Category: Strategies

Getting leads from Instagram as a startup is no easy feat. 

Because you’re a newcomer in your industry, no one knows about your brand and you’ll have very little to no Instagram followers.

TL;DR: It’s going to be challenging. Reeeaaallly challenging.

That’s why to run a successful IG lead generation campaign, you need tried and tested strategies. The likes of which that will compel your audience to follow you on IG, share your content, and take action on your offers.

To help you hit the ground running, we’ll share the top five tactics you can learn to generate leads on Instagram like a pro.   

1. Leverage automation

Generating leads often involves tons of tedious, repetitive jobs, from content idea generation to post publishing. 

However, you can reduce, if not eliminate, a chunk of your repetitive tasks by using robust IG tools with automation functionalities. 

Social Media Marketing (SMM) platforms such as Vista Social provides advanced, sophisticated, and affordable features to simplify your IG and other social media content creation and publishing.

You can plan and create your Instagram content and schedule them to post automatically on your set times and dates. 

If you have several pieces of content you want to publish in one day, add them to a queue, and Vista Social can auto-publish them based on the best times to drive engagement.

Image source: vistasocial.com. 

Take your IG post automation to the next level with Vista Social’s Smart Publisher. It can search for, source, and publish content for you.  

Image source: vistasocial.com.  

Choose a category and include keywords you want the platform to search (or exclude those you don’t want to include). Additionally, you can add hashtags and mentions and prepend the texts for your post. 

Automation can streamline and optimize your IG lead generation efforts and save time and resources while driving results faster. 

2. Partner with influencers in your industry

Getting influencers to help promote your brand and products is one of the best ways to generate leads on Instagram.

Why? Because influencers have established relationships with thousands (and sometimes millions) of followers.

You can tap into an influencer’s legion of followers with the right marketing approach. Then, leverage the relationships influencers built with their followers for your lead generation initiatives. 

Below are a few tips to help you find the best influencers to work with to support your lead generation efforts on Instagram and other social media platforms. 

• Focus on influencers already working in your niche (or industry) since they have the experience and expertise working with companies like yours. Aligning your social media marketing goals and the influencer objectives is also easier.  

• Do some digging on the shortlist of influencers you want to work with. Follow them, look at their followers, and develop a few ideas on how they can support your lead generation efforts. You can narrow your list to the top five and reach out to them to assess if they’re a good fit for your brand and IG marketing campaigns. 

• Use nifty digital marketing software and related tools to make finding influencers and running your influencer marketing campaigns on Instagram more effective and efficient. 

3. Run Instagram lead ads

Running lead ads can draw more eyeballs to your Instagram content, helping you achieve some level of lead generation success. 

With lead ads, you can run ads within Instagram while collecting customer information, such as email addresses, job titles, phone numbers, and birth dates.

Before you can run IG lead ads, you’ll need to do the following:

• Turn your existing Instagram account into a business account (or create a new business account).
• Create a Facebook Business Manager account (on FB) and link it to your Facebook page. 
• Go to the Facebook Ads Manager and select the Lead Generation option.
• Make your lead ads (the way you would create Facebook ads). Remember to choose Instagram as your placement.  

Image source: facebook.com.

Lead ads display a lead form that Instagram users can easily fill out with their contact details, allowing you to capture potential customer information with ease. 

While lead ads are great for generating leads seamlessly, running them requires trial and error. 

Know which variations of your lead magnets, Calls-to-Action (CTAs), targeting options, and other creatives generate audience responses best through A/B testing. 

Leverage the analytics features and get relevant data from top-tier customer engagement platforms.   

You can use the actionable insights to amplify your lead generation efforts, including improving your lead ad performance. 

4. Create shoppable content

Your content development strategy shouldn’t be limited to run-of-the-mill images, videos, and other text-based content anymore. 

The popular content type on Instagram that’s making waves are shoppable posts. 

Posting shoppable posts on Instagram is a great tactic to draw your prospects’ attention and entice them to buy your products. 

It’s because IG shoppable posts include the prices and product descriptions right on your posts, making it convenient for Instagram users to shop and purchase the items. 

Image source: blog.hubspot.com. 

Plus, you can still count IG users who tap on your shoppable posts as leads collected on interested prospects even if they don’t go through with the purchase. 

Leverage the information to learn the products your potential customers are most interested in. You can also target users with tailored ads you create based on audience engagement with your shoppable posts.

Also, shoppable Instagram posts are highly shareable, encouraging users to share your posts, widening your reach, and boosting your lead generation initiatives. 

5. Host Q and A sessions via Instagram stories

Building trust with your Instagram followers is crucial to your IG lead generation efforts.

After all, Instagram users don’t know you yet. They need to trust you before you can entice them into acting on your offers and ultimately turning from passive audiences to paying customers. 

A more creative and interactive tactic to help you build that trust is through Question and Answer (Q&A) sessions via IG Stories. 

You can include popular questions to ask IG followers, such as their dream vacation and favorite Friends character or something specific to a topic such as the best way to speed up videos with an iPhone. 

You can also leave the questions open for your IG users to ask.  

Hosting Q&A sessions via IG Stories is a great way to interact and connect with your audiences, engaging them in real time and generating leads. 

Make the most of Instagram for lead generation

Nail your lead generation efforts on Instagram with the tips and tricks in this guide. 

Try out the tactics and assess which ones lead you to successful IG lead generation.  

Leverage the right strategies and tools that work best for your audience, campaigns, and company. 

Packaging is one of the most important aspects of marketing a product. It’s what catches the customer’s eye on the shelf, and it’s what makes them decide whether or not to buy a product. So it’s no surprise that companies are always looking for ways to improve their packaging design. But what makes a great packaging design? According to the experts, several qualities make up a great design. Here are some of them.

Protects The Product

One of the most important qualities of a great packaging design is that it protects the product. The packaging needs to be strong enough to keep the product safe during shipping and while it’s on the shelf. It should also be water and weatherproof so that it can withstand any conditions. What also increases the importance of packaging design is its ability to shield the product in a way that it does not get damaged during transportation or while being displayed in stores. Also, it mustn’t contaminate the product or its surroundings.

Creates A Good First Impression

A great packaging design should also create a good first impression. It should be visually appealing and stand out from the competition. It should also be easy to understand what the product is and what it’s for. The packaging should also be designed to be appealing.

The Right Color Combination

To create an effective package design, it is important to understand how the color combinations can impact the overall look and feel of your product, which is also something you should consider when starting your business. Color psychology is the study of how different colors can affect people’s moods and emotions. When it comes to packaging design, it is important to use colors that will evoke the right emotions in potential customers. For example, if you are selling a new line of health supplements, you might want to use bright and energetic colors like yellow and orange to convey feelings of vitality and energy. If you are selling a new line of cosmetics, you might want to use soft and feminine colors like pink and light purple to create a feeling of luxury and glamor.

Typography

In addition to using the right colors, it is also important to use the right typography in your packaging design. Typography is the art of arranging typefaces in a visually appealing way. When it comes to packaging design, you want to use typography to create a visual hierarchy that will draw attention to your product. You also want to use typography to create a sense of consistency between your logo and your packaging.

Layout

The layout of your package design is also important. You want to use layout techniques that will make your product stand out on the shelf. You also want to use layout techniques that will make your product easy to read and understand. One of the most important layout techniques is called the rule of thirds. The rule of thirds is a design principle that suggests that you should divide your layout into three sections, horizontally and vertically. You should then place your most important elements in these sections to create a more balanced and visually appealing layout.

Creativity

The best packaging designs are usually the most creative ones. When it comes to creativity, there are no rules. You should feel free to experiment with different design elements and techniques until you find something that feels right for your product. The key is to be original and think outside the box.

Is Easy To Open

Another important quality of a great packaging design is that it’s easy to open. The customer shouldn’t have to struggle to get into the product. The packaging should be designed in a way that makes it easy to access the product without having to damage the packaging. Also, the packaging should be designed in a way that doesn’t create a lot of waste. For example, some packages are designed with a perforated edge so that the customer can easily tear off the top without having to use scissors or a knife.

Is Eco-Friendly

One of the most important qualities of a great packaging design is that it is eco-friendly. This means that the packaging is made out of sustainable or recycled materials and can be easily recycled or composted. One way to make your product packaging eco-friendly is to use sustainable materials like bamboo, sugarcane, and cornstarch. You can also use recycled materials like cardboard, paper, and plastic. Another way to make your product packaging eco-friendly is to use biodegradable materials. Biodegradable materials will decompose in a landfill within a few months. Some biodegradable materials that you can use for packaging are cornstarch, cellulose, and plant-based plastics. You can also use compostable materials.

Save Money In The Long Run

Eco-friendly packaging is not only good for the environment, but it can also be good for your business. Sustainable materials and biodegradable materials are often more expensive than traditional materials, but they can help you save money in the long run. Eco-friendly packaging can also help you attract more customers. Many people today are looking for environmentally friendly products, so using sustainable or biodegradable materials can help you stand out from the competition.

The Product Packaging Represents Your Business

Product packaging is one of the most important marketing tools that you have. It is the first thing that your customers see, and it can be used to create a positive or negative impression of your business. The best product packaging designs can convey the essence of your business in a few seconds. They are also able to create a connection with the customer and make them feel like they need the product. It should contain all of the necessary information about the product, including the name of the product, the price, and the ingredients. In addition, it should be designed in a way that is visually appealing and easy to understand. 

A great packaging design is essential for any business. It can help you attract new customers, create a positive image of your business, and save money in the long run. When it comes to packaging design, think outside the box and be creative. Use sustainable materials and biodegradable materials whenever possible, and make sure that your design is easy to open and eco-friendly. Your customers will appreciate it!

When it comes to promoting your business, it seems like everyone has the same few things to suggest: get on social media and create content that people like, optimize it for search engines, and then release it on a regular schedule that is both oppressive and exhausting so that you don’t have any time to actually work on your business. Marketing doesn’t have to be all-encompassing, and it doesn’t have to take three years to start providing results. The following will explore just one valuable marketing technique that can have a massive positive effect on the impression people have of your brand and the amount of product you move or services you book: testimonial videos.

What Is A Testimonial Video?

A testimonial video is a video in which a client or customer who has used your product or service shares their positive experience. These videos can be put on your website and social accounts as well as on review sites. Several testimonial videos can also be put together to create a fantastic advertisement that you use for Facebook or Instagram ads.

Why Do Video Testimonials Work?

Video testimonials have fantastic conversion rates for several reasons. Foremost, they build trust. It’s far easier to gauge someone’s vibe and level of honesty when you see their face as they’re speaking. Written reviews can be faked or paid for far more easily than video testimonials, and that’s because humans are really good at reading subtle cues in body language and facial expressions. Video testimonials are considered far more credible, engaging, and authentic for these reasons.

Secondly, the video holds people’s attention far more than written content or photographic content. There is a whole discussion that needs to be had about dwindling attention spans, but regardless of how we culturally approach that problem, you still need to advertise in the interim. Video content has a much higher retention rate than other forms of content. People are more likely to watch a full video and far more likely to remember what was said in it (95% of a video message is easily retained, whereas 10% of a written message is retained on average).

Thirdly, videos are more often sought than other forms of content and far more likely to be shared. YouTube is the world’s second-largest search engine with over two billion users. Beyond this, videos are more commonly shared than articles, text posts, or images.

Finally, video testimonials have high conversion rates. When someone has to make a buying decision, they’re usually on the hunt for someone whose advice they can trust. Because video testimonials are viewed as so much more trustworthy than other kinds of reviews, they are excellent at conversion.

Tips For Making Video Testimonials

Whenever you have a customer who is pleased with your services or product, ask them if they’d like to speak about it on video. If they say no, that’s okay, not everyone is comfortable being on camera (and those that aren’t tend to struggle to speak clearly and openly in front of the camera anyway). Keep asking and set up video shoots with those who are interested. You’d be surprised how many people are willing to be part of a video shoot; many find the process exciting and interesting. Be sure to ask as soon as the product or service has been completed because this way, people’s impressions, and ideas are fresh in their minds. They’re more likely to recall interesting and humanizing details if you record the testimonial soon after they’ve interacted with your company.

If you have the skills yourself, you can set up the shoot, but you can also reach out to a local video production company. Because many companies charge a day rate for a shoot, you might want to schedule several customers’ videos for the same day so that you spend a little less money on the filming.

If you’re shooting them yourself, make sure the audio quality is good (listen to a trial recording first) and aim for bright, natural lighting. Most YouTubers without expensive lighting setups face a window while they talk to their camera to have nice, even lighting.

Avoid Scripting

Most people don’t do well with script memorization. It’s a skill that causes a lot of stress and pressure, and even if people can do it, it often results in a robotic delivery as they’re focused on getting the lines right rather than speaking from the heart. It’s usually better to give direction and ask questions than to create a script. Think of it as having a conversation on camera and avoid yes or no questions as these tend not to start expanded conversations.

To create a fantastic advertisement video, try to keep the conversation focused on a few key points. People should introduce themselves and discuss the problem that led them to your product or service. This will allow viewers who have the same or similar problems to relate. Ask them to share why they chose your product or service over other possibilities and to describe the results of their interaction with you. When you’re creating amazing video testimonials, you want to emphasize feelings of naturalness and comfort. You want viewers to feel like they’re listening to a friend talk about something that benefitted them.

Keep It Trim

Shorter video testimonials tend to be ideal compared with longer ones. Again, there’s an attention span crisis ongoing, and this means that people aren’t going to watch a twenty-minute video. Keep it short and sweet—you’re probably looking at 90 seconds to 120 seconds long.

The above tips should help you better understand what video testimonials are, how they can benefit your business, and how you can go about crafting them. Digital marketing has, in many ways, taken over the lives of business owners, but it doesn’t have to be a difficult, never-ending project. Video testimonials are an easy and effective marketing method that can draw genuine customers to your business without costing you an absurd amount of time and energy. If you’re unsure how to go about the filming aspect, many highly skilled professionals can help you with the videography and editing process. Quite often, video production specialists also have access to royalty-free music and graphics, which can take your videos to the next level.

A good leaflet distribution campaign requires more than you might think. It takes a lot of planning to appeal to your prospective customers with leaflets. They should be kept small and to the point and handed out in areas where your target audience can be found. While being professional and polite is key to any leaflet campaign, you should also be aware that people might receive a lot of leaflets, so making sure that yours stand out is key. Here are some of the main steps involved in designing effective leaflets and planning your leaflet distribution campaign.

Determine Your Target Audience

The first thing to do when planning your leaflet campaign is determine your target audience. Who you are sending the leaflets to will have a large impact on how they look. Whether it’s different age groups, careers, or other demographics, various groups have different interests and may be more likely to be found in certain areas compared to others.

Keep Leaflets Small

Smaller leaflets are usually the best option as they are less costly and also less likely to be thrown away when received, since they are more convenient to read. A small leaflet allows you to give your audience the information that they need about your business without any unnecessary extras. Larger leaflets are not only more expensive but also harder for you to distribute, so keep in mind that bigger is not always better.

Create an Interesting Design

To be effective, leaflets should have a clear headline accompanied by an eye-catching design including a logo or image. Using bright colors and bold texts can be a useful strategy to get your leaflets to grab the attention of the people that you are sending them to. You could come up with phrases or mottos that not only cause people to remember the leaflet after receiving it, but also make it clear what the leaflet is about.

Include Your Contact Info

Make sure to leave room in the leaflet design for your business contact information. Along with your business address, including an address, email address, website, and telephone number along with your opening hours can be useful. Make sure that your audience are aware of how to reach your business and take the actions you want them to as a result of receiving the leaflet.

Decide Where to Distribute

Determine where you are going to distribute your leaflet. You can do this by finding out more about where your target audience lives, works, and takes part in activities so that you know how best to reach them. You can do this by looking at the data that you already hold on your customers; you may find that there are more customers living in one area compared to others. Once you have a list of addresses, you can use Lob’s letter printing service to verify the addresses, remove duplicates, and send leaflets on demand. Lob offers a range of handy automation tools to help you get more from your print marketing campaigns.

How to Distribute

There are several ways to distribute your leaflets. You can post them into mailboxes in-person, send them through the mail, or hand them out in a public area. Bear in mind that you may need to get permission from the local authority if you are heading to a public area to distribute leaflets.

Consider the Right Time to Send

It’s important to think about when is the best time to distribute the leaflets to customers. For example, if you are setting up a leaflet campaign to advertise an upcoming sale, you should make sure that customers receive the leaflets at least a couple of weeks in advance to give them time to prepare. It’s also worth bearing in mind that people tend to be more or less receptive to any kind of advertising at certain times. If they are getting your leaflets just as they are rushing out of the door to work, for example, then you may not see as good a result compared to the leaflets being received once people have returned from work and have more time to read them.

Repeat the Distribution

Once you have distributed your first set of leaflets, it’s a good idea to repeat it a few weeks later. Repeat advertisements tend to be easier to remember, and this also gives you a chance to expand on your message. For example, if you are advertising an upcoming sale with your leaflet campaign, you can wait until closer to the time that the sale is about to start to send out reminders to potential customers that you have already made aware.

A leaflet campaign can be an effective and simple way to spread the word about your business, a product, sale, or store. However, it’s important to keep several strategies in mind when planning your campaign to ensure that it works well.

The current boom in the e-commerce scene has attracted many entrepreneurs making the competition to win consumers’ attention pretty stiff.

One of the most effective ways of ensuring you stand out in the crowded e-commerce space is using high-quality digital assets, such as images, videos, and graphics.

Managing your digital assets in the fast-paced scene can be a challenge, and you do not want to make an error that could hurt your audience’s perception of your brand.

Given the risks, your best bet at organizing your digital assets lies with investing in a reliable digital asset management system.

So, What Is Digital Asset Management?

Digital asset management (DAM) system is a set of practices and tools that enable marketing teams to manage and optimize their organization’s digital assets. A reliable DAM should help your organization store, catalog, and share its digital assets easily and efficiently. 

A reliable DAM also helps control who uses the digital asset, tracks its use, and maintains a searchable asset library. If you are on the sidelines and unsure if to invest in a DAM system or not, this resource on why you need digital asset management for e-commerce can help answer the questions you may be having.

Importance of DAM in E-Commerce

1. Helps Achieve Brand Consistency

The audience judges a brand by what they see. With your digital assets being the face of your brand, consistency must be a priority.

This calls for creating assets according to consistent brand standards in terms of colors, fonts, graphics, and any other aspect that your audience identifies you by. 

Using a DAM also helps ensure consistency in restricting who can use an asset, where they use it and how it is used. For example, an asset to be used in a blog post is not to be used on social media and vice versa.

With a DAM, it is also possible to keep track of assets and retire assets that have passed their usefulness to ensure that there can never be a chance where an outdated asset appears in a campaign.

2. Increased Efficiency in Marketing

Marketing departments take the most significant portion of any organization’s budget and involve a lot of work. A DAM helps cut back on the amount of work needed to locate assets, which allows marketing teams to reduce their workforce without losing the speed of delivery.

Additionally, a DAM enables marketing teams to track asset’s effectiveness in how the audience interacts with it. This kind of information ensures that the marketing decisions are based on facts and are guaranteed to yield the best results.

3. Boosts Collaboration

Creating winning assets may require input from several team members and, at times, persons outside your organization.

Traditionally, creators could only achieve such collaboration by sending assets to contributors via email, resulting in a back and forth exchange of emails before reaching the desired result. 

With a DAM tool, several contributors or users can access an asset simultaneously, allowing them to make or suggest changes in real-time irrespective of their geographical location. This ensures that everyone works with the most recent version of an asset at all stages of the creation process. 

4. Enhances the Security of Your Digital Assets

Creating quality digital assets can involve a lot of time and money. Therefore, you must ensure that your assets do not leak. A reliable DAM helps restrict access for in-house and third-party contributors by narrowing down on permissions within your digital assets library.

Some DAMs go as far as restricting asset downloads through the entire process of creation and restricting the number of contributors and users that can download the asset once the creation process is complete. This ensures the chances of an asset leakage are minimal.

Whether your company employs an on-staff marketer or hires a marketing firm, it is important to understand just what marketing is and what you want marketers to do for you. In essence, a marketer is responsible for building a relationship between consumers and the businesses they represent. A marketer needs to be an expert in reputation management, management of demand, and finding ways to face off with the competition in your niche. To sum it up, marketers sell products and brands. So how does blogging enter into this equation and what are the benefits?

Blogging Brings Inbound Traffic

The first benefit of blogging for marketers would be in bringing inbound traffic to a website. Most companies today have both a physical location as well as an online presence. Whether or not a company has a blog on their website, the surest way to bring traffic to their business site is through links on blogs scattered around the web.

How they do this can be best explained by reading a few of the blogging guides on the YourTopBlog website. This particular site is dedicated to the art and science of blogging and how it can be used to grow businesses within any niche. Since growing a business is the chief aim of marketers, this is where you’ll find everything you want or need to know about how they use blogging as a key tool.

Blogging Builds Brand Awareness

Another thing marketers seek to accomplish is to use blogging as a key way to build brand awareness for businesses they represent. Again, whether you have an in-house marketing team or employ an outsourced marketing firm, building brand awareness is a top priority.

Today’s consumer wants to know more about the brands they deal with, especially in the area of sustainability. Marketers will always seek to create a positive image for the businesses they represent and the main way in which they do this is with brand awareness strategies in blogging. That’s a fact.

Blogging Builds Relationships

Another very important thing to be aware of is that today’s consumer is looking to deal with brands they can build a relationship with. Believe it or not, blogging is the best way to accomplish this. Blog posts can be repurposed for social media, and this will, in turn, open up conversations between brands and their customer base. Social media is one of the most effective ways of creating dialogue and repurposed blogs give the impetus needed to open those conversations.

Summing it up, blogging is perhaps the most important tool a marketer has when facilitating brand awareness and growth for the companies they represent. It’s the foundation of any effective SEO strategy and surely the best way to achieve a positive reputation for those brands they represent. Yes, it is a marketer’s job to do all of this, but it is your job as a company owner or director to know what it is they do and whether or not they are performing optimally. If you have any questions, refer to those blogging guides mentioned above, and you will have the information you need to choose the right marketers for your business.