Instagram Targets Young Adults for Commercial Sales
Abstract
In recent years, social media marketing has gained considerable popularity and has become a powerful resource for businesses, entrepreneurs and advertisers to reach out to their target audiences and build long-term consumer relationships with enhanced engagement. Advertisers have turned their attention to Instagram, the influential social photography network. One strategy for reaching customers has been advertisements that may imitate posts made by one’s mates. These native advertisements use the conventions of Instagram, and may at first glance be unrecognized as sponsored messages when browsing Instagram. Understanding consumer behavior is useful for entrepreneurs and marketers in developing more efficient ways of reaching the right audience to achieve their marketing goals by making effective use of the platform. This study also will provide data of how fashion brands use the media of Instagram and how they promote it.
Introduction
Instagram has an incredible 400 million monthly active users and was launched in October 2010. Instagram is now one of the fastest growing outlets ever launched and one of the largest social media outlets for active monthly users. If youth market engagement is an integral part of your marketing strategy, marketers and brand managers, need to understand Instagram’s position, and how to incorporate this channel effectively into your social media marketing strategy. Instagram allows the instant and ‘in-the-moment’ editing and uploading of images, allowing amateur photographers professionals. The built-in picture filters turn simple images into beautiful photos and can effortlessly render some of the most mundane moments. Instagram, market distribution Instagram has revolutionized the way brands and consumers interact: from a monologue to creating active conversations and engagement allows brands and consumers to connect on a more intimate level; by humanizing the communication and by satisfying the functional and emotional needs of the consumers.
Thick Description
In a digital world, buying and selling goods online has become the most common, successful, and rapidly growing strategy on the internet. Instagram gives businesses unbelievable opportunities to target their chosen audience and is one of the fastest-growing platforms for commercial sales and Advertising (Belanche, Cenjor & Perez-Ruenda, 2019). It effortlessly narrows down the types of advertisements that will target each individual based on how long we look at specific pictures, what we are liking, or what profiles we interact with the most. Instagram has never been more significant than it is now, and between the public and private discourse, our data is being collected and used as a marketing tool.
Re-utilization of promotional materials; by use of Instagram images, the e-commerce marketing program has helped the employees in working smart rather than hard work (Virtanen, Bjork & Sjostrom, 2017). It is, therefore, necessary for the management to ensure that they are in touch with the Instagram photos to exploit them in business strategy and thus increase the potential in wise utilization of resources. It helps to curb the issue of producing more material available in the business process.
Production
Instagram was developed in San Francisco by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger and focuses on posting, image editing, group messaging, live videos, shoppable tags in stories, IGTV, hyperlinks, and many more. “As of January 2020, 35% of global Instagram audiences were aged between 25 and 34 years, in total, over two-thirds of Instagram audiences were aged 34 years and younger. This makes the platform particularly attractive to marketers.” (Clement, 2020). Teenagers are the most active users on Instagram while checking the application on their digital device at least once an hour. Using this data, marketers can brand themselves accordingly to the specific age groups. Some of the most successful ecommerce brands include ASOS, Fashion nova, Forever21, Herschel Supply & Co, and many more. ASOS is user generated and targets the average American to be brand ambassadors rather than celebrities. While this strategy has its advantages and disadvantages, ASOS plays off the trust users have with their peers, rather than a celebrity they do not personally know. Ultimately, word of mouth travels fast, and these companies heavily rely on that. Narges argues on the influence of electronic word of mouth of Instagram users. He emphasizes on a consumer socialization framework and how much influence the media has on consumers. “The advantage of eWOM is that it attracts many customers with the least cost and high effectiveness ((Sheu & Chu, 2017) (Delafrooz, 2019)). Companies heavily rely on peer communications and influence from eWOM rather than spending money on well-known people to promote their products. Herschel Supply & Co uses the travel appeal to influence their customers. They post pictures of people in beautiful places hiking and using their backpacks and luggage as a necessity. These companies are extremely successful because they tend to show real people, doing real things, in real places, and looking good and happy wherever they are. How they relate to you is their biggest concern, and using the data we all put into the universe is how they successfully figure it out. The book titled, ‘Marketing and Smart Technologies’ by Alvero Rocha, expands on the problems of free apps and the advertising that comes with it. “When businesses come up with an algorithm that works, other businesses try to copy that because it is successful.” Rocha talks about individual agency and why humans do, the things they do, and how we can see why certain algorithms work and why others do not. (Rocha, 2019.) Not every company is successful in the ways they are attempting to attract consumers. One of the patterns you will find on Instagram are these companies with millions of followers but not many likes or customers. This could mean one of two things: they buy their followers, which is very common but not a value-add strategy, or they are focusing on the growth and not the engagement. Many businesses believe the more followers they have, the more customers they have. Having more followers is simply a superficial statistic if the company cannot convert those followers into customers. To convert followers to customers successfully, it takes communication with them to understand why they follow your page and what they want out of it. Posting pictures, making Instagram stories with polls, and following up with interactions on these posts is key.
Most companies know that posting content with no direction only drives their followers away. One of the many strategies these companies use is posting content that overall aligns with their marketing strategy and brand image. Using Instagram analytics, they can see when their posts have gotten the most engagement and why those posts were more successful. Instagram advertisements use the advertisement program from Facebook, which possesses potentially the most effective tracking capability. You may determine the venue, backgrounds, preferences, habits, and more of your target audience. Besides, people who purchased from you or communicated with you and someone like them may be targeted. (Lua, 2017). Mostly, our privacy is being substituted by the need to generate product sales. Instagram is ever-changing and has become more and more of a marketing machine. Our public and private spaces have conjoined into one confusing sphere.
The article by Marius Geru explains how artificial intelligence is used on Instagram for marketing strategies in ecommerce. “Everything you like, tag, or even scroll your mouse over and for how long is being tracked so that Instagram knows what you like and want to see.” (Geru, Micu, Capatina, & Micu, 2018). Which leaves the question, what is acceptable and what is not when it comes to the surveillance of Instagram and how we are being watched based on communication Ethics? With over 1 billion people using Instagram a month, “52% are female, and 48% are male. Two hundred million Instagram users visit at least one business profile a day. Users will spend an average of 28 minutes per day on the platform.” (Newberry, 2019). Instagram makes it easy to post where you are or what you are doing at any given the time of day. This app is being used all over the globe to update people about your life while also offering the open opportunity for influencers and businesses to sell their products online with just a click of a button (swipe up to buy). Our smartphones are the most common device people use for Instagram because you can easily take a picture of where you are at any given time and share that on your page.
Distribution
This platform has made it extremely accessible to buy and sell products directly from your phone or other electronic devices from anywhere in the world. Although smartphones are the most commonly used electronic device, you can also access Instagram from a kindle, desktop computer, IPad, laptop, and even an apple watch. Instagram is one of the few social platforms that highlight products and branded content, making it easy to drive sales on-site. With how popular Instagram is around the world, the disposal of the app or ecommerce through Instagram would have a significant impact on society. This would take away a mainstream avenue for these companies to promote their products. They would then have to pursue more costly ways to attract consumers, such as independent websites, catalogues, bulk mail, or other social media platforms, which reach fewer people and have a less detailed demographic. However, ecommerce has become a problem by taking over Instagram and bombarding users with advertisements they did not sign up to see. Companies often find brand ambassadors who will wear their clothing, or use their product, for discounts or free products in return. Very few companies pay Instagram influencers, but offer free products for them to post about instead.
Instagram Attract traffic by community building; the images associated with the Instagram posts are very engaging. It ensures better interaction than other people using different social media channels. It became clear that Instagram was more effective in maintaining people’s involvement compared to Pinterest, Reddit, and Twitter. Instagram’s content meant that the company was involved in business operations across social media that culminated in the customer becoming more likely to use the service (Hosseini 7 Akbari, 2019). In cases where an individual consumer buys goods from the company, they are more involved in the services being offered and, therefore, in the organization’s majors. This means the company is growing the brand identity and a better outcome.
Retailers use this platform to target young adults by displaying their products on beautiful, active, famous people, etc. This makes it more appealing to the customer if they see someone they admire or trust using a product or service. A study by Instagram found that “60 percent of Instagram users say that they learn about products and services through Instagram, and 75 percent say that they take actions such as visiting sites, searching, or telling a friend after seeing an Instagram post.” (Lau, 2017). To interact with their intended audience, they have to base their products and posts off their followers and what they want.
Instagram allows you to retarget the ideal customer. Although social media advertising needs some upfront investment, social ads can do a lot to complement the organic campaigns you run on your social media platforms. Social networking sites help you reach your ideal customers with sophisticated targeting capabilities, which allow you to drive traffic that is more significant to your site. That is the perfect way to make the most of your marketing budget. By identifying your ideal customer through the Ads platform, you will find new potential leads. It allows you to deliver your ad content to those that display the same behavioral trends as your target audience. You will boost results when you push traffic that is more important to your brand site, no matter what your ad goals might be.
Interaction
The plethora of opportunities Instagram has to offer gives consumers a broad spectrum of channels to provide their goods and services (Rathod, 2018). Having surveillance behind consumers, every move makes it possible to accurately market products and services tailored to meet customers’ demands. The distribution, consumption, and interaction are continuing to work together for each company to achieve their goals in sales, keeping their old customers, and gaining new customers.
Customer link across various channels; the use of the Instagram app has played a significant role in ensuring customer communication across multiple channels and thereby ensuring successful business operations (Munoz & Towner, 2017). For example, in determining while one is visiting the organization site, he or she can easily link the manufacturing process being conducted and therefore attempt to purchase products and services from the company. If the consumer sees Instagram pictures relating to the business process, they will go ahead to reconnect and support the process and thus be very helpful in connection with the goods being supplied. Instagram has generally been applied to the advertisement by ensuring that the products can be presented promptly quickly and thus providing a competitive edge.
The young audience at Instagram loves new, innovative and useful material. When your target demographic is between 18 and 49 years old, Instagram may be a perfect way to meet your future clients and engage your current clients (Khan, 2018). Show what makes you special, Instagram is more likely to resonate with teenagers and young adults if you can share a viewpoint that only you can give. Blend in to stand out, Instagram users enjoy rich visual content and sometimes share the content of that high quality on their own. You have to produce identical quality images and clips to engage them. Inspire the moment, in the survey, teens and young adults define Instagram as 42 percent new, 37 percent innovative and 32 percent useful. Therefore, they would expect this content from Instagram brands.
The frequency to post is not as critical as the quality to post. Posting more frequently is perfect if your audience wants to see several posts from you every day, and if you have the ability to regularly generate high-quality content. Otherwise, it is more important to keep posting regularly. If your followers are not used to seeing many posts from you every day, you may be irritating them and causing them to stop following you. If you do not have a team working on your Instagram page, putting out high-quality content consistently several times a day is probably difficult. When you run out of ideas about content and avoid regularly posting, you risk losing followers that Union Metrics discovered in their research.
It is essential that each channel have approaches that are special to it. Young adults tend to be drawn to Instagram since it has visual, clean and clutter-free. Knowing why the new platform relates to your demographics will help you create material that is relevant to your message, but relates to your target. The advertisement platform on Instagram enables much better targeting and provides more choices. Instagram does not have a universal best time to post. For you to shape hypotheses of your best posting time, this research is perfect. For example, as suggested by Lifewire, “At lunchtime is when people get a break to do what they want; this often involves checking social media.” What you should do is test posts at lunchtime and during lunchtime.
Businesses cannot ignore Instagram Stories. One way to overcome the decrease in interaction rate is to follow the trend in Instagram user behavior: to share Instagram stories. Klear, a content marketing site, analyzed 149 top brands in eight sectors to see how Instagram Stories were being used. They find that at least once a week, 45% of brands in their study use Instagram Stories. Some of Instagram Stories’ most popular brands include the McDonald’s, IBM, and Forever 21 (Lucas, 2017). The most prominent use of Instagram Stories in the fashion industry was the sharing of merchandise promotions. I think it is fair to say that companies are going to share more of what works for them and the most common use of Instagram stories is probably the best use of Instagram stories for that industry as well.
Using both hashtags and location tag drives the most engagement. Hashtags are a feature on Instagram, unlike other social media sites such as Facebook. When analyzing the top 100 global brands’ Instagram accounts in 2014, Clearly Calculated found that at least one hashtag constitutes 88 per cent of their messages. Of that, there is a valid explanation. The use of hashtags and location tags lets people find out about your Instagram posts. Simply Measured found in the same study that posts with at least one hashtag produced an average 13 percent higher commitment while posts with a location tag earned an average 29 percent higher engagement. It was verified in their 2015 study where they found that the highest average commitment was earned for posts with hashtags and a location tag. If you want to increase your scope and communication with Instagram, using hashtags and location tags where possible. After analyzing more than 65,000 posts on social media, TrackMaven found that nine hashtags tend to be the optimal number to get the highest interaction. However, you want to be careful not to overuse hashtags. According to Icon square, overuse of hashtags that result in a shadow ban on your posts where your posts do not appear under the hashtags they have used. It will popular the posts’ discoverability and scope, and in effect lower the level of interaction.
Boosting User Generated Content (UGC) marketing, this is very critical in ensuring the successful growth of related organizational sales and traffic. Instagram has been closely correlated with potential in terms of built-in happy user-generated. By presenting consumer photographs that are posted when consumers use the items, it highlighted the lifestyles associated with the company name. Instagram collects UGC photos related to the organization’s brand name being significant advantages in operating as a boost for the customers.
One of the best reasons for promoting your small business via Instagram is that your customers spend time on the platform. As of January 2020, between 25 and 34 years of age is 35 per cent of the global Instagram viewers. Over two-thirds of Instagram’s overall users were aged 34 years and younger, making the site especially appealing to advertisers. This provides a huge opportunity for small businesses that want to reach their online audience, with so many customers using Instagram every day (Songh, 2020). It will be easy to communicate with your target audience if you are involved in the Instagram they use the most often. In other words, do not bring your audience here – go to your house! If you are not already on social media, you may miss a valuable opportunity to communicate with your customers and take on new leads.
Users are active on the Instagram platform as it offers a fun and convenient way to network, keep in contact with friends and family and stay updated to what is happening around the world. Consumers will be more receptive to your messages when marketing through Instagram. Users are not usually on the Instagram platform with the hope that they will be appealed. However, that does not mean that social media users do not adopt their favorite brands and connect with them. Online adults of ages between 18 and 34 are likely to pursue a social media brand. If users follow brands and connect with their social media accounts; however, it is because they find the material and knowledge useful in such social media campaigns. If they are looking for discounts, enjoying fun content or just trying to know more about the brand, social media consumers are open to social media platforms engaging with brands.
The explanation customers on Instagram may be more open to your brand message is that Instagram allows you to be more communicative and show off a different aspect of your products. The material you share on these platforms adds to your brand identity and lets you reveal your company image. Through social media, instead of only sending direct marketing posts, you are able to make genuine links with your leads and clients. It is usually something about which customers are more sensitive. It is usual for you to encounter online consumers and companies debating a matter/concern about their brand. Moreover, maybe you have come across Q & As on Instagram stories of some brands. Most advertisers see these social media platforms as a more intimate way of getting to know their audiences better.
Marketing through Instagram help increases brand recognition. Most youths spend most of their time on social media to connect with friends and family. Instagram will help you boost exposure, and therefore increasing your brand’s awareness. Your company social media accounts give new ways to share your content and show the voice and personality of your brand. By sharing engaging content that brings value to your target market, you make your brand more available to new members and existing customers as well as more familiar. Let us assume, for instance, that a new leading on social media stumbles upon your brand. They may not have heard of your business before, but they can learn something about your product and the importance you offer through your Instagram posts. To your current customers, this same situation can apply. After seeing your social media posts on multiple networks, potential customers may be able to get to know your company better, which may boost their potential in a repurchase.
Instagram help you reach specific audiences. You can address various audiences systematically, depending on the platforms on which your company is involved. You should hit your target audience and work to bring links that are more eligible back to your platform, instead of just throwing your marketing message out there for all to see (Singh, 2019). By providing a consistent list of demographic values for your audience-the more comprehensive, the better. This list may include their sex, age, place, preferences, following products, interests etc. Knowing these principles will give you more perspective on which medium of social media you can use to achieve them. This will also help you develop information that will involve your audience and thus growing your probability of conversion. The more relevant this traffic is, the greater the chances of improving success levels.
Fix
Teenagers not only have significant purchasing power but also control what their parents and peers purchase. When you have a teen market product or a product that appeals to a teen audience, targeting this category will reap substantial financial rewards. There are various media platforms, which can touch teenagers. From product placement in television and movies series to internet advertisements and a presence on social media, marketing’s obstacle to teenagers is to narrow the emphasis based on the unique product or service. Adolescents often have shorter periods of concentration than their adult peers do, and communicating is yet another obstacle.
As Instagram aficionados, meeting teenagers where they reside — on their mobile devices is cost-effective. Although conventional types of advertisement, such as magazines, newspapers and radio and television advertisements, are not teenagers’ marketing tools of preference, their preferred means of communication are less expensive for adverts. For example, the cost of creating a television commercial that teens can miss via DVR apps can be enormous but sending promotions via Instagram costs next to nothing.
Advertising to teenagers and gaining their loyalty and brand awareness will make your company a customer for life. This renders your ad dollars and investment in your company’s potential revenues. Establishing a brand identity that you can market to teens that they market to their friends in effect helps you create a successful chain of consumerism repeating (Johansson 7 Engstrom, 2016). Even if teens do not buy big-ticket products with their own money, their emotions are having an effect on their parents’ purchases. For instance, teenagers may suggest buying “cool” cars, brand-name items advertised by their favorite stars or sports stars, or even their parents make the personal choice of clothing. Teens are also the beneficiaries of presents bought by parents and family members, making their approval of a specific product and their request invaluable.
Although marketing to teens may seem to have multiple benefits for companies, there are also some possible downsides. Consumer watchdog groups also target businesses that they think are pandering to or exploiting teens and their buying decisions, so careful messaging is important. However, if the spokesperson is involved in controversial or unsavory practices, linking the brand to a current celebrity — a common and sometimes successful practice — has the potential to backfire.
Instagram marketing also helps you to set up your company as a leading think tank in the industry. You should support items like forums and free downloadable content instead of simply publishing advertisements for your goods and services. Advertising-free resources such as forums, whitepapers, and e-books provide useful information for people and build a relationship with your brand (Sanches, 2018). Using such an inbound marketing strategy is useful for your company because you can create curiosity among customers and then convince them why they should be doing company with your business.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Instagram offers one of the best Commercial Sales for young adults. Today marketing is a tricky part of any company. Businesses must change their marketing strategies with each new generation that develops and becomes a part of the customer market. Instagram has revolutionized the market strategy of targeting young adults for commercial sales. From a monologue to constructive dialogue and interaction, they are allowing brands and customers to communicate on a more personal level; by humanizing communication and addressing consumers’ practical and emotional needs. It is a substantially successful marketing tool, which explicitly and indirectly creates brand loyalty and confidence. Second, Instagram marketing high street fashion brands contain three main assets, personal interest, word of mouth, and fashion trends. These properties are characteristic as they allow a personalized engagement on social media with the brands. As a street fashion brand, fashion trends are an essential component of the Instagram presentation if it offers inexpensive dressing methods like celebrities, current trends or fashion tips.
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