How to Get Started with Instagram Video Marketing

If you are wondering what kind of content to post on Instagram, the answer is — video.

Yes, video marketing is on the rise. After YouTube, Instagram is the second-largest social channel with higher video engagement.

According to a report, people spend 80% of their time watching videos on Instagram. Do you see how big the interest is getting? And that is why Instagram is prioritizing video features and video content more.

Through video content, you connect with your audience on a personal level. Video content can also generate more followers which could make you an Instagram star if your video went viral.

Is that not something you want?

So, let’s dive deeper into Instagram video marketing and learn how to do it better.

Choose a goal:

The first question you need to ask is what your Instagram marketing goals are?

Is it:

● Getting engagement?
● Driving traffic to the website?
● Generating sales?
● Building an online presence?

Once you are clear on the goal, plan out the actionable strategies that will help you reach it.

Conduct research:

Conduct thorough research and understand your target audience. Create a virtual profile of what your target audience would look like. For this, focus on factors like their gender, geographical location, age, interests, and income. When you have created this virtual profile, research other people in your niche and the strategies they are using.  Their wins, losses, and strategies will come in handy when you promote your own Instagram brand page.

Tag products with shoppable videos:

If you are a small business or an eCommerce store on Instagram trying to boost your sales, use shoppable videos. With the shoppable feature, you can tag your products in the posts. By doing this, a shoppable icon appears on your posts. When your audience taps this, they can see the tags, click them and visit the product landing page where they can buy the product.

This is a great way to drive traffic to your website and increase sales. To encourage your audience to buy from you, create videos that educate them about your product. Once they are aware of the benefits and applications of the product, they will be much more interested.

Create a variety of videos:

With Instagram, you have plenty of video formats to use:

1. In-feed posts

These video posts are visible on your feed and can capture your audience’s attention for up to 60 seconds. Use this format to create bite-sized videos to hook your audience and introduce them to your product. For best results, use a video cutter to make videos that are 30-seconds or shorter.

2. Stories

Use Instagram stories, to take your audience behind the scenes and share little snippets from your day-to-day life. Post at least 3 stories every day to stay connected with your audience. You can play with stories tremendously. Here are a few content ideas for stories that you can try:

● Ask questions about your products or find out what your customers want from you
● Use polls to gather feedback from your audience.
● Post screenshots of customer testimonials.

3. IGTV

Use IGTV to publish long-form videos to educate your audience. One of the benefits of IGTV is that you can share links.

Let’s say you are a home-grown stationery brand that has launched its planner. You can use IGTV to show what your planner looks like from the inside, what kind of illustrations you have used inside the planner, and the different categories inside the planner. You can then place a link in the description that sends the person directly to the landing pages. This is something you can’t do with regular feed videos.

Make sure you use UTM tracking to measure the traffic that’s coming from your IGTV videos. Also, use UTM tracking links for stories, link in bio, and ads as you can compare CTRs to see which method is driving the highest return.

4. Reels

With reels, you can create 15 to 30 seconds short videos. These videos are great to add a quirky and funny touch. If your reels get viral, your page gets a good amount of traction. Here are some ideas that you can use for creating reels:

● Introducing yourself to your audience
● Introducing your team members
● Sharing quick tips and tutorials
● Sharing before & after pictures of your product

Creating all these different videos can be a lot of work as you need to create unique videos for each format. So, make sure you use a good video maker to simplify the process and create videos of the right sizes.

Accompany videos with captions

Your captions are the first element in the video that your audience pays attention to. Most of the time, your audience would skip watching a video but a meaningful caption can insist them in watching the video. Captions spark curiosity, give details, and convey your message to your audience.

To write a power-packed caption, you need to write a hook statement or phrase. This hook phrase or statement could be a question, a statistic, or a story. When you start your caption by writing the hook, your audience stays till the end of the video.

Pay attention to insights:

If you are creating content one after the other and not tracking your performance, you are doing things wrong. Use the Instagram insights section to track the performance of your content.

By using the insights, you get to know about your content engagement, the best time to post based on the previous content performance, and days on which your content performs better.

When you have analyzed this data, you can create the right kind of content that your audience wants and stay on track.

Conclusion:

If you want to level up your game on Instagram, it is important you start creating video content. Let’s recap some of the things we learned.

● Focus on creating education and value-based content that educates your audience
● Use the insights section to track your content performance and create the content based on the data
● Make maximum use of all the video features like reels & IGTV videos

Now go make some quality Instagram videos!