Why every local business should be on Instagram

In this 5-minute read:

• What makes Instagram more effective than other social media for small businesses
• Why your small business should be on Instagram
• Instagram is huge with the youth market
• Instagram ads help you target specific local markets
• Tips for using Instagram to market your small business

Social media is a key part, and some would say the main part, of most small business marketing strategies today. Winning customer engagement on interactive social media platforms has become a highly effective small business marketing tool. Here’s why your small business should develop a solid Instagram presence.  

Easily manage your relationships with your customers at every stage of their journey with small business CRM software. Learn more, plus get free reputation monitoring and customer insights when you sign up for Womply Free!

Not on Instagram yet? Follow our simple guide to set up your business Instagram account.

Facebook is huge, but Instagram is better for local businesses

Facebook has long been viewed as the “big dog”  in social media for business use. However, Instagram actually puts up significantly higher engagement and conversion figures. 

According to online marketing expert Neil Patel, only 32% on Facebook users regularly engage with brands. This is still significant, and you probably should consider building up your Facebook following for your business as well. 

More Instagrammers engage with businesses

But if you had to choose one social media platform to focus on, it should be Instagram. Why? Because an amazing 68% of Instagram users regularly engage with brands via the platform. That’s more than double Facebook’s figures. (Even though Facebook owns Instagram.) 

Instagram Stories in particular boasts astoundingly good engagement numbers, with 400 million daily users, and 20% of Instagram stories shared by a brand receiving a direct reply from a current or potential customer.

Need more proof? 80% of Instagram users follow at least one business. You’re probably going, “So? Everyone does that.” Exactly. Following a business on social media was not even on the radar 20 years ago, but today, businesses (and their Instagram personas) have become celebrities or “friends” in the view of many consumers.

The value of this kind of engagement and exposure to direct consumer input can’t be overestimated.

Instagrammers take action more often

If the above isn’t reason enough to convince you to dedicate some time (and possibly some money) to building your Instagram business presence, consider that 75% of Instagram users “take action” (such as visiting your website after viewing your Instagram post or Story). 

If you told an old-school TV advertising executive that an ad induced 75% of viewers who saw the ad to take action, he or she would go absolutely nuts and commit every dime to that campaign.

The upshot of all of these figures is a 2.2% “interaction rate” for Instagram. That may not sound impressive if you don’t know what “interaction rate” means. For context, Facebook has a 0.22% rate. That means that Instagram is NINE HUNDRED PERCENT more effective than Facebook in eliciting action from your current and potential customers.

If your business does business with the youth market (or wants to) Instagram is the bomb dot com

Instagram is currently the hot social media platform for teens, largely because the “Instagram Story” feature mimics Snapchat (which has fallen to number 2 on the list). Nearly three-fourths of American teens use Instagram and the number continues to grow.

Instagram Stories makes your business feel more fun, personal, and “real”

Instagram’s Stories feature is another reason you should get familiar with Instagram for your small business. The main point of social media is engagement with your potential customers, and Stories boasts even better numbers than the core Instagram platform.

While your main Instagram page may be “professional-looking,” Stories is a way to make your business’s “personality” more fun, casual, and “real.” 

Stories can help customers and potential customers begin to consider your company you as a friend rather than just a business that sells goods and services they like.

Stories is a great way to try out new ideas, test an coupon, etc. If you get good engagment, you can consider making your ideas a more permanent feature via your regular instagram posts and/or your website.

Go deeper: 

• read our full article on how to use Instagram Stories to market your business
• Here’s a great post about using Instagram Stories Highlights feature. 

Instagram advertising can help you reach your local market

Targeted Instagram ads can help you reach the full potential of the platform for marketing your local business. 

As noted above, Instagram is owned by Facebook, whose demographic segmentation and targeting are the envy of the industry. 

When you advertise on Instagram, you benefit from all the Facebook know-how, and you can elect to have your marketing messaging show up on both Facebook and Instagram, for a true small business marketing double-whammy. 

Read more about how to use ads in Instagram Stories to reach more customers.

Get to know your customers better with small business CRM software

Instagram can help you engage with more potential customers and reach your local market. To get to know more about your customers, how they spend, and what they respond to most, consider a good small business CRM platform like Womply. 

Womply designed and built the first and only “pre-populated” CRM in the world, that comes already loaded with your customers names, contact information, transaction data, and much more. If you know how to target your best customers, you can build loyalty, repeat business, and revenue. Learn more, plus get free reputation monitoring and customer insights when you sign up for Womply Free!