15 Clever Ways to Promote Your Business on Instagram

Over 2 billion people use Instagram, and engagement with brands on the platform is 10 times higher than on Facebook. This highlights the immense marketing potential Instagram offers. However, these statistics alone won’t guarantee success. To truly stand out, you need to create compelling content and follow a cohesive marketing strategy. Once you’ve got that in place, you’ll be well on your way to saying, “My business is thriving on Instagram.” To help you get there, check out these Instagram marketing tips you can implement right now to attract new followers and grow your business.

Instagram marketing Tips for Small Businesses

Try these Instagram marketing tips to boost your social media presence and accelerate business growth. With over a billion users, Instagram is a powerful platform for increasing brand visibility, engaging your audience, and driving sales. These proven strategies will help you build a loyal following and turn followers into customers.

1. Stick with a Unique Theme

Branding is what separates you from the sea of businesses in your industry. It’s not just about having an attractive image but also about making your brand easily recognizable. A strong, consistent brand identity builds trust and helps establish an emotional connection with your audience. Plus, a cohesive brand image looks more professional than posting random, non-cohesive content, which can confuse potential customers and diminish your credibility.

So, we recommend consistently using the same filter or color scheme across your feed. This creates a visually appealing, unified look that strengthens your brand’s presence on Instagram. Just like your logo, you want your Instagram feed to be instantly recognizable to your followers, even before they read a caption or see your logo.

Consistency in visual elements is key to reinforcing your brand’s personality and values, making your content more memorable. That’s one of the fundamental pillars of building a strong brand—ensuring that everything you post feels like it belongs to one cohesive story.

2. Use Instagram Live

nstagram Live is a great way to reach your audience with news and other urgent content. Live videos are limited to an hour, which gives you plenty of time to showcase your content. In fact, 82% of people prefer live video from a brand over social media posts and other types of content. Of course, don’t forget to tell your audience to turn on their notifications beforehand!

Not sure what to live stream? No problem! Try these examples: behind-the-scenes footage, contests, Q&As, “how-to” demonstrations, product presentations, event updates, etc. Invite a friend, an influencer, or another brand to get even more engagement. Also, you can save your live streams to your camera roll, allowing you to repurpose them for other social media channels.

3. Share Testimonials

User testimonials are much more credible than using your own words when promoting your business. People trust the opinions of other customers more than they trust a brand’s self-promotion. Got a great review or testimonial recently? Then, share it on Instagram!

Whether it’s from Google, Yelp, Facebook, or another platform, showcasing positive feedback helps build social proof and credibility. If it’s a video testimonial, that’s even better! Videos allow potential customers to see real people talking about their positive experiences, which can be much more persuasive than written reviews.

Let your followers know about the joy you bring to your clients. Share their words of praise, or highlight their success stories with your product or service. Don’t be shy about sharing these moments of satisfaction. User-generated content like testimonials can have a powerful impact on the purchasing decisions of those who aren’t sure whether to trust your brand.

Seeing real, heartfelt feedback can alleviate doubts and encourage new customers to take the leap. Plus, it shows that you value your clients’ opinions and are committed to delivering exceptional experiences.

4. Start a Hashtag Contest

Hashtag contests on Instagram can help drive new followers and user-generated content very quickly. They not only encourage engagement but also expand your reach as participants share content with their own networks. Here’s an example you can try: offer existing social media followers a prize for following your Instagram page and posting an image that fits a specific theme, along with a unique hashtag (which you provide).

Once the contest begins, your new followers will naturally encourage their friends to vote for their photos, further boosting engagement and visibility. The voting process adds a fun, interactive element that encourages users to get their friends involved. Then, at the end of the contest, use a third-party tool to view all the photos tagged with your contest hashtag.

This helps you keep track of entries and ensures transparency in the process. After collecting the votes, you can determine the winner based on who got the most votes or select the best entry according to your contest rules.

This type of contest not only helps you gain more followers but also generates a wealth of creative, authentic content that you can repurpose to showcase your brand’s community. It’s an effective way to increase awareness, build brand loyalty, and engage your audience in a fun and memorable way.

5. Run a Giveaway

While a hashtag contest may drive more prospects and engagement, it requires a larger budget and a little more effort to manage. If you’re not quite ready to start a contest, consider running an old-fashioned giveaway. Giveaways are a simpler way to boost engagement and grow your audience without the complexity of tracking votes or creating a contest gallery. There are many ways to run a giveaway, but here’s an easy example to get started.

Think of an event, celebration, or milestone that could provide the context for your giveaway—perhaps an anniversary, product launch, or holiday season. Then, ask your followers to tag a friend or two in the comments of your post. You can also make it more engaging by asking them to optionally share their favorite product of yours or why they love your brand. This invites more interaction and gives you insight into your audience’s preferences.

Once the giveaway has ended, simply choose a winner randomly (you can use a third-party tool for fairness), reach out to them via direct message (DM), and coordinate the prize delivery. That’s it! It’s a quick and easy way to reward your followers, spread the word about your brand, and encourage people to interact with your content. Plus, by asking participants to tag friends, you’re naturally expanding your reach and exposing your brand to a wider audience.

6. Use Branded Hashtags

You’re missing out if you don’t have a unique hashtag for your brand. Having a branded hashtag distinguishes your brand from competitors. Plus, it helps people search for your brand and see content from your brand on Instagram and Google.

It also encourages user-generated content, as followers can use the hashtag to share their experiences with your brand. Furthermore, a strong hashtag creates a sense of community and loyalty among your audience, making your brand memorable and engaging.

Branded hashtags amplify your marketing campaigns by tying all related posts together under one searchable tag. Additionally, they provide valuable insights into how your audience interacts with your brand, helping you tailor future content and strategies.

7. Offer a Behind-the-Scenes Look

People love to get a glimpse into how their favorite businesses are run. This includes you, too! Post behind-the-scenes photos on Instagram to showcase your staff, workplace, or office pet. It humanizes your brand and creates a personal bond with your followers.

So, another Instagram marketing tip is to take candid snapshots outside of the context of work and share them. A simple, candid photo with your team at work may complement pictures of your products beautifully. Show your followers you’re just like them – real people doing fun activities.

8. Celebrate Company Milestones

Every time you have something to celebrate, whether it’s a business anniversary, an employee anniversary, a product launch, or reaching a significant milestone, share the great news on Instagram!

People love it when their favorite brands celebrate achievements, as it builds a deeper connection and shows the human side of your business. Engaging your audience with these celebrations lets them feel like they’re part of the excitement and success. Share behind-the-scenes moments, heartfelt messages, or even throw a virtual event to make your followers feel included.

These celebrations can also be a perfect opportunity to run giveaways, offer special discounts, or create unique content that resonates with your audience and amplifies the joy.

9. Share User-Generated Content

Speaking of pleasing your followers, they also love when their favorite brand focuses on them. A great way to do that is by sharing content they’ve created on your own channel and tagging them. This applies to businesses such as clubs, coffee shops, clothing stores, tattoo parlors, etc.

By doing so, you develop your brand’s community and personalize your interactions with them. Also — bonus! — there’s a ton of user content to tap into. Of course, choose some of the more eye-catching and visually stimulating photos/videos you can find and you’ll possibly boost your reach as well. Just make sure to tag the original creator. Always give credit where credit is due!

10. Use Marketing Tools

To select only the best content for your Instagram, a content curation/analytics tool will help you do it faster and better. Marketing tools like Iconsquare, Later, or INK361 allow you to take your Instagram marketing to a new level.

More specifically, use these tools to track your progress, find great new content, schedule posts, track your followers, and determine which posts get the best engagement. This helps you find content similar to your best-performing content faster and more efficiently than searching manually.

11. Use Instagram Advertising

One of the constant struggles of building your Instagram account is gaining new followers and more engagement organically. But if you’ve exhausted all the strategies in the book and you’re running out of ideas, try Instagram advertising. While you’ll have to pay out of your pocket, you’ll reach a bigger, selected audience.

With Instagram ads, you can promote five ad formats: photos, videos, carousels, canvas Story ads, and Story ads. As a rule of thumb, promote content that, in your experience, has gained the most engagement organically.

Also, Instagram ads are integrated with Facebook Ads Manager, so you can use Facebook’s wealth of user information to target your audience with laser precision.

12. Follow and Engage with Influencers

Another good Instagram marketing tactic is to follow popular people (influencers) and engage with them. These individuals are talented at building a good follower base by posting great/useful content.

So, just as influencers have the potential to reach a wide audience, companies that are targeting that audience pay the influencer to promote their product on their account in a photo or video. Influencers typically get creative in your product placement – depending on the compensation.

Try using a tool such as Upfluence or Keyhole to find influencers for your business. These tools let you search for influencers by keywords, manage your influencer campaign, and track your success.

Of course, if you don’t want to pay influencers to promote your product, follow them and engage with their content. You may be able to get their attention or reach their audience in the process.

13. Make the Best out of the URL in Bio

Instagram bios are very short in nature, so you have limited space to describe and promote your business. Besides the short description, you can also add a link. But that link doesn’t always have to be your main website address. Instead of leaving it as a generic homepage link, you can strategically update it to direct followers to specific content or campaigns you’re promoting at the moment.

Whenever you promote new products, run special campaigns, or share fresh blog posts, updating your Instagram bio with a relevant link makes it easy for your followers to access exactly what you want them to see. This could be a landing page, a limited-time offer, or a special event you’re hosting.

By keeping the link in your bio updated, you ensure that your audience is always directed to your latest initiatives, maximizing engagement and increasing conversion opportunities. You can even use link-in-bio tools that allow you to add multiple links, giving you the flexibility to point followers to a range of important pages all at once.

14. Use a Selling Tool

If you want to sell something through Instagram, consider using tools like Like2Buy or Have2HaveIt. These tools generate a link in your bio that takes followers to your Like2Buy (or whichever app you use) gallery, where they can easily browse and shop for your products. This seamless shopping experience allows you to showcase your products in a curated space, making it convenient for customers to explore what you have to offer without leaving the platform.

Alternatively, try using Instagram’s product stickers in the stories feature. These stickers allow you to tag products directly within your stories, offering customers quick access to product information and making the shopping experience even more streamlined. When users tap on the sticker, they can view product details, pricing, and even make a purchase right from the story.

So, get creative with your stories; whether you’re showcasing new arrivals, exclusive deals, or behind-the-scenes content, engaging followers through these interactive features can drive traffic and increase conversions. Followers might flock to your offers, especially when you make shopping feel fun, easy, and personalized.

15. Include a Location in Your Posts

Don’t forget to capitalize on the Location feature when posting content on Instagram. Adding a location is especially important if you’re marketing locally. It helps visitors know they can find you if they’re close to your location.

Note that Instagram’s default setting for Location is “off,” but you can turn Location on whenever you post a photo. Choose whether or not to allow Instagram access to your location in your phone’s settings. Also, you can add a location manually when posting content.

Instagram’s popularity continues to grow, and if you don’t adapt to current trends, you could fall behind your competition. So, create an Instagram marketing plan, follow it, analyze what works, and adjust – that’s the key to tapping into Instagram’s incredible potential to engage and convert prospects to clients.

For Social Media Marketing with Exceptional Results, Contact Bright Pink Agency!

These Instagram marketing tips will help you build a solid foundation regarding your business growth on Instagram. Yet, you need a solid plan to make Instagram one of your biggest assets for your business. For that, we can help.

Bright Pink Agency is a franchise marketing agency working with franchisors and franchisees throughout North America. We help our clients clarify their message and tell their stories so that they can fulfill their purpose. Contact us for social media and content marketing services today!