10 Ways to Help You Get More Leads on Instagram

10 Ways to Help You Get More Leads on Instagram

How to get more leads on Instagram?

I get it: Instagram typically isn’t the first thing that we consider using for lead generation. Usually, social media isn’t considered to be a place for businesses to actively generate leads due to its long association with making human connections. However, Instagram and other social media platforms can be highly effective sources of sales leads if you know what you are doing.

Before we talk about how to generate these leads, we should ask ourselves what are social media leads in the first place? Social media leads are just like other leads in that people have expressed their interest in receiving information about a product or service from marketers. However, these leads originate from social media channels and not from any other source of web traffic. Typically, marketers believe that generating leads via social media is quite difficult. However, this is a misconception: in fact, 80 percent of personal accounts on Instagram follow one or more business accounts. People also use Instagram to decide whether to buy something or not. As a result, a company’s Instagram audience is a prime source of sales leads.

Because social media is becoming such an important marketplace, if you don’t collect Instagram leads, you’re definitely missing out big. Here are some good ways to generate leads on Instagram.

Make time for lead generating ads

Make time for lead generating ads

It’s simple: to get more leads on Instagram, your best bet is to make use of lead generating ads.

Using lead generation ads is one of the first steps to help businesses collect relevant and meaningful information around a customer. What’s meaningful information? Their location, their contact details and maybe birthdates. You will also want to take note of which products they appear to be most interested in.

With information collected this way, you can tailor your marketing campaigns to maximize conversion. In order to do this, it is important that you send relevant offers to target leads.  Homesnap is a great example of a company that has done this successfully. They used lead generation ads to get more information about home buyers. For this niche, you might want to know what the potential buyer’s budget is.

Necessary Instagram tools:

An Instagram business account is one of the first requirements to create a lead generation ad. In addition, you’ll need a Facebook page that is connected to the Instagram account. Since Instagram is owned by Facebook, you have to own a Facebook account to create the ads on the Facebook ads manager. Under settings, select lead generation as your goal. Next, choose automatic placements to get the cheapest possible bids.

Also, it makes total sense to add pre-filled sections to your ad copy, because it is easier to get everything done. If the appropriate details are present in the customer account, Instagram will pre-fill email, full name, phone number, and other details from customer accounts.

Also, once you have access to customer information, refine your Instagram ad targeting settings. This way, you can also target customer’s lookalike audiences. With these audiences, you can target the right people on the platform and get more exposure for your brand. This way, you can increase the impact of each advertisement placed.

Whatever your goal may be, such as getting more traffic or getting more sales, Instagram lead generation ads can help. All kinds of businesses, including realtors, mom and pop shops, and restaurants can use this kind of marketing. It isn’t just for the big players.

Improve on the link in bio

The Instagram link in bio is a special feature and needs to be utilized to its full potential. That’s because this link is essential to direct people to goals you set. It can range from generating email leads to increasing sales or simply boosting brand awareness.

  • The link must be short. There are shorteners that let you brand the link the way you like it. This has the dual advantage of space-saving and branding.
  • Use UTM parameters to understand who clicks on the URL and from where. See what works. Also, include a call to action phrase in the link.

Further Reading: How to Start Blogging on Instagram and Make Money: Tips and Strategies for Success

Optimize the landing page

Optimizing the landing page is the next step towards Instagram greatness. With well-optimized landing pages, you’re bringing people closer to making a purchase. As they say, first impressions are critical to success.

The rules that apply to other landing pages also apply to this one. Make your landing page easy to scan and let it reflect an easily understandable experience that seamlessly integrates search intent and directs visitors toward a call to action. Make sure that you present the right landing page to the right visitor. This is done by thinking about which stage of the lifecycle the customer is presently in.

You can link to specific pages on your site as well as the podcast landing page or other marketing assets. However, the golden rule of optimization still applies.

Use the Instagram swipe-up feature

Use the Instagram swipe-up feature

Embedding links is allowed on Instagram stories if your account has more than 10,000 followers. Stories are great for businesses because most of the Stories viewed on Instagram are part of their marketing efforts. Not only that, but studies have shown that consumers enjoy this format. That means there’s a lot of good news on Instagram for businesses.

Stories are much more effective than bio links because consumers viewing them only need to swipe up on the Stories to view a website. A swipe is a type of engagement  which is a sign of interest in the company, product, or service. Here’s how to set up this kind of post.

  1. Go to the feed. Next swipe right. Click on the plus icon. You can locate this above the profile picture, just on the top left.
  2. Upload your content.
  3. In the next step, click on the icon that resembles a chain. Add your link. You’re done.

Add three or four swipe-up stories per day to your account. This frequency has been shown to result in the highest levels of engagement.

You can add blog articles, ultimate guides for your industry, free e-books, webinars, or anything else for that matter. It’s easy too. Just create the content and upload it to Instagram. As you saw above, adding links is easy too.

Is Your LinkedIn Working?

Just released: my new book to help professionals, entrepreneurs, and business owners maximize LinkedIn for real growth.

With years of LinkedIn expertise, Maximizing LinkedIn for Business Growth offers actionable steps to build your brand, expand your network, and drive results.

Start leveraging LinkedIn like never before—grab your copy now! Click the cover or button below to buy on Amazon.

Maximizing LinkedIn for Business Growth

When you share these Stories, try to use colorful images. One of the biggest reasons people love Instagram is the photography.

Create content around the end goal

No matter what your goal is, it’s important to create the right kind of content for Instagram. In order to accomplish this, here are some tips and tricks.

Instagram lead generation is most successful if you create content around your end goal. The words you surround your bio link should drive action. At the same time, the pictures you use coupled with the powerful call to action should be consistent with the desired result. This only happens if all the elements work together in cohesion.

For example, if someone were to click the Instagram bio link, this should be a result of the captions and the bio working together well. This is also true of any links you place in the call to action, and any swipe-up features in Stories. Next, use emojis to lend more excitement to your Instagram stories. And use text to give the audience some direction. The creative should inspire action with a strong call to action.

By having your content produced in a way that promotes your advertising goals, you’re encouraging people to engage more frequently. That, in turn, will serve to increase sales or brand awareness.

Further Reading: Instagram Highlights: 10+ Ways You Should Use Them for Your Marketing

Use the Instagram shopping feature with tags

Use the Instagram shopping feature with tags

Tagging products generates interest in that item. This way, you get many more people interested in what you have to offer. In fact, Instagram shopping is one of those channels that has gained lots of interest recently, because more than 100 million accounts click on product tags.

To do this successfully, find out products your customers are most interested in and you can create ads in a manner to engage them. Then, consider shoppable Instagram posts. With these, you need to create a catalog with the catalog manager. Connect the catalog to Instagram with Instagram shopping, and you’re ready to go.

Grow together with an Instagram influencer

Instagram influencers are a big way to increase leads for your business. It’s a good Instagram marketing strategy, but it must be done properly. An influencer must be extremely relevant to your brand but shouldn’t have the exact same people following them that you do. With a different set of followers, you have the opportunity to grow your audience at the same time that you get new Instagram followers and leads.

At the same time, make sure that the influencer is someone whose audience fits your buyer persona relatively closely. This ensures that the partnership does increase the number of leads you get with each campaign.

Use Instagram contests

Use Instagram contests

Contests are a clever way to rapidly accomplish lead generation. Instagram contests should offer great prizes for you to be able to influence people to engage. Those prizes can include design opportunities, giveaways, and more. For instance, brands like Starbucks often create cup design contests to get people to engage and garner shares and likes. It’s also a fun prize that lets the winner make a mark on the brand, if even for a short time.

Increase engagement by helping others

Neil Patel opened up Ubersuggest. It’s a free service that generates thousands of free signups for Neil. The truth? A lion’s share of these registrants never convert to paid customers. However, the more free trial users he has, the more people will convert to paid customers. In theory, he keeps getting paid customers so long as the trial is offered.

This approach proved to be successful in the long run. As more features were added to Ubersuggest more of these old signups turned into customers. That’s because the added features made the service more valuable and increasingly advantageous to people who initially decided it wasn’t worth the money. His traffic on UberSuggest also went up  the minute he announced that he is giving more features away for free.

The moral of the story: When you help people for free, signups increase as a result of what you’re doing. You too can experience the same phenomenon. Giving away things for free can get you social media fans and get your product in front of more people. This can work well in a variety of industries, from the old-fashioned food samples in grocery stores to customer education. It’s also useful in the tech industry: If you have an SaaS product, think of giving away free software trials on Instagram. In addition, you can spread goodwill. Many brands have experienced success with this approach.

What does helping someone out on Instagram mean? It means listening to their comments and feedback and using the opportunity to genuinely assist them should they face an issue. Corporate values are important, and you need to demonstrate this. With your business, the end goal should be either give things for free during these difficult times or help people any way you can.

Engaging with the audience doesn’t mean that you ought to limit responses to a single line or write an entire essay to help them arrive at a solution. In most cases giving their comments some attention is enough.

  • Add exciting elements like emojis to spruce your comments
  • You can also choose to reply with gifs
  • Instead of merely answering you can ask a question to fire up the conversation.

Engagement is also possible by going to competitor accounts and engaging with people who are already commenting and sharing on those accounts.

This way, the brand becomes more accessible to the common man. Furthermore, you get to bring friends over.

User-generated content is great for creating engagement

User-generated content is one of the most important steps you could take to get more leads. Briefly, UGC is content that followers of your brand are sharing and creating on their own.  It is a huge form of social proof. People tend to trust what other people say about a brand.

So, user-generated content can be used to get you leads. ASOS and other brands frequently use this step to encourage social proof and increase engagement.

What do you think of the tips and tricks directed to generate leads from Instagram? Do let us know in the comments below.

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

Yes, it is possible to do lead generation on Instagram. Here are 10 ways in how to get more leads on Instagram to try today.
Actionable advice for your digital / content / influencer / social media marketing.
Join 13,000+ smart professionals who subscribe to my regular updates.
Share with your network!
George Mathew
George Mathew

George Mathew is an expert on Instagram Marketing. George is an SaaS marketer who's worked with several brands like CrazyEgg. He's contributed to dozens of blogs and has been writing for the web for more than 9 years now.

Articles: 3

Need more sales from your digital marketing?

Grab a free preview of my new book Digital Threads, the definitive modern marketing playbook for digital-first entrepreneurs and small businesses.

+
Table Of Contents