Should you sell on Instagram or not?
If your audience is young customers under 30 years old and you ignore Instagram, you are really missing out on a treasure trove of gold!
On Sales and Marketing groups, I often see many people complaining, even cursing Facebook because of increased advertising prices, or algorithm changes that reduce Fanpage's reach to users. Although this started happening 3 years ago, when I was still selling shoes. Even in 2018, it will certainly happen even more strongly with Mark Zuckerberg's birthday pledges to enhance the connection of relatives and friends rather than advertising or the presence of social networks. brand fanpage.
The question is: "Why do people keep complaining about Facebook without finding their own solutions?"
In my personal opinion, Facebook is just one of the channels to reach customers, so don't deify it too much. There are many other channels that can reach your target customers better, it just depends on whether you are willing to research, learn and research carefully about your target customers or not.
If you want to get rid of dependence on Facebook, you can read more articles: “How to avoid having your business affected every time Facebook sneezes?“
Currently, because of the products I'm selling, I hardly use Facebook ads much (actually because I'm so sorry for money, Mr. Mark, you keep getting richer and everyone just keeps offering money to make you poor). If you run Facebook ads, you also link back to your website to bring customers to you. And most of them do not run large objects but run imported customer data using Phone Numbers, or run expansions from object files that they have already built (if you haven't learned about this yet, I recommend you learn it). More in-depth about FB advertising. There are many tutorials on blogs online so you can search to learn).
Here, I absolutely do not deny the effectiveness of Facebook in sales. Because, until now, I have not seen any channel that can thoroughly research user behavior, or target as deeply as FB. What I want to emphasize here is that you should look for other channels besides Facebook because there are many less-explored fertile lands waiting for you.
If you've never tried using Instagram, or have done it but not thoroughly, try learning about Instagram in this article and try applying it to see if it's more effective. Believe me, you will be well compensated!
What is Instagram?
Instagram started as a smartphone photo sharing social network founded in October 2010 and was acquired by Facebook in April 2012 right before Facebook conducted its IPO for 1 billion $.
At this time, Instagram was only 2 years old with 13 employees and no revenue. Many people suspected that Mark Zuckerberg was impulsive, but now everyone knows that it was a very successful business.
Let's look at some statistics about Instagram. You don't need to remember it, but let's take a quick look to see if your target audience is on Instagram or not:
Instagram stats
Number of online accounts regularly every month:
800 million
Last updated: 12/24/17
Number of online accounts regularly every day:
500 million
Last updated: 12/24/17
Number of online accounts using Instagram Stories daily:
300 million
Last updated: 12/24/17
Number of photos shared:
40 billion
Last updated: 1/23/17
Business account number (similar to Fanpage) on Instagram:
25 million
Last updated: 12/24/17
Number of Like buttons pressed per day:
4.2 billion
Number of photos uploaded per day:
95 million, last year it was 70 million
Last updated: 1/23/17
Instagram demographic statistics
- 68% Instagram users are female.
- 80% Instagram users outside the US
- 77.6 million Instagram users are from the US
- 31% American women, 24% American men use Instagram
- 32% total number of Internet users use Instagram.
- 59% Internet users from 18 to 29 years old use Instagram, 33% Internet users from 30 to 49 years old.
- 38% women using the Internet use Instagram, 26% men using the Internet use Instagram
17% teens say Instagram is the most important social network (up from 12% in 2012)
Some interesting information about Instagram
- To date, there have been more than 40 billion photos uploaded to Instagram
- 200 million Instagram users actively visit business accounts every day.
- Posts with at least 1 hashtag get an average of 12.6% interactions.
- Brazil ranks 2nd in female users, is the country with the largest total number of users in Latin America and 2nd in the world.
- When IG launched the video upload feature, 5 million videos were uploaded in the first 24 hours.
- Videos have 2 times the engagement rate than photos on Instagram.
- The most used Hashtags are: #Love, #Instagood, #Me, #Cute and #Follow.
- Pizza is the most mentioned food on Instagram, followed by Sushi.
- There are Instagram influencers who are charging up to 100,000$ for a post.
That is an international statistic. As for Vietnam, I can't find many statistics. If there are any, they are too old. According to my personal assessment, Instagram users in Vietnam are currently mostly young women and are often used to edit photos, follow celebrities and update fashion trends.
According to the current trend, young people around the world are turning to use Instagram more because they are bored with Facebook due to advertising and thinning, and at the same time, parents and relatives have joined Facebook more, creating a feeling of discomfort.
So which products will have potential on Instagram? These are products for young people under the age of 30 (the audience will gradually expand due to the older audience increasing in age and the increasing spread of Instagram to older audiences).
For example:
- Clothing fashion
- Fashion accessories, shoes,...
- Cosmetics, perfumes, watches.
- Food, Places to eat.
- …..
Those are some products that many people have been selling quite successfully on Instagram. These products are already being exploited so competition will be a bit higher but the potential is still huge.
In addition to the popular products above, there are still many wild lands waiting for you to explore, as long as your product is a little related to art, aesthetics,... because IG is a visual social network so it uses content. mainly with pictures.
- Mother and baby items.
- Interior.
- Decorations.
- Decorative green plants
- …
I think there's a lot more but it's just Tet so my fatty brain can't think of more. Gradually the fat melts away so I can think of what to add. If you have anything to add, please comment below so I can add it.
It's an Instagram basics to help you see if your item is a good fit. If you find it suitable or seems a little suitable, then read on. Currently, in my opinion, there are 3 options to build a brand on Instagram.
1.If you are rich.
- Advertisement
You have an ad set on Facebook's ad manager. It's best to set aside a campaign or an ad group that only advertises on Instagram so you can optimize post images specifically for Instagram. Below is a promotional clip of chanel on Instagram, the video frame is very suitable for Instagram as it stands out and takes up almost the entire screen on the phone, the clip background also stands out very prominently on the white background of the IG application.
Just like Facebook, you need to determine what your purpose in the campaign is? Is it increasing Followers, increasing recognition, or leading users to your Website.
If you already have a number of customers on Facebook, or a Website, you can try to take advantage of advertising on these existing audiences to increase "contact" and "rubbing" with your customers on different channels.
- Rent posts from KOLs, Influence (famous, influential person)
You need to find KOLs whose fans are your target audience to contact to post posts. You need to carefully study the profiles of the KOLs you want to see if they are suitable for your product?
Don't pay too much attention to how many followers they have? See if their previous posts had good engagement? What was the response from the Fans? Have they ever rented out posts? (This is just an extra because many KOLs only allow posts to be posted hourly or daily. After the time expires, the advertising posts will disappear). To choose KOLs with reasonable prices and high efficiency.
You should also write the content of your post in a sophisticated way that still directs users to follow your profile. Don't advertise too openly, something half-hidden and half-open is more intriguing, right?
The important thing is to stimulate them to click to view your Bio (Profile introduction in IG is called Bio) to bring long-term effectiveness to the advertisement. Once they click on it, how do you make them follow your account?
Don't be afraid to offer calls or promotions for customers to Follow your Profile. Remember that "If the baby doesn't cry, the mother will breastfeed", call on customers and bring them worthy values if they Follow. Don't forget the value of turning a customer into a repeat customer!
2.If you like free.
- Only use the App on your phone
Free, of course you will have to spend more effort, everything has its price. But this is also a fairly sustainable way for you to gradually build an IG channel in addition to your main channel.
With one phone you can add 5 IG accounts at the same time. Because building a large IG Follow account cannot be done quickly, so if you want to be more effective, you can do it for several IG accounts at the same time.
But it's not like making 5 identical IG accounts. If so, it's no different than spamming customers. You can follow the structure as follows. Here, I assume you are selling dog products so you can do the following:
- Main account: Is your brand account. Set the correct Brand name and Avatar so that customers can easily recognize your brand. For example: Dog & Medio, Medio Dog,... This account does not need many posts, just post quality posts, introduce products,...
- Secondary accounts: Consider these as your satellite accounts to pull potential subjects to your main account. Can be divided into sub-Accs for dog breeds: Husky Parents, Corgi Parents, Chihuahua Parents, etc. These accounts should post more posts, more regularly, have more followers, like a community page. Occasionally tag him on the main account, also asking how to get them to switch to the main account.
For example: Upload a photo of a husky grinning with white teeth, add a caption: Parents who want their children to have white teeth, go to Cho & Medio to buy a toothbrush, I see they are having a promotion where if you buy a toothbrush you get a fake tooth for free,...
Doing this will not take you too much time every day, but it requires perseverance because doing it for a few days may not be effective immediately.
Remember to set the Hashtag appropriately. Take the time to research the hashtag carefully. In the next few days, when I have free time, I will write a more specific article about this part if people request it a lot.
At first, the effectiveness is not high, but after a while, your follower count will skyrocket. For example, there is a post in a certain hashtag that reaches the top and is shared by a certain Kols.
As promised, I have a more specific article on how to build Instagram for free. Please read the article: “5 steps to build effective Instagram sales for free“
- Automation
Automation helps you reduce the effort in building your IG account. Very effective if you want to build multiple Instagram accounts.
If you don't have much budget or want to build your own, then following what I instruct on this Blog is completely possible to build. But please be patient and try your best to learn more. I believe the effect from IG will be worth it.
Everything I write is mostly based on my personal research and application, so it will only be suitable for retail and shops or small businesses. For big brands, that's not something I usually do and is beyond my understanding.
