08/08/2017
Increased Popularity of Instagram Stories Help Boost Marketing Efforts
The Instagram feature - `Instagram Stories` is being hailed as a central factor in the increasing popularity of business engagement with customers. The feature gives users the chance to build a digital slideshow of photos and videos and is proving to be an extremely effective marketing method for businesses across the spectrum.
According to Instagram, they have an impressive 250 million daily, active users - compared to their nearest rival, Snapchat, who have 166 million. This means that there is a huge pool of potential customers for businesses to tap into. They also state that users under 25 spend an average of 32 minutes per day on Instagram and users over 25 spend an average of 24 minutes per day.
InstagramStory
Instagram have said that in the last month, half of all of the businesses who use Instagram produced an Instagram story in the last month, proving just how effective the feature is for businesses.
Some of the ways that Instagram Story is used by businesses include to launch limited sales, to learn about new products or to get quick customer feedback.
Charles King, Pund-IT`s Principal Analyst comments that the sellers are checking if the Stories are suitable means for communication with potential and existing customers, and that some of those have achieved substantial success in these efforts.
Instagram for Businesses
Instagram has seen a sharp rise in the number of businesses that are registered with them. They have been working hard to add extra features which can help businesses to engage with their customers, has this has resulted in an increase from about 8 million businesses who were registered in March, to over 15 million who are registered today - 8th August 2017.
Instagram have also stated that 60% of Instagram's users have found new products there and 75% of Instagram's users have `taken action` after `being inspired` by a post on the site.
Instagram, however, do still have some work to do to in being accessible to the whole community. A research manager at Stratecast/Frost & Sullivan, Michael Jude, stated that there were some retailers that managed to mark some success using Stories to promote certain sale events. As the similar campaigns are always dependent on certain demographic criteria such as age and income, the promotions were limited to some extent due to the lack of the options for focusing the campaigns.
They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, and this certainly seems to be the case with Instagram. Extra features such as Instagram Stories are giving businesses the chance to engage more effectively than ever with their customers and taking their marketing efforts to a new level.