With over 200million businesses on Instagram in 2022, sharing sleek photography is not enough to capture your audience’s attention on Instagram. On this social media platform, brands only succeed if they focus on creating and developing a compelling Instagram visual strategy. A visual strategy is a plan or a roadmap. It guides your business on how to capture, convince and convert the best customers available on Instagram. Thus, providing tangible benefits to your business through the use of Instagram. This blog explains how to create a successful Instagram visual strategy for your business.
instagram brand strategy and its advantages
First off, let us explain what an Instagram visual strategy is and why it is so important for your business. For anything to succeed, it requires planning and preparation. Similarly, when creating an Instagram visual strategy, a strategic approach is essential. It is important to meet the targets of your business, capture the correct target audience and achieve realistic business results. Essentially, an Instagram visual strategy is the use of clever and attractive visual content to communicate effectively with the target audience. Additionally, this visual strategy is based on the business’s targets and goals. Finally, having these clear objectives in mind, the most appropriate visual strategy can be selected to communicate the brand’s message and convert the audience.
To sum up, the main advantages that you can benefit from when planning and executing a visual strategy on Instagram:
- It unifies of your brand’s visual identity
- It communicates clearly your brand’s values and personality
- It distinguished your brand from competition
- It builds strong brand recognition and awareness
- It allows you to achieve a powerful market position
a successful instagram brand strategy
However, simply having a visual strategy in place does not mean that it will deliver the best results. For a visual strategy to be successful on Instagram, there has to be clear visual marketing principles. Visual marketing includes creatively creating eye-catching images, graphics and video content to communicate your main message to your audience. This will lead to effectively selling your products and services. Given that Instagram is a visual platform, this social media channel is perfect to harness the power of visual marketing. Here are some reasons as to why visual marketing is such an effective approach, especially on Instagram:
- Using visual content leads you to communicate your main messages to the right audience much faster
- Visual content is much easier for followers to absorb, recognise and remember
- Creating visual content (such as videos, graphics, GIFs, reels, etc.) has become much easier to do. Now more than ever due to the rise of visual content creation software (example: Canva, Adobe Photoshop, Animoto, etc.)
3 principles of building a successful instagram brand strategy
So what visual marketing principles does your business needs to consider when creating a successful and stand-out visual strategy for Instagram? There are mainly three practical parts, in order to embed the principles of visual marketing into your Instagram visual strategy.
Part 1: Focusing on social media richness
This means that the more rich and engaging that your visual content is, the more effective it is to communicate the brand’s message to your audience. Furthermore, it is more likely that the audience will remember and absorb the message and the information you have shared. For example, face-to-face communication is placed at the top of the “richness” scale. On the other hand, at the bottom, one can find text-based content (such as emails). Therefore, it is essential that when designing a compelling Instagram visual strategy, you keep social media richness in mind. This will enable you to post engaging posts that capture the attention of your ideal audience.
Tips: How to apply social media richness into your instagram visual strategy
- Showing the human-side of your business – this helps in building trust with your audience and creating a more personal connection. This can be done by posting visual content that is more focused on the people in your business. This includes investing in professional photography to take hi-res photography of your team’s work. Furthermore, have behind-the-scenes Instagram stories of the team. Finally, create reels that explain to your audience what you do and how you can solve their problems.
- Adding a visual call-to-action to your Instagram posts – this is most effective when designing graphic overlays that encourage engagement. Such graphic overlays can motivate your audience to like, share or save your content. This will boost engagement and build a meaningful relationship with your audience. Moreover, you can also make use of interactive Instagram story stickers that allows 2-way communication with the audience. Such stickers allow customers to give feedback, engage in polls, ask questions, or even answer a fun quiz. Therefore, having a visual call-to-action can bring your visual content to life and allow higher engagement with your audience.
- Creating visuals and text that tell a story – involves finding a way to tell an aligned story between your captions and visuals. Thus, communicating a single message. Combining text and visuals will enable you to produce rich social media content that effectively communicates the main messages.
Part 2: Building brand equity
Brand equity is how your customers think and react to your brand. Such thoughts will impact the way customers make purchasing decisions from your company. Therefore, the more positive brand equity, the higher the purchase intent. On the contrary, negative brand equity will lead to less sales. When it comes to Instagram, building a positive brand equity depends on how well your visual identity portrays brand awareness. Additionally, it depends on how smooth the design of visual content connects with what your audience actually needs. Note that it only takes 0.05 seconds for an online follower to form an opinion about your brand. Therefore, first impressions should only generate positive brand equity on Instagram.
Tips: How to build a postive brand equity in your instagram visual strategy
- Have a clear reason for each visual content piece – this includes having clear KPIs for your Instagram content. Identifying KPIs also enables you to select the most appropriate content format for each post.
- Create a cohesive visual identity – consistent Instagram visual content leads to higher are the chances for users to recognise and remember your brand. This involves using consistent branding colours, fonts and photography that is aligned to the brand’s desired visual identity.
- Designing graphic templates to have a consistent look and feel – this involves creating easy-to-use templates and frameworks. The whole team could use them for each visual content posted on the brand’s Instagram account.
Part 3: Boosting purchase intent
Purchase intent includes how likely someone is to buy a product/service from your brand. The good news is that today, more than 80% of customers are utilising social media to engage with brands. Furthermore, social media platforms (such as Instagram) have a huge impact on purchase intent. This presents a huge opportunity for your business to capture potential customers through effective Instagram content. Shaping the purchase intent of followers involves designing Instagram content that can build trust. It also involves leveraging social proof and streamlining the path to the purchasing decision.
tips: how to boost purchase intent with your instagram visual strategy
- Designing a visual content strategy focusing on trust and value – one of the pillars of brand trust is providing education. Some of the most effective visual content on Instagram that communicates knowledge include video tutorials, tutorials via IGTV, infographics, etc.
- Finding the optimal time to share visual content – the best customer experience depends on reaching the right target audience at the right time with the right content. Therefore, it is essential to understand your follower’s behaviours on Instagram. Also, to learn when they are the most active on this social media channel.
- Building user generated content – UGC is a powerful tool that can boost the purchase intent of followers on social media. In the case of Instagram, this includes designing tailored hashtags, as well as encouraging re-shares. This will allow your customers to advocate for your brand in their own words.
Did you find our blog on creating a powerful Instagram visual strategy useful? Read our other blogs on the best Instagram hashtags to use as well as the Top 5 brands that are killing it on Instagram.
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