How Do I Market My Small Business On Instagram Organically?
October 9th, 2024
With Instagram being the latest gold mine for attracting new customers online, many businesses are leveling up their social media game. But if you’re new to the platform, it may be daunting trying to figure out how to market your small business. There’s a really important bio section to write, a whole content strategy to come up with, and hundreds of work photos to sift through - where do you even start?
If you’re brand new to marketing your small business on Instagram, or have been on Instagram for awhile and want to learn new strategies to grow your business, we’ve got you covered. This blog walks you through small business marketing with Instagram, organically (no ads here!).
Small Business Instagram Marketing 101: Before You Post
If you haven’t created your account yet or you have an inactive account collecting dust, there are a few things you need to have in check before you start posting.
When marketing your small business on Instagram, it’s all about getting and holding attention. When someone clicks on your profile, it should not only tell them about what you do, but it should add a layer of intrigue that drives customers to check out your profile (or even better, your website!).
Username
The username should be self explanatory, but we’ve seen quite a few businesses mess this up. You want your username to be short, and as similar as you can to your business name. If you need to use acronyms, that’s okay too.
Usernames for small businesses need to be short so 1. Customers can type in your username if needed 2. You appear in more searches. Avoid special characters like underscores, periods, and numbers, unless you want to look like a Gen Z personal Instagram account. Or worse - a rookie that doesn’t know how to use Instagram to grow their small business.
Bio
This will be the first thing customers see when they click on your profile. If you want to grow your small business with Instagram, your bio needs to be dialed in so that customers start getting familiar with your brand.
“But with limited space and a lot to say, what makes a good bio?”
Your bio is not an entire, 12-page description of your business and your unique value proposition, with your company history and core values… Save that for your website. Your bio should tell the user everything they need to know without having to Google your business.
It should include these elements:
Business name (In the name section)
Business’ tagline
Small description of what your business does (unless your tagline achieves that)
Location (if local)
CTA - Ex: “Click below to book a consultation call”
Website
You don’t have to follow these rules to the tee, since every business is different and it depends on how you want to market your small business on Instagram. But use these as guidelines to construct your bio. If you want to know if your bio makes sense, ask a friend to look over it and see if they can understand what your business does after the first read.
Highlights And Stories
Highlights are saved stories that hang right under your bio, and should showcase different aspects of your brand that you want your customers to know and see.
This serves as a great way to market your small business on Instagram because of how creative you can get with it! It can be a mix of product photos, campaigns, FAQs, etc.
This is niche specific, so we can’t tell you exactly what to use as highlights. But as long as it gets customers to know you, like your brand, and get excited about choosing your product/service.
Small business marketing is really that simple when it comes to stories! Feel free to take a peep at your competitors to see what they’re doing and how you can do it even better than them.
Profile Pic
Another simple point, but still needs to be said nonetheless. Your profile picture should be your company logo, ideally one that customers can read. If your logo is strictly words, sometimes that can be hard to see on a small instagram profile picture. If it’s hard to read, it may be time to create a new graphic for your brand.
Eventually, users will get familiar with your logo if you’re posting consistently, which can help if you do other forms of marketing.
For personal brands, headshots are okay, too. The name of the small business marketing game is if your profile picture sets you apart in a crowded feed.
Pinned Posts
Now we’re kind of cheating here since this is on a list of things you should do before you start posting. But, if you already have posts on your account, take note of this too. Instagram allows you to pin (keep at the top of your profile) up to 3 posts to your profile. You’re signaling to new viewers, “Hey new person, look at this!” And they most likely will - so use this to your advantage!
While it may seem right to post your top 3 most liked posts on your account, you want to be strategic about what posts you pin.
So here some good posts to consider pinning to your profile:
Your Brand Story
Your Services/Rates, Products/Prices
A Highlighted Campaign Promo (Commercials, Videos, Etc.)
Testimonials Or Case Studies
Brand Defining Hype Photos/Reels
Use high-quality images (please) and videos to hype up your products and show how customers are benefiting from them.
If you’re running any promos or sales, those are always a great thing to post (even if you don’t get many likes on them, but we’ll explain that later). This is also a great way to drive traffic to your website.
If you want to grow your small business online with Instagram posts, you need to put the feelings of your products on display.
For service providers like home improvement, cleaning, and landscaping, before and after photos are your best friend.
On the flip side, get active within your local community, and post your philanthropic efforts and testimonials.
If you’re a location based business, this is a huge driver that will separate you from competitors who don’t really have a face behind their brand.
And If you’re running any fundraisers, Instagram has a feature that allows you to display your fundraisers within your posts, pretty cool!
In some niches, especially ones that involve service providers, customers won’t buy from you until they’re sure you know what you’re doing.
Prove it to your audience with carousels that show you fit the industry’s best practices.
This could also be a good opportunity to communicate your dedication to sustainability, if that’s what you do.
Just keep in mind, your audience might not know certain terms that you use on an everyday basis.
Stories are a great way to diversify your content mix and engage your audience. In fact, some stories can offer even better engagement compared to your traditional posts, with Instagram’s story features. Get your followers involved with polls, quizzes, colored links, countdowns, and so much more!
It’s also a great way to get involved in your local community by reposting any relevant posts related to your community/niche/industry. Oh - and remember the highlights we talked about earlier? Don’t forget to update those over time with new stories!
Instagram Reels are Instagram’s response to TikTok, offering a way for users to submit video content. If you really want to stand out in your industry, this is where the money is made. If you can create high-quality reels that get attention from users that don’t follow you, say hello to new customers! Instagram also has built-in editing features, so you can do it all yourself if you need to!
You can get as creative as you want with reels. If it fits your brand, try making memes with your products/team/industry that fit the current trends.
While this isn’t a content tutorial, we definitely recommend rounding up your marketing team to brainstorm new content ideas.
Vanity metrics are statistics that appear impressive on the surface, but don’t actually mean much for your business. Instagram is filled with vanity metrics, being likes, views, new followers, etc.
Now don’t get us wrong, those are all nice to have, but what you should really be looking at is how much of your audience converts to customers (AKA the conversion rate).
Just because you aren’t getting hundreds of new followers daily, doesn’t mean you aren’t growing your business with Instagram.
While Instagram can’t track your organic (non-paid) conversion rates, you shouldn’t overvalue or undervalue the other metrics.
Instead of setting 1,000 new followers as your KPI for your next campaign, use a different metric like “website traffic” if you’re pushing Instagram followers to your website.
Posting Content To Grow Your Small Business On Instagram
Setting up your account is easy enough, now here’s where small business owners start to lose their marbles - “What do I post?” The truth is, it’s not all about promoting your products.
What customers are really looking for - whether they know it or not - is a brand they can trust. Posting on Instagram to grow your small business involves a variety of content to keep it engaging, and ultimately lead to a sale. Here are the different types of posts to add to your content strategy.
Product And Promotions
The classic, go-to, “post-when-you-don’t-know-what-to-post” post. Showcase your products creatively, and add some sense of entertainment - 64.8% of users engage with entertaining content, according to Sproutsocial. Rule #1 of social media: Don’t be boring.
If you’re in a pinch and need to post something to keep your content up to date, you should have a bunch of jobsite photos to fall back on.
Building Community
To give your brand a bigger purpose from selling your stuff and making a profit, show your customers what’s going on in your team! Showoff new team members, company parties, and any awards employees are receiving.
Fun fact: Contributing To Community is one of our core values!
Informative Carousels
Instagram has a “carousel” feature that allows you to include multiple photos and videos in 1 post, in the form of a slideshow. This is a perfect way to inform your followers about various topics/concepts in your industry that may affect them.
It’s totally valid to go the infographic route and use different colors to make it pretty.
After all, no one wants to read a wall of text. Canva offers a great free graphic design software (which we personally use, too!)
With these types of posts, you’re putting your expertise on full-display.
Stories
Reels
At the end of the day, if you can make customers laugh and engage with your content, they’re more likely to buy your product.
A Note About Vanity Metrics
"What Do I Write In The Captions?"
Writing captions can be a confusing bunch if you’re brand new to social media. If you don’t have a defined brand voice yet, it’s okay to experiment with different captions and figure out what voice aligns closely with your brand’s core values.
Captions should be engaging and elicit some sort of reaction with your audience.
Small business marketing is all about having brand cohesion across all your platforms, so aim to nail your brand voice as soon as possible.
Include Call-To-Actions (CTAs) as much as you can in your captions so that you give your audience something to do, and they don’t just scroll past, going about their day. This could be something like: "“Send us a DM to get started!”
You don’t have to be an expert copywriter - sometimes asking a question and prompting them to comment their answer, directing them to the link in your bio, or leaving a like are effective ways to get your audience involved in the fun.
Hashtags
Hashtags are a great indirect way to market your business on Instagram. Use key hashtags to land on users’ explore pages and draw in non-followers.
As for what hashtags to use, make sure it’s relevant to what you're posting, and do your research to see what hashtags are most used in your industry.
Getting More Followers To Grow Your Business
Although we said that followers are a vanity metric and isn’t a clear sign of your marketing health, it’s still recommended to get more followers as it's more exposure to your brand.
We recommend adding links to your Instagram on the following:
Your Google My Business Profile (see image) ->
Your Website
Your emails
Other social media accounts
Any flyers or physical marketing materials
If your content is well received by your followers, they’ll market your small business for you when they share it to their stories and friends! On that note, some businesses use contests/giveaways that require you to share their Instagram profile to enter. That’s certainly worth considering trying out, too!
Planning Your Content
We covered a bunch of different types of content, and it’s a good idea to post a mix of them at different times. An organized content calendar is vital for maintaining a consistent posting schedule. Planning your posts ahead of time helps ensure a healthy balance of content types and themes, making your Instagram feed attractive and engaging. If you use other social media platforms, consider posting the same content at the same time, to increase viewership.
(Grandir Solutions Content Calendar)
If you want help planning and posting your content, we have a team of social media specialists and copywriters ready to deploy a booming social media to grow your small business! We’ll work with you to develop and bolster your social media presence, brand voice, and produce exciting, modern content that will bring in more customers. Click here to grow your brand with Instagram.
It's Time To Grow On Instagram!
Marketing your small business on Instagram takes more than just posting regularly. It's about strategic content creation, engaging with your community, and optimizing your profile for business conversions.
With this guide, you're now equipped to create a compelling, converting Instagram presence that attracts new customers and keeps the old ones coming for more!
Yes, you can grow your business’ Instagram without spending a dime on ads!