Wish to improve your Instagram marketing performance? Consider building an Instagram Marketing Funnel!
As the preferred social network for Millennials and Gen-Zs, Instagram is an increasingly important social media marketing channel. Shunning “older” social networks like Facebook and Twitter, youths and young adults have flocked to Instagram as their social network of choice.
But what can you do to improve your Instagram marketing results? Should you just be creating lots of Stories, or hop onto the latest Instagram Reels bandwagon?
In this article, you will learn how to sharpen your Instagram Marketing Strategy using the principles of
a digital marketing funnel.
Much of this was inspired by a recent podcast How to Develop Instagram Superfans hosted by the amazing Michael Stelzner of Social Media Examiner featuring Instagram expert Jade Beason.
Why You Need an Instagram Marketing Funnel
Contrary to popular belief, Instagram isn’t just about posting beautiful pictures of your food, or sharing endless selfie videos on IG stories.
With over one billion users, it offers bountiful opportunities for brands to reach out to a young audience.
Courtesy of 99 firms.com (source Statista)
To reach and impact your Instagram audiences, you need to have an Instagram Marketing Funnel — one that looks at how to grab the attention of your target audience, nurture them through their entire customer journey, builds their affection for your brand, and helps you to generate leads and sales.
We will examine how this can be done next.
The 4Cs of an Instagram Marketing Funnel
To build an Instagram funnel, you should ensure that your social media content strategy is relevant to your audiences at each stage of their relationship with your brand.
Adapting from Jade Beason’s 3 Cs framework, your content mix can follow the Four Cs:
- Capture (40 percent): The first stage of Instagram marketing, where you capture the attention of your audience
- Converse (30 percent): Here, your goal is to engage with your followers and nurture brand trust through educational and entertaining content
- Convert (20 percent): This is where you provide an incentive for your followers to give you their credit card numbers (or cash) in exchange for your products or services
- Care (10 percent): To continually sustain your relationship with your customers and followers, you should care for them.
Here’s a simple infographic depicting how your Instagram funnel should look like.
Let us now look at each of these stages in detail.
#1 Capture Attention (40% of Content)
How do you grab the attention of your potential customer in a never-ending stream of posts, stories and reels?
The trick here is to focus on Instagram content that will be shown to non-followers.
Here are some ideas to consider:
- Instagram Reels: Yes, I’ve been dabbling with this and love what Instagram is doing to boost your organic reach. Think of IG Reels like TikTok videos with less focus on #hashtag challenges and trending memes. You can use Reels to educate your audience, ride on a trending topic, or tell your brand story.
- Instagram Posts: Here, your goal should be to educate and inform your audience, albeit in an entertaining and light-hearted manner. Here’s an example taken from our Instagram account.
- Instagram Bio/Profile: Ensure that your Instagram bio is crafted in a way to attract the right audience. You should also curate your Instagram post grid so that it looks consistent — this helps you to grow your followers.
- Instagram Outreach: Yes, engaging on other people’s Instagram accounts still work in growing your followers. You can search for IG users who use certain #hashtags, or look for influencers who are in your niche. Like at least 5 to 6 of their IG posts, interact with them on their stories (with a reaction sticker), and comment on their posts.
#2 Converse with Followers (30% of Content)
Build and foster your relationship with your Instagram followers by communicating with them regularly. Here are some good ways to do so:
- Instagram Stories: Post regular IG stories — a day-in-your-life, behind-the-scenes of a new product launch, bite-sized tips and tricks, or an unboxing video!
- Instagram Story Highlights: Use these to build stickiness with your audience. These are permanent IG stories that you can push into different categories. You can also use them as placeholders for your product/service descriptions, as well as your brand story.
- Instagram Story Stickers: Deploy these on your IG stories to interact and engage with your audience. Do a poll. Ask a question. Put up a slider. Or answer their questions.
#3 Convert Prospects (20% of Content)
At this stage, you are reaching to followers who are a lot more likely to buy from you. They may have regularly viewed your story, interacted with on your stories, and maybe even commented regularly on your posts.
- Instagram Live: Yes, going live is probably one of the best ways to convert potential customers. You can do it like a webinar offering a couple of useful tips, and provide a link for them to download your materials (use that for lead capture). You can also sell your products and services and pitch them on live.
- Instagram Direct Messages: Encourage your prospects to send you a DM on Instagram, and use that as a way to build a direct messaging connection. You can also direct them to your website to purchase a product, or fill in an opt-in form.
- Instagram Story (with link sticker): Use your IG stories to promote a product and get your prospects to click on a link to your offer.
#4 Care and Share (10% of Content)
Finally, consider allocating some of your “content currency” on posts, stories, and reels that shine the spotlight on your customers.
- Instagram Story Highlights (Featured Customers): Re-share your customer’s IG stories (if they post about you), and save it as one your IG story highlights
- Direct Message Loyal Fans: Yes, this may not be scalable, but its a good way to foster deeper relationships with fans or customers on Instagram. You can ask them how their experience is like, use this to get direct feedback, and also ask for occasional favours to get the word out.
- Tag Deserving Customers: For customers who may need help getting the word out, you can tag them on your posts to help them to reach a broader audience. This can be done on either your IG posts, IG stories, or IG reels.
Integrate with Your Broader Marketing Funnel
For many of you, Instagram could just be one out of many other digital marketing channels. If that applies to you, do consider how you should integrate your Instagram marketing activities with the rest of your digital marketing mix.
From my experience, I find that social media channels like Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter work best in building brand awareness and brand resonance. With the right content topics, formats (eg posts, reels, stories, live), and types (eg carousels, videos, infographics, quotes, photos), you can help to reinforce your brand values through the entire funnel.
Do you use Instagram regularly as a marketing channel? Which Instagram Marketing Funnel strategies have you used thus far?
