Instagram is a strong visual marketing platform and a great opportunity for B2B companies to grow their businesses. With more than 800 million monthly users and over 25 million companies, Instagram is a force to reckon in the marketing sphere. With its current undeniable popularity, Instagram provides a good opportunity for B2B companies to market their products and services to their target audience without spending heftily on paid advertising.

As mentioned, Instagram is a heavily visual platform. It was created to show rather than tell, something that B2B companies should take advantage of. It is an ideal platform for businesses to showcase their stories in a compelling, engaging and memorable way. That said, there are two main benefits B2B businesses benefit from Instagram marketing. They include;

• Enable brands to build trust with the audience – Instagram encourages engagement, something that is crucial when brands need to build trust with their customers. It allows B2B brands to share day to day glimpses of company life and casual stuff, adding some personal touch to the public image of the brand.
• Increases traffic to B2B company’s websites – Instagram has a high engagement level compared to other social media platforms. High engagement profile makes this channel a powerful traffic driver. To succeed in this, the bio link can be used to send followers straight to the website homepage or the product page.

B2B companies can have success on Instagram, but they need to focus on specific ways of humanizing their brand. Some of the successful B2B Instagram marketing strategies that convert as follow.

1. Take advantage of real-time, user-generated content

Throw out stock photography and staged promotional visuals that work well with other platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Instagram encourages brands to go real-time as prospects and followers enjoy authentic content that offers a personal glimpse into the brand’s culture and offerings.

Real-time content such as live streaming, live videos are unfiltered and 100% original. It provides the much-needed human touch to every BB business and helps develop a genuine connection with the audience and potential customers. Using extremely professional content may look cold and less converting as customers want to identify with real people and stories behind the brand.

Embracing user-generated content is also overly beneficial. Share photos, videos, and captions made by followers on Instagram. This will not only make the audience feel a personal connection with the brand but also build the company’s reputation, making it appear genuine.

2. Be involved in the niche

Instagram is a social platform, and so brands must be social. They should stop observing what other brands in the niche do or talking about and contribute actively in any discussion falling in the niche. Content should not just be posted in the Instagram feed, but also be part of wider conversations.

Posting images and videos or replying to the community when they leave a comment isn’t enough. Take some time off to check other brand’s Instagram profiles, browse for content and leave friendly comments here and there. Taking time to engage with others will increase the chances of engagement.

3. Take full advantage of the link in the bio

Instagram doesn’t allow users to include website HTML links in the captions of their posts; however, they can be included in the bio. An Instagram bio allows up to 150 characters, including the link.

Tools like Linktree can create custom links that have a page with more links, which would enable more than five links to be connected. Instagram stories are the other best place to throw in links with content. The main drawback is that Instagram stories only last for a maximum of 24 hours. Despite this limitation, Instagram stories are valuable and provide real-time offers.

4. Tell a story

Businesses that tell the most engaging stories on Instagram create a sense of community. Therefore, to attract a lot of people to a business and have them engage, cutting edge visual storytelling should be employed, and photos and simple videos should not be the limit.

Instagram stories allow users to create a slideshow-like feature, and people will feel more enticed to check in daily to see what’s new if the content stays fresh and relevant.

5. Avoid relying on vanity metrics

Metrics, though important, don’t depict the whole story. Whereas an increase in Instagram likes and clicks are a positive sign, they don’t indicate if the right people are interested in the content. This is why indicators of real engagement should be the focus.

Instagram user’s comments on posts and an increase in followers from the niche are the real indicators. They give a better look at performance and how the brand is getting exposure.

6. Identify content that works

A good way to judge if the content is performing well is by who’s liking or following immediately after the post. Day to day and post by post analytics show what audiences are resonating with the most. Instagram’s reporting dashboard has that built-in feature. From the dashboard, it is easy to visualize how posts are performing in one place across a given time.

Conclusion

For too long, B2B marketers have overlooked the importance of Instagram marketing. The main reason is that they think Instagram is lifestyle focused on vacation photos and cat photos, something that resonated with B2C companies. Similarly, most think that their audience isn’t there. This isn’t true as even B2B customers are probably on Instagram.

That said, B2B companies can employ the above-mentioned strategies to gain converting leads while also utilizing Instagram automation. Of much importance is that such brand should tell an engaging story, leverage event marketing, share company news and take advantage of their bio to share their links. B2B brand should also shy away from vanity metrics that can be misguiding.