Benefits of Video in Your Instagram Marketing Strategy

Featured article by Bradley Henris, Head of  Marketing Management at the InstaGrowing company – Bradley Henris

Instagram is one of the most business-friendly social networking platforms out there today. Although it started as a simple photo-sharing app, the platform is no longer restricted to image sharing. Over the years, the site’s updates have ensured that it is now conducive for all kinds of visual sharing. As on any social media platform, having a solid engagement rate is key to building a brand presence on Instagram. Many invest in paid services and buy Instagram views, likes, and shares for this very reason. But you can get a high engagement rate organically, too, by posting great attention-grabbing visual content. Thus, if you are looking for ways to enhance your marketing strategy on Instagram, it is a great idea to include videos in your Instagram activities.

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However, simply putting up videos may not help if you are unclear about your video marketing strategy.

What is Instagram Video Marketing Strategy?

It is a video marketing strategy customized for Instagram to drive maximum results beneficial to your business. There are over a billion active users on the platform. Your sales strategy must keep in mind that you only have a fleeting chance at grabbing this huge market’s attention. Most users scroll up their Instagram feed with the flick of a thumb on their cell phones. Your content needs to stand out and make the average user pause, view it, save it, like or comment, and share it. If what you are posting is a shoppable post, your content should be convincing enough to make the viewer want to make a direct purchase from you through the post.

In other words, how you conceptualize and present your video to meet the end goals of engagement, sales, and reach on Instagram is your Instagram video marketing strategy. It involves:

– Planning with micro-goals in mind.
– Researching, using trials, observations, and analytics to determine the best way to create and present your content.
– Resource allocation and budget analysis to ensure your overall business marketing strategy are not adversely affected.
– Publicizing the content for best results.
– Reviewing and Upgrading your Video marketing techniques in keeping with the need of the hour.

What Content Works Best for Instagram Video Marketing?

As with photo posts, content is key to your brand building when you upload videos for the best results.

Depending on whether you are a B2B or a B2C business, you can decide what to concentrate on for your videos. Typically, the following are good ideas for generating loyal followers and sales besides establishing brand authenticity:

1. “How-to” and tutorials

Most influencers and content creators find excellent audience traction on videos that give the audience the knowledge of a skill set. It can be something as simple as a step-by-step instruction to doing makeup or organizing a kitchen cabinet. Or it can be a complex guide on building a gadget. These videos can be made in segments, series, or parts, so you can use the same content to spread over a set of videos depending on your audience’s attention span and the nature of the project the “how-to” is based on.

2. Product videos

These, as the name suggests, focus on your services or products. Product videos can include:

– Introduction to the product;
– Uses of the product;
– Components and back story of the product;
– Unboxing videos;
– Reviews and feedback.

3. Announcements

Are you hosting a contest or a giveaway? Is your store moving to a different address? Maybe you will have a new service in your store soon. Whether your announcement is time-sensitive or a teaser to a more significant event, creating a video post about it is sure to bring more attention to the subject at hand than a regular image poster.

4. Content that humanizes your brand

Ultimately, content that gives the audience a sense of reliance, connectivity, and authenticity about your brand will also bring the best engagement rates for your IG content and sales/conversion generation for your business. Include videos about:

– The governing principles behind your company;
– The story of the company’s coming into existence;
– Employees and customers;
– Reviews and evaluations;
– Anything that builds your brand with a human touch.

5. Live content

Live videos work great in building credibility and trust as they eliminate the scope of video editing. For best engagement and audience reach, incorporate real-time broadcast of:

– Product demos,
– Question-answer sessions,
– Participation in fairs or conclaves,
– Result announcements for contests.

Now that you understand what Instagram video marketing is and have an idea of what to focus on for your video content creation let us look at what types of videos you can incorporate into your marketing plans.

Video Formats You Can Use for Instagram Video Marketing

There are several types of video posts you can create to enhance your digital marketing on Instagram:

In-Feed Instagram Videos

These are the videos that will appear in your regular feed, like your photo posts. If your profile is public, anyone can engage with these videos regardless of whether they follow your account or not. You can make these videos to be up to a minute in length. Infeed videos can be put up as

– Single video post.
– Carousel post (which means you can make them a part of up to 10 uploads on the same post).

As with any regular posts, you can enhance an in-feed video with:

– A keyword enriched caption that sets the context for the video.
– Up to 30 relevant hashtags.
– Relevant tags and mentions.
– Geo-location.
– Thumbnail of your choice.
– Subtitles and music.
– Stickers and animations.
– Shoppable tags.

Instagram Stories

These appear in the story feed and are visible to your active followers for 24 hours from the time of posting. Although you can only upload a clip of 15 seconds in length, there is no limit to the number of clip segments you post, making the length of video posting quite flexible and adaptable to your needs. You can enhance your Story videos with:

– A keyword enriched caption.
– Up to 10 relevant hashtags.
– Interactive Polls and surveys.
– Stickers and animation.
– Subtitles and music.
– Swipeable URL links.

If you wish your Story to stay visible for longer than 24 hours, you have the option of pinning them into your Highlights. Anyone who visits your profile will be able to check these videos out as long as they are marked as Highlights.

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Instagram Video Ads

As the name suggests, these are promotional posts. Instagram lets you promote posts and Stories of your choice for a price. All you need to do is choose the publication you want to push and then specify your target goal, budget, and duration for keeping the promotion active. As Instagram gives paid posts a visibility boost on its user feeds, you will likely get more clicks and conversions on these than you usually do on your posts. Investing in these videos periodically is a great way to boost your engagement and sales conversion rate, especially if your content has shoppable tags.

IGTV

This is Instagram’s long-form immersive video content posting option. Instagram also has its app for IGTV to allow users to have a seamless video channel experience while watching content from their favorite IG users. With IGTV videos, you can create videos longer than an hour. Since the only pre-recorded videos can be uploaded here, you can also edit and enhance your video to suit your needs before posting them up. You can create a web series out of your video content and categorize the videos into different series. IGTV is increasingly growing popular among IG users. Recently Instagram also rolled out an experiment in monetizing IGTV content for creators, making it a source of income generation for businesses who can utilize this video format to their advantage.

Reels

If you want to create super short, fun videos to coo, etc., Reels are the type of video you should create for your target audience. You can add graphics, music, text to the video, thus making it a convenient visual palate for getting your essential information across any way you please.

IG Live

As the name suggests, you can live broadcast content on your Instagram profile. When you go live, the notification appears as part of your story. As only your followers can currently attend a live video broadcast, it is an excellent idea to collaborate with others in your niche to broaden your visibility and reach among your target audience. Live videos are a great way of building trust and humanizing your brand.

Benefits Instagram Video Marketing Bring to Your Business

Depending on your goals for your Instagram profile, you can use videos advantageously to bring you several benefits. Some of the most crucial ones include:

Ability to Diversify Your Marketing

A photo may be worth a thousand words, but a video can create impact and generate interest in more powerful and versatile ways. With all the in-built enhancements like adding music, captions, and subtitles, you will be amazed at how your marketing scope broadens with the use of videos. Videos can help you establish goodwill, brand credibility as well as customer relations. Experiment with the different formats of Instagram videos to make your business approachable, relatable, and authentic at the same time. Give your brand its persona using videos and explore all possible uses you can make of posting videos. Videos on Instagram can help you achieve your micro-goals in the shortest time possible. So, using videos is a definite plus for your marketing strategy.

Create Long-term Visual Impact and Social Proof

With rare exceptions, videos stay in immediate consciousness for longer than a still image. Think of all the movie scenes or television advertisements. You can remember scene by location, and you will realize you probably do not remember half as many still images you have seen in the past with such clarity. The same can be said for Instagram content. Most users catch only a fleeting glimpse of bee content on their feed as they scroll by with a flick of a thumb to find something interesting. If you want to have a lasting impression on your audience, using videos will increase your chances of doing so much higher.

Moreover, videos have a substantial influencing power because of their ability to be retained in memory for a longer duration. If you wish to increase sales and conversions, use videos to build your social proof. Suppose you can get collaboration from industry experts and popular influencers in creating and publicizing your videos, all the better.

Increase Real-time Engagement and Reach

You only need to keep an eye on your insights and analytics to validate this. On Instagram, you do not just create videos, and you can amplify your engagement rate on these videos by using several methods. For instance, Instagram allows you to:

– Live broadcast.
– Conduct polls and surveys.
– Add shoppable tags.
– Add swipeable URLs.
– Use hashtags, mentions, and referrals.

All of these real-time interactive layers added to the videos attract organic engagement and bring genuine follower growth. Well-presented videos are a great way to boost your reach and engagement ratios. To ensure that you get the right target audience, be extra vigilant about your content and your collaboration partners. Publishing the right video in the proper format at the right time can do wonders for your reach and impression rate.

Conclusion

To promote your business on Instagram successfully, you must keep yourself updated on trending post formats and Instagram user behavior patterns. Using video in your Instagram marketing strategy is part of being in sync with the famous marketing practices of the times. From using clickable links to shoppable tags, videos allow for many ways of direct sales and conversions. In addition, you may even be able to monetize your video content across formats depending on the rules and policies of the country you are residing in. Creating videos may take more time and effort than creating photo posts. However, when it comes to checking engagement turnover and real-time conversions, videos win over still posts hands down and are definitely worth the investments you make in them.