Why Franchisors Should #Focus On Instagram Marketing

Launched 9 years ago, Instagram has now become one of the most used social media platforms. Incepted as a photo-sharing app, Instagram has successfully emerged as a powerful marketing tool. As they say, “A picture is worth a thousand words”, then what better way to convey a message to consumers using a thousand words!

Whether you’ve been on the platform since the beginning or new to the “Insta-game”, every brand should use Instagram if they want to resonate with their customers. Being on Instagram is no more an option for franchises. There are over 1 billion users on Instagram, accessing the platform every month and 50% of those scroll through their feed each day.

With such a huge user base on a single platform, the sky is the limit if you devise a good Instagram marketing strategy. Especially for franchises, Instagram is highly beneficial to attract and interact with potential and existing customers.

Instagram for Business                      

Instagram has evolved over the years, and with greater emphasis on making money via product placement has rolled out various features curated for businesses. Known as shoppable posts, Instagram now has a feature which allows various businesses to add tags to the products in the photos with links which include product description, price and an option of “shop now”, which will redirect the user to the online store of any business.

Apart from the “shop now” option on posts, Instagram has also added the option of adding the link in the stories for businesses over 10k followers. Users can simply “Swipe up” on a story to buy products directly from a brand’s site.

According to a recent report, there’s been a 114% increase in web referrals through Instagram. 8 out of 10 users on Instagram are following businesses. This implies that if your franchise has an Instagram presence, your target audience is likely to follow you.

In fact, 200 million Instagrammers actively visit business profiles every day. So, it would be a great loss, if franchisors ignore Instagram for marketing.

Cost-effective

Instagram, not only provides a huge user base and better engagement but all this in lower prices. Instagram generates more leads organically than any other social media platform. Even in the case of paid advertisements, Instagram provides more user engagement at a lower cost. If reports are to be believed, there has been an increase of 115% in organic marketing since 2012 over Instagram.

For example, promoting your page on Facebook will cost you INR 69 per day for getting the engagement of 31-89 likes. While boosting a post, will cost you around INR 100 for 10 days which assures a reach of 51-150 people. On the other hand, Instagram assures an estimated reach of 120-310 people with a budget of INR 40 daily.

Recently, Swiggy used ads in Instagram Stories to find new users and drive app installs, achieving a 30% lower cost per install and a 17% increase in installs. Dineout ran an app-install campaign in Instagram feed and Instagram Stories that featured an animated video, which facilitated a 17% lower cost per install.

Brand engagement

As a franchise, apart from the centralized marketing strategy, you need to have your own social media strategy.  The main motive for any franchise behind starting a marketing campaign is to increase customer engagement.

And, Instagram is the king of social engagement. As per studies, Instagram delivers 58 times more engagement per follower than Facebook and 150 times more engagement per follower than Twitter.

Approximately 68% of Instagram users engage with a brand daily. Instagram is a platform for users to like, comment on and shares their favorite posts. The more likes and comments you get, the more visible your company becomes