When you think of Instagram, you may not necessarily think of it in the context of business and lead generation. However, Instagram is a great app for lead generation. Around 80% of its approximately 1 billion users follow at least one business on the app. How can you use Instagram to tap into lead generation?
There are a few great ways to tap into this gold mine of leads.
Social Media Leads vs General Leads
First, it’s worth asking: is there a difference between Social Media Leads and General Leads?
The key difference between general leads and leads gained from social media is where your business found them. That and the fact that leads from social media tend to be already more engaged and warm to what businesses have to offer.
This is great, particularly as around 80% of Facebook users claim to use Instagram to help them in their decision to buy. This also has a great deal to do with Influencer Marketing.
However Influencer Marketing is not the only way to gain warm leads on Instagram.
Here are a few of our top tips for Lead Generation on Instagram:
Optimise your Bio
Your bio is possibly one of the most important aspects of your profile. It is your introduction to your potential customer and your ‘elevator pitch’ at the same time.
A well written bio that has been optimised with the right keywords, hashtags and descriptions will help leads find your business on instagram. It should also be a tool to lead them to your website or call-to-action. This can be done so efficiently through the ‘Link in Bio’ tool.
It is important to even optimise your ‘Link in Bio’ to include your brand name. A great tip is to also ensure that this link leads users to an easy to use and effective landing page that is designed to convert your leads into customers.
Another great way to optimise your bio is to include call-to-action buttons in your Instagram bio. These can be anything from ‘Email us’ to ‘Visit our Website’.
Use Lead Generation Ads
Using Instagram ads is a fantastic way to get leads. This is done through the Meta Business Suite – so you will need an Instagram business account for this to work for you. Within the business suite you can adjust your ad settings to fit your target audience and what you want to gain – in this case leads.
In fact you can manage a lot of your advertising strategy on the Meta Business suite including:
- Choose your marketing objective
- Define your audience
- Select your placement (Facebook recommends Automatic Placements – which are a great option for when you have no experience with the platform – but we find manual placements tend to work better overall)
- Set your bid (optimize for leads or for link clicks)
- Choose an ad format
- Create your lead form
A great part of Instagram Ads is that you can target “lookalike audiences”. This is a useful tool because it helps you ensure that your ads are going to the right audience, not just random people.
The Swipe Up Feature is a Great Tool
This is particularly useful within Instagram stories. It allows you to include a call-to-action and embed links within your stories.
You do need a minimum of 10000 followers to be able to use this function. It is however a great function as it has proved to be more effective than Link-in-Bio links because it requires very little effort on the part of the user. In fact by uploading 3 swipe up stories per day, you’ll see a marked increase in both engagement and lead generation.
This being said, it is equally important to have a great landing page to go with these links as no one likes a time waster.
However this swipe up feature is fantastic because you can link it to your blog, product pages and more.
Conclusion
Instagram is a great platform for those who want to grow their lead base and these are just some of the ways you can do it. The wonderful thing about social leads is that often they are already warm to your business as often they follow similar businesses and similar interests.
If you enjoyed this article or found it helpful, check out more e-commerce marketing content on the inSyte blog or listen to the inSyte Podcast.
This article was brought to you by Syte.
We’re a specialist e-commerce and lead generation digital marketing agency dedicated to driving up your bottom line.
If you need any help running your business’ digital marketing strategy, feel free to reach out with the form below or check out our case studies page to see what we’ve been able to do for our clients.
