Instagram has been the fastest growing social media platform over the last several years, and now has hundreds of millions of daily users, making it an important place for all businesses to consider doing their marketing.
Until recently, it may have seemed like a platform that wasn't necessarily ideal for generating leads, but that has definitely changed. Instagram now has several viable ways that businesses can use the platform to generate leads quickly and affordably.
Let's cover seven of them.
Instagram Lead Generation Ads
First, Instagram lead generation ads are an obvious choice. If you're comfortable running paid advertising, Instagram has an ad objective that is specifically designed for generating leads from the platform.
The format is simple. The ads are easy to create, and can be very effective. Particularly if you're targeting a younger demographic, or creating content in the most popular content categories on Instagram, such as fashion, food, and travel.
Contests
Number two is to run a contest. Contests are very popular on Instagram. And they're a great way to generate a lot of attention, and a lot of leads, very quickly. You don't have to give away anything too valuable, or too extravagant. Just make sure that it's closely matched to the interest of your audience.
Conversation Ads
Instagram now has a cool ad objective feature that is designed to get someone to message you on Instagram, starting a conversation directly in your messaging inbox. What a powerful way to create a more personal experience than just collecting an email address!
Inside of that conversation, you can then give them an opportunity to provide you contact information to keep in touch, creating a very personal experience that's highly effective.
Link in Bio
Adding a link in your bio that directs people to an offer page has been the most common way of generating leads from Instagram from the start. In your Instagram profile you have the opportunity to place just one link, making it a very important link. Use this link to connect to an offer page where you capture their contact information, and can keep in touch.
Instagram Stories
Instagram stories have been growing in popularity at an absolutely astonishing rate. They've actually become the most popular part of Instagram in terms of the time spent consuming the content. One of the best things about stories is that you can add a link to them, making them a simple way to give you more options to generate leads from your content than just the one link in the bio.
Story Highlights
Related to using Instagram stories is using story highlights. When you create an Instagram story you can choose to save that story as a highlight on your profile, giving it a permanent placement, or at least a semi-permanent placement on your account. These highlights - just as their name suggest - are more prominently displayed on your account, making them more likely to be viewed. That makes them a good place to put stories that link off to specific offers.
Tag an Instagram Account In Your Story
This is a great lead generation and prospecting approach for those of you selling high value products or services where a conversation with the prospect is necessary.
When you create Instagram stories, you can tag other accounts. When you tag another account, it creates a message inside of that account's messenger inbox on Instagram, making the content that you created very high profile for the person that you tag.
Since messages on Instagram get a very high response, it's very likely that you'll generate a response from them, creating a conversation in your private messaging inbox and giving you the opportunity to get them additional information and follow up with that person outside of Instagram.
Your Turn!
That's seven great ways to generate leads from your Instagram account. If you had thought that Instagram was only a place for posting pretty pictures - think again! It is absolutely evolved into a much more sophisticated platform, and a great channel to market to your audience and generate leads.
Take a few of these strategies and give them a try and let me know how it goes!
Author: Rudy Labordus
Rudy Labordus is an Internationally acclaimed author, marketing strategist and speaker. He has been instrumental in helping launch and develop several multi million dollar businesses around Australia and excels in developing innovative, strategic and creative solutions that produce exceptional results for his clients.
