Instagram is the best online location for any business with products to sell. Once your brand has switched from the regular Instagram page to the Instagram business page, there are a lot of opportunities to explore with this business account. Your focus should be on how to position the brand on Instagram to reach the ocean of users who form your target audience. Consider these eight tips for the perfect Instagram marketing strategy. If you lack experience in this regard, consider using a social media marketing agency which will have you up and running in no time at all.

1. Get the brand’s short biography on the page profile right

What is the first thing you want visitors to know about the brand? How do you want visitors to contact the brand for services or products offered? An Instagram business account gives room for any brand to create an excellent first impression by putting the right information in the profile page area of their Instagram account. This is the place visitors will go to first to learn more about the brand.

The “Name” section in the profile area should be fully maximized. You don’t have to repeat the name of the brand, rather use it to either define your brand’s niche like “Makeup Artist in London”, “Coffee Shop in LA”, “Event Manager in Melbourne”.

In the “website” section, put your brand’s website or if you have important links that will give visitors more information about the brand, put a URL that contains multiple useful links, to make it easy for visitors to navigate links with relevant information.

The “Bio” section allows up to 150 characters, so use it wisely to highlight important, helpful information about the brand. Edit the “contact options” to include the address of the brand, the contact email and contact number. You can also add an action button too, in that section. The entire profile page of the brand is the first place to market the brand, so it has to be done correctly and enticing enough to spur them to take action on the brand’s page.

2. The marketing content has to be of high quality

Instagram is mostly used by a younger audience, who are primarily within the age range of 18 to 35. This age group is highly motivated by engaging visual content. Whatever content you are planning to use to market the brand must be top notch! Content is a crucial aspect of any marketing effort. It can greatly impact the success of the marketing campaign. Video content, over the last two years, has grown to be a more effective marketing content on Instagram and more video content would be used this year and beyond.

One quick way to use content to connect with your target audience is to tell a convincing brand story that will resonate well with the brand’s target audience. Even when marketing, do not push out only marketing content, rather push out other engaging content as well. Social media is about engagement. The moment your visitors or followers feel the brand’s feed or story is only about their products or services, they are less likely to be active on the page. A larger percentage of Instagram users base their buying on visuals, so the better your visual content, the more chances to increase sales.

3. Understand the brand’s target audience

This is very important in any marketing effort. Brands need to know who their target audience is and what their interests are. Not everyone is their customer. The fact that Instagram appeals to a young audience that their products also targets does not mean that they will all have the same interest in the brand’s products or services.

You must be able to define precisely who the brand’s target audience is. Doing this helps you narrow down the marketing campaign to focus only on those who will have interest. In addition, it also helps to determine the narrative tone of the marketing content. If the brand’s product or service would appeal to young married people, the tone of the marketing content would not be like that of old married people.

4. Use a defined call to action

Action words, when used in marketing content, calls the attention of a potential buyer to take a necessary action that would generate leads or sales for the brand. When advertising on Instagram, brands can either instruct that visitors “visit profile”, “send a direct message”, or “visit the website”. Although these are very basic call to actions, it can be creatively used to drive these visitors to take an action that is beneficial to the overall marketing goal.

5. Have specific offers, promos or discounts for Instagram users

By applying the “what happens on Instagram, stays on Instagram” rule, a lot of brands can get more sales and leads by offering discounts, promos or juicy offers to only those that buy through Instagram. They can create special offers or promo codes and share on Instagram and promote such posts as well. With this, brands can track sales or leads gotten through Instagram.

6. Use a branded hashtag

Instagram is the domain of hashtag! The rise of hashtag trends on Instagram made it a lot easier to follow things or topics of interest. Creating a branded hashtag also makes it easy for Instagram users to keep up with all ongoing activities of a brand online by simply clicking to follow the branded hashtag. In addition, brands can also increase post views, reach or impressions organically by complementing their branded hashtag with other hashtags that their target audience is likely to be clicking through or following.

7. Tease your audience with your products

This method works well for most brands that know how to apply it. Releasing videos or images that creatively teases your target audience about your product is one good way to boost your marketing efforts to generate more sales or leads. Creating and sharing product teaser content on Instagram is a subtle way to advertise a product without appearing to be shoving it down people’s throat.

8. Partner with an influencer

Most small businesses are very quick to dismiss this because of the fear that it might be costly. Surprisingly, most don’t charge as much as influential celebs might. So look out for the smaller ones with greater impact to partner with.