Marketing and advertising have always been there. For decades, companies have been looking for ways to promote their products and services to target consumers and leveraging different mediums to attain that goal.
The transformation is largely attributed to platforms like Instagram that have ushered in the dynamic world of SMM panel, where strategies can be adjusted in real-time to optimize engagement and reach. The ability to immediately see the impact of an advertisement, tweak it and re-deploy it plays a pivotal role in today’s digital marketing strategies.
If you are a marketing student, answering this question will help you become a more well-versed specialist in this field and build a successful career in the future. So don’t hesitate to delegate your current assignments to paper writers to ensure success with no effort, and read on to learn how advertising changed in the era of Instagram!
New Forms of Content
When Instagram was launched in 2010, there were already a couple of other social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter. That is, businesses were already using social media for advertising. However, Instagram has completely changed how brands deliver audience content.
Unlike Twitter and Facebook, where written content played the biggest role, the new network was all about posting photos. This challenged companies to switch their focus from solely text-based content and pay more attention to visuals. After that, a decade of innovation followed. Today, Instagram lets users share photos and Stories, Reels, and IGTV videos, which brings even more opportunities for advertising.
Better Engagement
Apart from changing how companies deliver content, Instagram has also transformed how users engage with content. Everyone can seamlessly like, comment, share, and save publications. Moreover, users can subscribe and follow the accounts they like most and even send direct messages to account holders.
The volume of engagement has also increased. According to the stats, in the US alone, 75% of adults use Instagram, the highest percentage of all social media. Also, studies confirm that visuals drive much more engagement than text-based content. According to Socialbarkers, this network gives brands up to 400% more engagement compared to Facebook.
Narrow Ad Targeting
You already know that Instagram has a huge base of active users. Thus, it’s a no-brainer that it’s a perfect place to reach your target audiences. And to do it even faster, companies can leverage paid ads.
In terms of paid advertising, this platform also offered many changes to marketers. With the help of Instagram, brands can craft incredibly accurate ad campaigns and enjoy narrow ad targeting. Due to this reason, ads posted on this network tend to be rather successful.
On top of that, this platform offers great tools for measuring the success of your SMM strategies. With the featured tools, specialists can learn all their audience demographics, analyze the engagement, and do much more.
New Way to Get to Know Target Consumers
Companies primarily use social media to establish better contact with their existing and potential customers. Such platforms enable businesses to speak the same language as their audiences and encourage better, more personalized, and more direct communication with them.
While this is true for all media, Instagram was the first to go the extra mile and offer marketers a new way to learn more about their prospects. With the help of Stories and polls featured, companies can gather valuable insights from their audiences. They can ask them about literally anything that can help promote and sell their products and services better. And they can use this feature to build more trust.
Diversification of Beauty Standards
There is no secret that the biggest part of marketing (especially in fashion and beauty spheres) was creating the so-called “perfect body image.” This continued for decades as flawless models and actors were looking at consumers from all kinds of advertising. But Instagram has changed it.
At first, the platform received a fair share of criticism. Many people insisted that too many filtered and edited images out there presented an unrealistic expectation of beauty. But now, the network has distanced itself from traditional broadcasting of a narrow definition of beauty. Now, it encourages us to break beauty taboos. Respectively, while this diversification continues trending, it’s also changing the way brands advertise their goods.
Influencers
Lastly, there is one more way how Instagram has changed marketing forever. Being very followers-focused, this media quickly paved the way for influencers. In a nutshell, influencers are social media celebrities who have large audiences and the trust of these audiences.
The rise of influencers stimulated the development of a new SMM branch – influencer marketing. This form of advertising makes reaching the right audiences easier than ever. Basically, it lets companies partner with famous people and advertise their goods with their help. Now, this approach is widely used on other networks too. But Instagram was definitely the first one to offer this opportunity.
The Bottom Line
Marketing is an ever-changing field. It has been around for ages. And it has always evolved and adapted to the changing needs of consumers.
After the rise of the Internet, more people adopted it as a handy tool for finding and sharing information. So, advertising shifted to the online landscape. After the launch of social media, it became one of the primary means of communication for consumers. As a result, brands had to start interacting with their customers through them.
Finally, after the launch of Instagram, marketing changed even more. This platform became a breakthrough in the field of SMM.
Now you know about some of the biggest changes this platform has brought us. And while it continues evolving, we can’t wait to learn what else it can offer to marketers in the future!
