Sententious E-Commerce Branding Strategies You Can Learn From Instagram

Digital marketing goes a long way, particularly for businesses like eCommerce. From customer service to email marketing, it covers a wide range of tools, tactics, and mechanisms of product promotion and it’s not easy to choose the best one.

However, there is one channel that stands out from the crowd with the sheer power of versatility and influence on modern customers. We are talking about Instagram, a social network that currently has more than a billion active users and keeps growing year after year.

This platform is not only perfect for product-focused businesses but it also makes a great example of how digital marketing should be done in general. There are so many things to learn from Instagram marketers, so we decided to present 10 e commerce branding strategies that can often be seen on this social media channel. Let’s take a look!

1. You Have to Be Active

The first lesson of Instagram marketing is simple—you cannot afford not to be there. Online retailers have to be active 365 days a year in order to attract followers and keep pace with their competitors. This goes for Instagram, but other channels of digital marketing are by no means an exception.

Why is it so important to be present and active online? To put things into perspective, just take a look at this stat: users publish more than 100 million photos on Instagram every day. The situation is similar to all other platforms, so for building product awareness you must be highly engaged in order to find your place in the sun.

2. Optimize Your Account

Another lesson is that you cannot build a brand on Instagram with a poorly optimized account. If you don’t fill in the basic information, you are wasting the opportunity to get the audience acquainted with your eCommerce business. Instagram marketers must write a comprehensive bio with the following information:

• Write the official brand name.
• Create a description that briefly explains the nature of your company.
• Add a link which leads to your homepage or a landing page. 

These features are Instagram-specific, but all other networks of communication also require similar brand descriptions and it is very important part of internet branding strategies.

3. Planning Is Critical

This tip is common to all other spheres of life and business, but it is particularly important for Instagram marketing and eCommerce in general. Scheduling posts on Instagram is fundamental for new brand development because you need to take into account many different aspects.

For instance, it is necessary to consider the issue of frequency because you don’t want the audience to forget your brand among all other companies. At the same time, you don’t want to bother fans with dozens of images every day. 

Another thing you need to plan is when to post for building product awareness. Some audiences are active early in the morning, while others prefer evening Instagram sessions. In each case, your job is to figure it out because you want to maximize the visibility of each post.

4. Quality Is Irreplaceable

You can create and optimize an account on Instagram perfectly, but it won’t help you to evoke interest and curiosity if you are not publishing high-quality content. After all, who wants to see a poorly-looking image in the sea of amazing photos?

You can compare it to essay writing services: students who need a custom essay or assignment help can choose from hundreds of agencies, but they will never settle for anything less than the best content creation agency. The same goes for digital marketing, so keep this lesson in mind when trying to build an authoritative eCommerce brand.

5. Align Photos with Brand Style

Another important lesson coming from Instagram is to keep the content aligned with the overall style of your brand. Each image you publish is part of a bigger unit and it must fit perfectly into the context of your Instagram account.

Take a look at the Nike Tokyo campaign for a moment and you will see how they create images using the same motives, styles, and color schemes. Each post shows athletes in action and makes it easy for brand followers to identify with the general message of the campaign: Tokyo Olympics is getting closer and you better prepare for it!

6. Build Relationships with the Audience

Branding building is not an isolated process which has nothing to do with the audience. On the contrary, it is all about establishing relations with your followers, keeping in touch on a daily basis, and creating an army of loyal fans in the long run.

Jake Gardner, a marketing officer at Australian Writings, says there are many ways to nurture audience relationships: “You need to be engaged 365 days a year. The most productive tactic is to ask questions, answer users’ comments, and reply when they address you directly. Doing so, you will make them feel acknowledged and appreciated as individuals.”

7. Use Marketing Tools

Here comes a very important announcement for all of you online retailers out there—it is much easier to build a brand on Instagram when you use marketing automation tools. The Internet offers you thousands of incredible platforms for building brand identity that makes almost every segment of marketing simple, so we will mention only our favorite apps:

• Canva: Canva is a precious platform for marketers who need quality visual content quickly. 
• Grammarly: It’s a convenient editing and proofreading tool. 
• MailChimp: This one makes email campaigns simpler and more effective. 
• HubSpot: It’s an all-encompassing platform that takes care of all marketing-related issues.

8. Don’t Push It

Another very valuable lesson for building brand awareness strategy coming from Instagram is that you cannot afford to publish too many promotional posts. Users who follow you do it because they want to see quality content, so pushing it too hard and focusing on your products only can have a serious counter effect.

We recommend you to follow the Pareto principle: create 80% of informative and entertaining posts, but save 20% for product-focused announcements. This is more than enough to keep the audience interested in your posts while saving some time to promote the brand.

9. You Can’t Avoid Advertising

As much as it would be ideal to grow reach and engagement only organically, it is not possible. No matter how good or interesting your content might be, it will have a hard time getting noticed among millions of other posts.

This is why sponsored content is a regular thing on Instagram and all other marketing platforms, too. But you certainly don’t want to sponsor every post, so you better make sure to invest in critical posts and campaigns that are particularly important for your eCommerce business.

10. Follow Competitors

The last advice on our list is to follow your biggest competitors and see what they are doing on Instagram. It will give you valuable insights and perhaps even fresh content ideas that you could use later on in your campaigns. Of course, this tactic goes way beyond Instagram. Use it in all other areas of work because it’s essential to know what your rivals are doing and how they are doing it.

Conclusion

Instagram is a powerful marketing tool that perfectly suits eCommerce companies. You can find it all on this platform, which makes it ideal for learning important lessons about digital marketing in general. In this article, we discussed the top 10 brand building strategies eCommerce companies can learn from Instagram. Tell us what you think about it in comments and we can discuss this interesting topic even further!

Jacob Dillon is a writer at best essay writing service, where he helps businesses with show correspondence and marketing. He is also a content manager at write my essay and write texts for dissertation service. Find Jacob on Twitter and Facebook. I look forward to your reply and feedback. Sincerely, Jacob Dillon.