The Rise of Lifestyle Brands & Culturally Constructed Identities

Social media has become an incredible marketing tool. It allows you to build brand awareness, influence prospects, and drive returns at every opportunity. It is now a crucial place to build relationships with new customers and develop them with existing ones. It is also a field that is constantly growing at a rapid rate. One in three people were active on social networks last year and it has now become impossible to deny that social media offers an incredible opportunity to find, connect, and engage with your target audience.

Why Is Instagram Good for Marketing?

Incorporating Instagram into your marketing approach should be a no-brainer for your company. After all, if one billion people use Instagram every month, with 500 million using Instagram Stories each day, it doesn’t make sense not to. With engagement numbers as high as these, it’s vital that you learn how to create an Instagram marketing strategy to connect with as many engaged users as possible in 2020.

Your Instagram marketing strategy for 2020 could be the difference between your business having a good year or a great year. If you want to grow your business, creating high quality and engaging content on Instagram is more important than ever before. With more competition in the world of social media, audiences are very aware of things they like and, more importantly, what they don’t like seeing in their feeds. Remember, they won’t hesitate to quickly remove any content that doesn’t appeal to them.

This means that in order to create high-quality Instagram content, you’ll need a strategy in place for planning, shooting, editing, and posting all your content. Consistency will be key. You need to be able to regularly produce and post content that your audience is going to engage with. Once Instagram’s algorithm picks up that you’re creating content that connects closely with your audience, it will then put you and your future posts in front of new audiences, creating a greater chance of reaching a wider range of people who may be interested in your products.

Instagram Marketing in 2020

Instagram will be one of the biggest social media marketing trends in 2020. With an almost identical split between male and female users, the app sees around 63% of people log onto it at least once a day. It’s expected that these users will spend an average of 28 minutes a day on the platform with 200 million people using it to visit at least one business profile on a daily basis. This is a huge market for you to tap into.

As a predominantly visuals-first platform, Instagram is the perfect social media platform for brands that focus on aesthetics, such as food companies that want to show off their tasty creations and fashion brands hoping to get their styles trending. There are several key reasons that Instagram suits these companies well, namely:

• They can create beautiful online catalogues on their feed that present their products in a desirable way
• The app’s two-way engagement allows them to reach out to and communicate directly with their customers
• Hashtags allow for easy targeting of those who align with the brand’s messaging
• Product tagging encourages purchases
• Influencers prefer Instagram, and the right one in collaboration with your business can lead to a powerful brand ambassador

All this sounds like a great opportunity, but it probably leads you to ask one very important question: how can I grow my Instagram in 2020? Here are 5 tips for Instagram in 2020 you need to know.

1: Establish a Consistent Theme

The first critical step to running a successful Instagram account is planning your content. Defining the look and feel of your profile will need to be taken care of before you can even start posting. There are a number of different traits you will have to consider, such as:

• What are the colours you will be using?
• What filters will you be applying?
• What is the type of content you’ll be posting?
• How can you make the visuals reflect your brand?
• Will you be having pictures and videos with people, or do you prefer to just showcase your products?
• Will animation be incorporated?

Fashion brands like Lacoste and Fjällräven are great examples of different fashion styles being instantly accessible because they’ve clearly defined the feel of their Instagram content. In the case of Lacoste, they stick to a very regular colour palette, usually on a white background and heavily reference their relationship to tennis. All of these are defining traits associated with the company, so the Instagram reinforces these in a visual manner. For Fjällräven, their clothing is all about being worn outdoors and getting closer to nature. Therefore all their images are taken in rugged landscapes and involve people being active in a wild environment; they are either hiking, climbing or camping and fully encapsulate the type of person that Fjällräven are trying to target.

2: Plan Your Content Effectively

Once you understand what you want your Instagram profile to look like visually, you’re set to start planning the actual content itself. Before considering different types of content, think about what you want to achieve with your Instagram marketing in 2020. Are looking to increase more sales? Is the goal greater overall engagement with the brand from users? Do you just want to increase your followers?

These goals are crucial because they inform the content you publish on Instagram. This should focus on the day-to-day planning of posts as well as the overall yearly content. It should be a mix of images, videos, Stories, photography and anything else you can think of. This variety of content, whilst still adhering to the content theme you’ve instilled, will keep your Instagram interesting and vibrant as well as avoiding being repetitive, which usually leads to a decrease in engagement from your followers. Madewell is a great example to take Instagram inspiration from. Their content is tailored to the different seasons, both in regards to the clothing itself and the variety of colours they use in their shots. This attention to detail helps them stay relevant throughout the year and target people with the appropriate products at the right time of the year.

If you’re a company that feels like it might need support with this, bringing in a fashion eCommerce agency like Appnova will go a long way in helping you achieve your goals.

3: Leverage the Right Hashtags

Hashtags are a very important part of Instagram because the right hashtags, combined with the right number, can help you quickly reach a wider audience and attract more followers. When first starting out, you will need to experiment with the different numbers of hashtags you include in your posts and track how they affect your results. Pretty soon you’ll be able to find the right number of hashtags that work best for your brand.

Research your hashtags before you use them and try to go beyond which are the popular ones at the time. If there is simply too much content associated with your hashtags, it’s easy for them to get lost in the sheer amount of other posts latching on. Like everything else on Instagram, your hashtag usage should be a mix, utilising different types like popular, niche, and location hashtags. Doing this well will get more eyes on your posts in no time at all.

4: Collaborate with Relevant Influencers

There’s a reason so many companies incorporate collaborations into their marketing strategies: they work. Adding influencer marketing into your overall Instagram strategy will help raise brand awareness, add to your follower base, and ultimately, drive more sales.

Influencers are viewed as a trusted source of information to their followers, and when they recommend a product or service on their Instagram page, it has a greater level of authenticity and credibility than if it was just coming from the company itself. As well as this, it comes with the distinct advantage of offering direct access to a target market.

When an influencer has a close connection with a specific market, for example, vegan food, workout supplements, or make-up, they are seen as an authority on that topic to their followers. This instils their recommendation with an added level of trust that just can’t be found with a random celebrity who is arguably more famous. By partnering with relevant influencers who have an engaging and authentic voice, your business is well placed to target people who are already interested in your sector.

5: Use High-Quality Elements

(Obviously) Due to Instagram’s focus on looks, everything you put out there should be very high quality and visually appealing. This includes everything from the lighting of a shot and the type of camera you use, to the editing done in post. If your content isn’t to a very high standard, people will just scroll by your posts and find competitors with more appealing content.

Presenting your products in a premium light will not only make them seem more appealing, but it will also make your brand’s Instagram page more attractive. As such, it’s definitely worth spending that little bit extra, both in regards to time and money, to ensure that everything is as high production as possible. Think of it this way, would you prefer to buy from a company with fuzzy or poorly lit pictures, or one with high-quality imagery that shines a light on all their products’ best features? It may seem obvious and self-explanatory, but on Instagram, the smallest blemish can have the biggest impact.

Time for a Recap

It doesn’t matter what products your business is looking to sell, having an Instagram marketing strategy for 2020 should be something you are focusing on. With the recent Facebook rebranding involving WhatsApp and Instagram, it’s never been a better time to start fully optimising your social media channels, and connecting them together has never been easier.

To recap, getting the most out of your Instagram page next year will start by following these 5 tips that we’ve explained in this guide:

• Establish a consistent theme
• Plan your content effectively
• Leverage the right hashtags
• Collaborate with relevant influencers
• Use high-quality elements

By doing this thoroughly and effectively, you’ll be able to engage with a much larger audience who may already be interested in what you have to offer. All you have to do is reach out to them.