Did you know that when it comes to influencer marketing, Instagram is the best performing channel for social action across all social platforms? Poised to become a key strategy in promoting your products and brand on Instagram. Its ease of implementation, low-cost, and effectiveness in boosting your brand’s awareness and follower base also helps drive increased sales growth for your business. 

Here’s how Instagram Influencer Marketing Works

Since its 2010 launch, Instagram has grown to over 1.12 billion users, with over 500 million people using the platform every single day. Due to it’s highly engaged user base, Instagram is considered a premier platform for brands to partner with influencers and reach new audiences fast. Instagram influencer marketing removes the barriers of traditional digital ads simply by introducing customers to your brand from a trusted source (the influencer) in an authentic way, leveraging a casual platform (Instagram).

Instagram influencer marketing comes in all shapes and sizes, just like influencers themselves. For the most part, influencer marketing is when a brand contractually partners with a social media influencer (pedler) to assist in extending social reach to a segment of Instagrammers. This could be in the form of a sponsored Instagram post, a sponsored blog post paired with social media posts to promote the blog post, or a larger, long-term Instagram marketing campaign. If you are on a tight budget, never fear, there are many influencers that will trade product for promotion. It truly is about finding the right fit for both your brand and the influencer. 

You don’t have to have a huge budget to leverage the power of Instagram influencer marketing. Look for influencers that fit your target market and have the right audience demographics for your brand, and then send them an email or direct message. If you have a great product, a friendly attitude, and the right influencer, you’re sure to find something that works for both of you. Not sure how Instagram influencer marketing can help you? 

Here’s 5-ways you can use Instagram influencers to grow your business, followers, and sales:

1. Increase Brand Awareness with Instagram Influencer Marketing

Whether you’re a new or existing business, building brand awareness is a top priority. However, building brand awareness through influencer marketing on Instagram is a great way to introduce your brand much faster, and to a wider audience. Think about it:  if you partner with just 3 influencers who have an engaged audience of your target market, your reach exponentially increases in just 3 Instagram posts.

Many retail brands invest in working on sponsored content with Instagram influencers that sometimes have hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers. Depending on the influencer and the size of their followers (typically <100,000 ), you can trade free products for services or simply ask that if they love it, to include your handle in an Instagram post. Often, if you have a product that people truly love, you’ll get more than one post out of your Instagram collaboration, increasing your brand awareness even more. So think about your Melrose inventory, what would move an influencer to lend you their followers?

2. Drive Sales with Instagram Influencer Marketing 

A very successful example which shows the power of Instagram influencer marketing is for Daniel Wellington. They’re a watch company that exploded on Instagram by leveraging influencer marketing to create a unique, modern brand identity – while reaching millions of customers.

Daniel Wellington is said to reject traditional advertising, choosing to focus on Instagram influencer marketing campaigns to increase brand awareness and a ton of sales. Instead of just trying to increase their brand awareness, Daniel Wellington used influencers to directly drive sales of their watches. They gave each influencer a free watch and a unique promotional code that gave their followers a 10-20% discount on their purchases.

The code was only valid for a limited time, which created a sense of urgency from their followers to act fast and buy now. By giving influencers a personalized discount code, they were more excited to post about Daniel Wellington and encourage their followers to buy a watch, because they felt like they were providing value to their followers instead of just posting an ad. Plus, they got a unique watch.

3. Build Excitement using Instagram Influencer Marketing 

Say you have new products arriving in your store or you’re opening after COVID-19, collaborating with Instagram influencers is a great way to get people excited about your event! By giving influencers early access to your product/store, you’re able to both position your products/store uniquely while marketing it before it’s even available or open!

Before the event, simply select pieces and send them to Instagram influencers. By utilizing Instagram, influencers can post about your products or store opening before it’s even available. You can spread the word, build excitement, and have a more successful launch or reopening because you’ll have customers waiting for it!

For example, to promote your store opening, you can take advantage of Instagram influencer marketing to create buzz. Let your customers, as well as the influencer’s audience, know that there’s something new in store by offering the new Spring or available Christmas line. You can reach a whole new audience by partnering with multiple influencers in different markets! By utilizing influencer’s posts to feature your products and/or store, captivating Instagram captions help highlight the influencers’ excitement about your products.

4. Encourage Use of Your Branded Hashtag through Instagram Influencer Marketing

While they work great, you don’t have to have a new product or discount code in order to leverage Instagram influencer marketing. If you’ve created a branded Instagram hashtag that you want to get more people to post with, turning to Instagram influencers to promote it is an easy way to increase adoption and use. Working with multiple Instagram influencers with large followings, you’ll have more options when it comes to reposting user-generated content on your Instagram profile. Take a moment to review the Melrose blog post on “Instagram – The Value of Hashtags” for more helpful hashtag information.

5. Promote an Instagram Marketing Campaign

If you’re creating an Instagram marketing campaign for your brand, collaborating with multiple Instagram influencers is a surefire way to pump up the volume on your campaign’s reach. You can even add the power and reach of video by capturing promotional clips featuring popular Instagram influencers. You could even use Instagram Live to broadcast as a kick-off to your targeted social media marketing campaign, and cross promote on your Facebook account. 

The sky and your imagination are the limit, there are a ton of ways that you can leverage Instagram influencer marketing to help grow your business. Whether you’re gifting product or paying for sponsored posts, brands both big and small continue to harness the power of Instagram influencers to get their products in front of new audiences and use Instagram marketing to make more sales. Why not you?

To learn even more about the power of Instagram for your business, check out “Instagram for Business Help Center” for strategies that work.