A Guide to Leverage Instagram Stories To Attract New Customers

Instagram is one of the famous social media which is growing rapidly. As for 2021, Instagram has more than 500 million active users on a global level.

Also, the platform ranked at 6th most popular social media by the users.

Well in a world where people constantly reject the ads, the Instagram story is a helpful tool that is helping sellers to get the new customer without irritating them.

Instagram launched stories in August 2016, and it becomes one of the most used features on the platform.

Instagram stories help increase reach, boost engagement, and many different things.

As for the sellers, it’s a powerful tool to get more customers. If you are looking for a way to get that too, here is how to do it.

Why Use Instagram Stories For Your Brand?

No doubt Instagram is helpful for making your brand more visible to your audience. 

But if you are still considering using this feature to promote your business, here are a few reasons that can help in deciding :

It Easier To Promote Products

Instagram stories are helpful if you are launching new products, features or promoting recent updates. 

You can share with your audience what you are doing and post the sneak peaks.

Image source: Quora

The best part of using Instagram stories is that you don’t have to be professional about it.  It can be fun, interesting, and original. 

Drive Traffics To The Website 

You can add the links and share them in your stories. This is also good for repurposing the content from your website. 

Invite people to read and update with what you are planning to post. 

You can engage the audience by asking their preferences and what they would like to read. 

Image source: previewapp

Redirect the new customers to your website, so they can understand more about your brand and connect with it. 

Get The Feedbacks 

Without feedback, it’s hard to keep the customers in your long run. 

For the customers, they don’t like when they feel  they are not important or nobody is here to listen to them.

Instagram stories can help in eliminating the feeling. 

Image source: Later

 You can put stories about your recent products, activities, and promotions. Ask your customer to share their opinions. 

You can do the poll, add stickers or sliders to make it more fun and interactive. 

Getting More Leads 

In the end, you are looking for customers so you can get more sales. This is why you can use the stories to nurture the leads. 

With this, you can convert the visitors to your potential leads. 

However, for that, you are going to need powerful content and a solid reason why they should share their information with you. 

What Are The Different Types Of Instagram Stories That You Can Use?

There are different types that you can consider for Instagram stories.

 Not just it can help you in reaching new customers but with these different types of Instagram stories, you can make the content more engaging and interesting to hold their attention.

 Here are some types of Instagram stories for you to know. 

  Make How to And Tutorial Stories

This type of Instagram story is about  making step by step tutorial content for your brand. 

There are different brands that use this for sharing the recipe and making beauty tutorials.

You can make how-to tutorials by telling your customers how to use different features and for highlighting the purpose.

Image source: SmartInsights

 Also, you can make an Instagram story if you are launching a new product or feature. 

Make stories about encouraging the features and share it on Instagram. By this, you will get the user content that you can share on your stories as well.

 Share Behind The Scene

 One of the best things about using Instagram stories is you don’t need big or polished productions.

 Instagram stories allow you to make your content the way you want. 

You can use this behind the scenes of how you make the product or how your brand works.

Image source: Sproutsocial 

 This makes your new customers feel like they are also so part of the whole process. 

User-Generated Content or UGC

 You can share the content of your followers on Instagram and put it on your Instagram stories. 

This type of story is also helpful to use shout out from your followers on Instagram without wasting it.

Special Announcement And Time-Sensitive Offers

 Instagram stories can  be helpful for promos, offers and promotions. 

To get the attention of your customers you can use stories to highlight sales or deals. 

Image source: Later

If there is any kind of announcement that you want your new customers to see, you can post it on your stories. 

To make sure that they notice you can add this story to your highlights.

Ways To Take Leverage of Instagram Stories To Find More Customers

The stories feature has its benefits that are helping individuals or sellers to grow their presence on Instagram.

For a small business, it’s helpful to build their brand and establish. 

It boosts brand awareness, conversions and gets more engagement.

Most of the brands are using Instagram stories to build their customer base. Here are some listed ways that can help you too.

Use The Story Highlight Feature

One of the drawbacks of posting stories on Instagram is, it will be removed after 24 hours. 

But Instagram solved that problem too by offering a story highlight feature.

You can use the story highlight to make it accessible at any time. You just have to ‘ add to highlight’ when posting or you can do it later too. 

Image source: Later

It will be saved as highlights and shown on the main page of your account.

With the help of Instagram, you can curate multiple stories, and it will help the audience to watch your stories at their convenience.

You can make the content evergreen.

By highlighting your stories to your Instagram, you can save the content that you want your new customers to see.

You can save different highlights dividing them into small categories. For example, you can create a highlight which contains behind the scenes of your shop.

Or you can use it for highlighting the events or interviews to your Instagram stories.

Do Exciting Announcements

Instagram stories are one of the efficient tools which can help in getting more attention to your content.

You can use this for announcing your new products, staff members, or even do general updates.

Add More Videos To Stories

The craze for video format content increased on such a level that Instagram had to introduce IGTV, which is another powerful tool for the business.

Coming back to Instagram stories, you can post video content as you can record it or do live.

Image source: Leadquizzes

Since Instagram has millions of active users on a daily basis, it gets a huge amount of content uploaded too.

In this scenario, it’s easy for your content to be lost, however, using Live videos can help you to stand out.

This helps you in getting more visibility and Instagram promotes real-time content on their platform.

You can connect with new customers and get more reach.

However, you can choose pre-recorded videos for showcasing the qualities of your product.

You can also make your videos about the manufacturing process and final look which gives an interesting perspective to new buyers.

Add More Effective Hashtags

One of the ways that can help you in getting new customers is hashtags.

By using this, your content gets more visible to others and it targets a wider audience.

Hashtags are also recommended for various reasons such as:

• You can tag a location to your Instagram story and it will help the new customers to find you much easier.
• You can tag yourself in stories, this helps in getting more users and makes them simple to find your profile.
• Lots of sellers use hashtags for tagging influencers and others, this helps in targeting a wider audience. However, make sure you are tagging the relevant people.

Customization in hashtags is also there, it helps in connecting you to the larger community on Instagram.

Image source: sproutsocial 

Also, it helps in getting the views and reach that your Instagram stories deserve. But using hashtags can be tricky for lots of people.

Share More About You To New Customers

Targeting new customers is a hassle especially when it comes to building trust. However, you can use Instagram stories to build a connection.

When a new customer decides to purchase something, the first thing they want to know is the seller. It’s important for understanding if you have credibility and can they invest or not.

Image source: Oberlo

Using Instagram stories, you can share about yourself as a seller as well as individuals. 

You can share the idea behind the products, what inspired you, and the journey.

You can invite the new customers as a member of your family. This will help in creating a friendly and trustworthy environment for them.

Take Leverage By Adding Influencers

There is no doubt that influencer marketing is one of the powerful ways to promote the brand.

Image source: Mediakix

However, it also brings the opportunity to target a new audience, and if you play your cards well, you can get the new buyers without much hassle.

There are basic ways that you can choose :

• Either ask the influencer to share the video or photos of your product as their content and share it.
• Or you can share their photos or videos of using the products and tagging them in your Instagram stories.

Get The Content Of Users

User-generated content is also a great way to get more people. This means you can use the content of the audience by using permission and giving credit on your Instagram stories.

Image source: Later

Either this can be free and on goodwill or you can choose to give the incentives for this.

By both ways, you are getting the chance to connect with more people. Also, it saves your time as well as effort to create the content.

Show What Makes Your Brand Different

When new customers look for the brands to shop, they look for reasons and what extra or different they are going to get.

The comparisons help them to pick the best deal that checks all the requirement boxes.

As a brand, you can use Instagram stories to showcase what and why they should pick you.

Image source: business2community 

The more engaging your stories are, the better response you will get, Use Instagram stories to tell what makes your products as well as brands fun. 

Highlight things that your customers are looking for.

Interact With Your New Audience

Image source: Later

Instagram stories have different interaction features that help you in connecting with the new audience.

You can use :

• Hashtags
• Polls
• Gifs
• Tags
• Stickers

And this will help your Instagram stories be more engaging. However, you will require a little bit of freshness and creativity.

How to Get More Customers on Instagram

We all are very familiar with Instagram, and we know how popular it is, especially among youth and also the elderly age group of 18-35.

Instagram has a user of over 1 billion, and it is the 3rd most used social media platform coming after Facebook and YouTube.On Instagram, we generally post our photos and share very short videos. 

Why is Instagram the best place for more customers?

• Instagram is known for its great audience base, and it has an audience of all age groups.

• With the help of Instagram, you reach customers from any corner of the world. 

• Instagram has several features that are easy to use.

• All the big brands are on Instagram. 

As it has such huge popularity among the masses, it has become a place to do market for many reputed companies and start-ups. With the help of Instagram, companies can reach their set of target populations for promoting and selling their product.

Effective Ways to find customers on Instagram

Post gripping images

Instagram is mostly used as a visual platform. So, the very first thing that you should do is to post high-quality images on your page.

While posting the image of your product, you should be very aware of what you are posting. The image should be creative and should highlight the product that you are promoting. It should be compelling to the eyes of your viewers.

For Example Calvin Klein an American fashion brand posts very cool and eye-catching images on Instagram. No wonder why they have 20.8 million followers on Instagram.

Making collaboration with influencers

This is the most common strategy used by companies to promote their product. Most people on Instagram follow influencers, both non-celebrity and celebrity influencers.

If a company wants to promote its product, then other than posting about it on its official page, it can directly collab with top influencers.

By collaborating with top influencers, they can reach a larger population with their product and get easy followers for themselves.

For Example: clear. haircare has only 24.2k followers on Instagram, but they endorsed Cristiano Ronaldo who has 230M followers on Instagram.

As a result, when ‘Clear’ promotes its product on its Instagram page then only 24.2k followers watch it. But when Cristiano Ronaldo posts about Clear on his Instagram page then 230M followers of his view it. This way ‘Clear’ gains popularity among people.

Maintaining consistency in posting

To help you track your performance on Instagram you have to post maintaining consistency. Through research done by Tailwind, it has been found that with more and more posts you will get more likes.

To engage traffic at your channel you need to post at least twice a day. If you are new to business then you will need to post more so that more people get aware of your brand and help you to gain new customers.

For Example: Starbucks remains very active on Instagram. They almost post every day sometimes twice or thrice a day. 

Having a great content strategy

One of the most common strategies to do marketing on social media platforms is to have excellent content. The very first impression of the customer about your company will be through your content.

 If you have proper content that gives an insight into your product, your company’s working culture, the daily life of your employees, the history of your company, etc. then you are good to go.

For example: If you see posts of Microsoft on Instagram, you will notice that they post very informative and interesting images and videos.

They post about there work, sometimes they post on current issues, they share their employee’s life and a lot more.

Using Hashtags

Using proper hashtags on your posts will attract more customers and will increase your sales. Your hashtags will help your targeted customers to find you. 

Appropriate hashtags help you to spread awareness of your brand. Sometimes it helps to spread the main message of your product.

For Example: 1st Phorm, an American Vitamins and Supplement company uses #iam1stPhorm and #legionofBoom for promotion. The influencers that they have endorsed use #1stPhorm while promoting 1st Phorm.

Provide offers like discounts and giveaways

Giving away offers like discounts and giveaways always attract customers. It is also a very effective method to increase your sales and promote your products and also increase traffic on your channel.

You will see often on Instagram that many companies give away offers especially during special occasions.

If you have loyal customers who help to promote your product through buying, sharing liking your product then you can reward such customers with VIP discounts and give them VIP memberships to them.

Such strategies not only attract your customers but also develops a good relationship between you and your customers. 

Proper use of Instagram Stories

You can optimize the use of Instagram stories to promote your product. In the past year, ads on Instagram have risen significantly thus providing how effective it is to companies for promotion activities.

You can add pictures and videos of your product in your stories and tag people with high followers.

You can also promote your product through your endorsed influencer by making them post your product on their Instagram stories.

With Instagram introducing full-screen, vertical story ads recently you can post more about products and give ads of more interesting ads. 

Don’t always Promote

You should always know your limitations. Sometimes, overdoing something spoils the whole thing.

Don’t just promote your product all the time. It may sometimes irritate your followers and they may unfollow you.

You should have proper knowledge about the taste and preferences of your targeted population and post according to it.

Other than promoting if you post non-business staffs then it may gain attention and help you in gaining a few more followers.

The best way to know the taste and preferences of your customer is by looking at the comment section and the likes that your posts are getting.

If you know what your customer wants then you will get a certain idea about what to post and how much promotion do you need.

For Example: If you see posts of Nike, who have around 117M followers on Instagram, you will see a variety in their posts. Other than promoting themselves, they share various kinds of non-business staffs. 

 Frequently Asked Questions ( FAQs)

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