsurprisingly, these accounts do not leave their success to chance; they use specific strategies to draw in new followers and keep them returning for more.”
Instagram’s visual platform makes Influencer Marketing easier. There are 4 formats in which influencers can promote a brand on Instagram:
- Stories: Instagram stories are vertical content within 24 hours. Influencers can promote a brand on their story via a picture or a video, enhancing it further with the help of filters, stickers, music, and text. In the Instagram story below, the skincare brand Foxtale has collaborated with the social media influencer Fizah Khan to promote its Overnight Glow Mask. The key tactic used by the brand to attract customers is the Buy 2 Get 2 Free offer promoted and encouraged by the influencer.
- Grid Posts: Grid posts allow influencers to post a picture/video in the old-fashioned way, with a limitation of 2,200 characters for the caption. Grid posts can be created with the implementation of an Instagram image splitter, offering designing, scheduling, and publishing of multi-image posts.
- Reels: In the section of reels, influencers can post a short and aesthetic video for brand promotion, which may go viral and reach its audience organically. The image below shows a collaboration between LakmeIndia and the famous Indian fashion influencer Isha Borah, promoting the Dew Drama Serum. Isha takes the creative liberty to remind the viewers to use the Lakme serum for glamorous skin, thereby successfully encouraging the target audience to buy it.
- Live: Livestream on Instagram is a great way for influencers to engage with the audience in real time, thereby promoting and selling products via active interaction. Also, by integrating the influencer API, live streams on Instagram become more effective for engaging with the audience and promoting products.
Source: Influencer Marketing Hub
Let us look at some of the statistics of Instagram’s user base and the engagement that they provide. According to a 2023 report by SocialPilot,
- Around 25% of the world’s population have accounts on Instagram
- 70% of Instagram users are under the age of 34
- Daily, 500 million users put up Instagram stories
- 87% of Instagram users are non-U.S. residents
- The top 3 countries with Instagram users are India (229 million), the U.S. (143 million) and lastly, and Brazil (112 million)
- Instagram consists of 48.2% female users and 51.8% male users
When it comes to user engagement statistics on Instagram, photos show an engagement rate of 0.81%, videos it is 0.61% and carousel posts have a rate of 1.08%. Furthermore, reels get 22% more engagement from users than normal video posts.
Identifying the Right Influencers
To carry out Influencer Marketing efficiently, it is essential to identify and collaborate with the right influencers who are compatible with the brand’s core theme. Before reaching out to the influencers, it is important to understand the brand’s target audience. Once this information is armed, the brand can then move on to understanding which influencer caters to the target audience of the brand. It is also important to make sure that the personality of the influencer is at par with the “brand voice”.
Identifying the right influencer requires a few other steps as well. These include:
- Looking for influencers in the brand’s own follow list
- Doing hashtag searches to find relevant influencers belonging to that category
- Being aware of the followers of the competitor brands to identify the influencers interested in the industry
- Doing Google searches to find the influencers
- Using influencer marketing tools
- Analyzing the influencers’ reach or niche to understand their compatibility with your brand.
- Checking the engagement rates of the influencer. This includes their follow list, likes and comments on their posts, and the influencer’s press coverage range. This will determine the exposure that your brand gets.
- It is also important to exclude influencers who have had some controversial past activities or have received negative attention from the press or the public. This shall save your brand from a bad reputation.
The end goal of Instagram Influencer Marketing should be to bring more visibility to the brand, influence purchase decisions and increase sales, boost SEO and ROI, increase lead scoring, save time, and increase exposure in the most cost-effective way possible. To track the growth of the brand, one needs to analyze the traffic coming in from the influencer marketing campaigns. This can be done via tools like Google Analytics and Tapfiliate. Apart from this, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) also keep track of the engagement rate based on clicks, shares, comments, likes, reach, story views, sales, followers growth, and so on.
How to Craft an Effective Instagram Influencer Marketing Strategy?
To create a winning Instagram Influencer Marketing Strategy, it is important to understand the output that the brand will be gaining. Some of the most effective ways to make this a success include:
- To have access to the influencers’ knowledge of the platform, access to their target audience, and their feedback on the brand. Checking the brand’s expenses related to the influencer is also necessary. According to Influencer Marketing Hub, the following is what influencers charge:
- Nano influencers: $10–$100 per post
- Micro-influencers: $100–$500 per post
- Mid-tier influencers: $500–$5,000 per post
- Macro influencers: $5,000–$10,000 per post
- Mega influencers: $10,000+ per post
- Secondly, keeping a check on the engagement rates, creating an influencer media kit to refer to, and being clear about your expectations from them are immensely helpful.
- Sales automation processes such as sending follow-up emails and creating drip campaigns can also boost the process of identifying and collaborating with suitable influencers.
- What comes in handy is building a strong relationship with the influencers. One of the major ways to do this is by counting on the creative skills of the influencers. As influencers hold authority over their followers, it is important to give them the creative freedom to cater to the tastes of their audience in their way. To better evaluate the quality and impact of influencer collaborations, brands can use tools like browser screen recorders to capture real-time reactions and engagement metrics during live sessions or story promotions. This data can then be analyzed to refine future marketing strategies.
- Building a strong relationship with the influencer can also be achieved by consistently engaging with their content. Once a brand reaches out and builds a friendly but respectful rapport with the influencer, the collaboration can last for a long term.
Source: LinkedIn
- Another powerful strategy in Instagram Influencer Marketing is collaborating with influencers to co-create content. Once a strong relationship with the influencer has been built, the brand can then concentrate on co-creating various types of visual content which shall be beneficial to the growth of both the influencer and the brand. Some great examples of content collaboration include collaborative photos or videos, exclusive giveaways, Instagram story takeover, the creation of a trend or challenge, and the promotion of a discount code. The brand can also be a part of the influencer’s personal website design, to allure the audience from that site; or opt for mobile app development and further its promotion via Instagram influencers.
After collaboration, there are nine ways to analyze the success of the Instagram Influencer Marketing strategy:
- Using affiliate links to keep track of the sales of the products.
- Monitoring the engagement rate
- Keeping a tab on the Instagram metrics
- Tracking the traffic before, during, and after a campaign is conducted
- Creating promo codes to bring in new customers and track sales
- Attaching an Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) to monitor the analytics
- Asking the influencer access to their analytics once a campaign is over
Legal and Ethical Considerations
Here are the three main factors that need to be considered during Instagram Influencer Marketing (according to Forbes):
- Authenticity: Authentic portrayal of the brand is the key to gaining the trust of the audience, and this leads to a successful digital marketing campaign.
- Ethical Concerns: Influencers using heavy filters and edits to present themselves and the brand, creating unrealistic standards for the audience to reach is ethically concerning and should be avoided. The internet personality @josephinelivin, via the comparative images below, shows how heavily edited pictures have become the new norm on social media, thereby affecting women who don’t look like internet images.
- Legal Concerns: Influencers who rely on AI tools to alter the appearance of their photographs and fail to label them well may face legal charges. Hence, transparency and authenticity should be maintained at all costs.
Three Major Success Stories of Instagram Influencer Marketing
- Subaru: Subaru collaborated with 20 influencers belonging to various niches to create unique content that promotes a Subaru car. The brand has also worked with Zach King, who created a video on Subaru cars, single-handedly generating around 8 million views.
- Youfoodz: Youfoodz is an Australian fresh meal company that collaborated with 81 influencers to promote their healthy menu options. They created 167 pieces of content and posted 162 stories on Instagram for the campaign. These generated nearly 70,000 direct engagements and 500,000 impressions.
- Maybelline Mascara: To increase the sales of Falsies Push Up Drama mascara, Maybelline collaborated with beauty influencers to create content centering the product. It generated around 73,700 views, 35.7 million impressions, and 10,900 engagements. Maybelline’s total media value increased up to 1.3 times.
The Future of Instagram Influencer Marketing
Let us take a look at some of the strategies that shall shape the future of Instagram Influencer Marketing:
- It is important to focus on nano and micro-influencers, instead of celebrities. This gives way to a more genuine and personalized interaction with their audience, thus increasing the engagement rate organically.
Source: SproutSocial
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) shall play a major role in the digital marketing domain as it automates services, scrutinizes activities, and mitigates potential risks.
- Live shopping shall continue to influence marketing campaigns as the sense of urgency and the limited availability of the products increase sales.
- There shall be a rise in the inclusivity of people from all racial and sexual backgrounds. This shall allow brands to reach out to a large variety of audiences and boost engagement.
- Brands shall opt for long-term, ongoing projects rather than a one-time contract. This enables the audience to understand that the brand is a part of the influencer’s life, and is hence trustworthy.
- Short videos shall be in more demand as it is easier to consume, especially on small devices like smartphones.
- Paid collaboration will become crucial in reaching a wide audience, as it attracts dedicated content creators who produce high-quality content.
A well-executed Influencer Marketing Strategy on Instagram can bring tremendous reach to the brand overnight. Having specific marketing goals, a well-thought-out budget, quality influencers, and room for improving engagement rates are crucial to this process. In addition to these, tracking the three R’s of influencer marketing:
- relevance of the content,
- reach of the influencer,
- resonance with the audience,
contribute to the ever-evolving process of influencer marketing strategies.
Whether you are a big or a small brand, make use of the power of influencers to market your products organically. Follow the above-given tips for the best experience in Instagram Influencer Marketing and give your brand the success that it deserves!
Ready to supercharge your marketing? Dive into Instagram Influencer Marketing today!