Instagram Targets Young Adults for Commercial Sales
Skylar Cummings
University of Minnesota
Abstract
In recent years, social media marketing has gained considerable popularity. It has become a powerful resource for businesses, entrepreneurs and advertisers to reach out to their target audiences and build long-term consumer relationships with enhanced engagement. Advertisers have turned their attention to Instagram, the influential social photography network. One strategy for reaching customers has been advertisements that may imitate posts made by one’s acquaintances. These native advertisements use the conventions of Instagram, and may, at first glance, be unrecognized as sponsored messages when browsing Instagram. Understanding consumer behavior is useful for entrepreneurs and marketers in developing more efficient ways of reaching the right audience to achieve their marketing goals. This study also will provide data on how fashion brands use the media of Instagram and how they promote it.
Introduction
Initially launched in 2010, Instagram boasts an incredible 400 million monthly active users.
Instagram is now one of the fastest-growing outlets ever launched, and one of the largest social media outlets for active monthly users. If youth market engagement is an integral part of your marketing strategy, marketers and brand managers need to understand Instagram’s position, and how to incorporate this channel effectively into their social media marketing strategy. Instagram allows instant and ‘in-the-moment’ editing and uploading of images, allowing amateur photographers professionals to edit photos. The built-in picture filters turn simple images into beautiful photos and can effortlessly render some of the most mundane moments into professional appearing highlight reels of the user’s day. Instagram’s market distribution has revolutionized the way brands and consumers interact: from a monologue to create active conversations, to engagement, which allows brands and consumers to connect on a more intimate level by humanizing the communication and by satisfying the functional and emotional needs of the consumers.
Thick Description
In a digital world, buying and selling goods online has become the most common, successful, and rapidly growing strategy on the internet. Instagram gives businesses unbelievable opportunities to target their chosen audience and is one of the fastest-growing platforms for commercial sales and advertising (Belanche, Cenjor & Perez-Ruenda, 2019). It effortlessly narrows down the types of advertisements that will target each individual based on how long we look at specific pictures, what we are liking, or what profiles we interact with the most.
Instagram has never been more significant than it is now, and between the public and private discourse, our data is constantly being collected and used as a marketing tool.
Re-utilization of promotional materials; by use of Instagram images, the e-commerce marketing program has helped the employees to work smarter rather than harder (Virtanen, Bjork & Sjostrom, 2017). It is, therefore, necessary for the management to ensure that they are monitoring the Instagram photos to exploit them in business strategy and thus increase the potential in wise utilization of their resources. It helps to curb the issue of producing more material available in the business process.
Production
Instagram was developed in San Francisco by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger and focuses on posting, image editing, group messaging, live videos, shoppable tags in stories, IGTV, hyperlinks, and many more. “As of January 2020, 35% of global Instagram audiences were aged between 25 and 34 years, in total, over two-thirds of Instagram audiences were aged 34 years and younger. This makes the platform particularly attractive to marketers.” (Clement, 2020). Teenagers are the most active users on Instagram while checking the application on their digital device at least once an hour. Using this data, marketers can brand themselves accordingly to the specific age groups. Some of the most successful ecommerce brands include ASOS, Fashion nova, Forever21, Herschel Supply & Co, and many more. ASOS is user generated and targets the average American to be brand ambassadors rather than celebrities. While this strategy has its advantages and disadvantages, ASOS plays off the trust users have with their peers, rather than a celebrity they do not personally know. Ultimately, word of mouth travels fast, and these companies heavily rely on that. Narges proposes that the influence of electronic word of mouth of Instagram users creates a consumer socialization framework by which the media can influence consumers. “The advantage of eWOM is that it attracts many customers with the least cost and high effectiveness ((Sheu & Chu, 2017) (Delafrooz, 2019)). Companies heavily rely on peer communications and influence from eWOM rather than spending money on well-known people to promote their products. Herschel Supply & Co uses the travel appeal to influence their customers. They post pictures of people in beautiful places hiking and using their backpacks and luggage as a necessity. These companies are extremely successful because they tend to show real people, doing real things, in real places, and looking good and happy wherever they are. How they relate to you is their biggest concern, and using the data we all put into the universe is how they successfully narrow that down. The book titled, ‘Marketing and Smart Technologies’ by Alvero Rocha, expands on the problems of free apps and the advertising that comes with it.
“When businesses come up with an algorithm that works, other businesses try to copy that because it is successful.” Rocha talks about individual agency and why humans do the things they do, and how we can see why certain algorithms work and why others do not. (Rocha, 2019.)
Not every company is successful in the ways they are attempting to attract consumers. One of the
patterns you will find on Instagram are these companies with millions of followers but not many
likes or customers. This could mean one of two things: they buy their followers, which is very
common but not a value-add strategy, or they are focusing on the growth and not the
engagement. Many businesses believe the more followers they have, the more customers they
have. Having more followers is simply a superficial statistic if the company cannot convert those
followers into customers. To convert followers to customers successfully, it takes
communication with them to understand why they follow your page and what they want out of it.
Posting pictures, making Instagram stories with polls, and following up with interactions on
these posts are key.
Most companies know that posting content with no direction only drives their followers away.
One of the many strategies these companies use is posting content that overall aligns with their
marketing strategy and brand image. Using Instagram analytics, they can see when their posts
have gotten the most engagement and why those posts were more successful. Instagram
advertisements use the advertisement program from Facebook, which possesses potentially the
most effective tracking capability. You may determine the venue, backgrounds, preferences,
habits, and more of your target audience. Besides, people who purchased from you or
communicated with you and someone like them may be targeted. (Lua, 2017). Mostly, our
privacy is being substituted by the need to generate product sales. Instagram is ever-changing
and has become more and more of a marketing machine. Our public and private spaces have
conjoined into one confusing sphere.
The article by Marius Geru explains how artificial intelligence is used on Instagram for
marketing strategies in ecommerce. “Everything you like, tag, or even scroll your mouse over and for how long is being tracked so that Instagram knows what you like and want to see.”
(Geru, Micu, Capatina, & Micu, 2018). Which leaves the question, what is acceptable and what
is not when it comes to the surveillance of Instagram and how we are being watched based on
communication ethics? Over 1 billion people using Instagram a month, “52% are female, and
48% are male. Two hundred million Instagram users visit at least one business profile a day.
Users will spend an average of 28 minutes per day on the platform.” (Newberry, 2019).
Instagram makes it easy to post where you are or what you are doing at any given time of
day. This app is being used all over the globe to update people about your life while also offering
the open opportunity for influencers and businesses to sell their products online with just a click
of a button (swipe up to buy). Our smartphones are the most common device people use for
Instagram because you can easily take a picture of where you are at any given time and share that
on your page.
Distribution
This platform has made it extremely accessible to buy and sell products directly from your phone
or other electronic devices from anywhere in the world. Although smartphones are the most
commonly used electronic device, you can also access Instagram from a kindle, desktop
computer, IPad, laptop, and even an apple watch. Instagram is one of the few social platforms
that highlight products and branded content, making it easy to drive sales on-site. With how
popular Instagram is around the world, elimination of the app and the subsequent loss of
ecommerce through Instagram would have a significant impact on society. This would take away
a mainstream avenue for thousands of companies to promote their products. They would then
have to pursue more costly ways to attract consumers, such as independent websites, catalogs,
bulk mail, or other social media platforms, which reach fewer people and have a less defined demographic. That being said, ecommerce has become a problem by taking over Instagram and
bombarding users with advertisements they did not sign up to see. Companies often find brand
ambassadors who will wear their clothing, or use their product, for discounts or free products in
return. Very few companies pay Instagram influencers, but offer free products for them to post
about instead.
Instagram attracts traffic by community building and through the use of very engaging and
visually appealing posts. It ensures better interaction than other social media channels. It became
clear that Instagram was more effective in maintaining people’s involvement compared to
Pinterest, Reddit, and Twitter. Instagram’s success meant that the company was involved in
business operations across social media that culminated in the customer becoming more likely to
use the service (Hosseini 7 Akbari, 2019). In cases where an individual consumer buys goods
from the company, they are more involved in the services being offered and, therefore, in the
organization’s majors. This means the company is growing the brand identity and a better
outcome.
Retailers use this platform to target young adults by displaying their products on beautiful,
active, famous people, etc. This makes it more appealing to the customer if they see someone
they admire or trust using a product or service. A study by Instagram found that “60 percent of
Instagram users say that they learn about products and services through Instagram, and 75
percent say that they take actions such as visiting sites, searching, or telling a friend after seeing
an Instagram post.” (Lau, 2017). To interact with their intended audience, marketers can fine
-tune their sales opportunities by utilizing the algorisms which show interest in the company’s
products and services. Instagram allows you to retarget the ideal customer. Although social media advertising needs
some upfront investment, social ads can do a lot to complement the organic campaigns you run
on your social media platforms. Social networking sites help you reach your ideal customers
with sophisticated targeting capabilities, which allows you to drive focused traffic to your site.
That is the perfect way to make the most of your marketing budget. By identifying your ideal
customer through the Ads platform, you will find new potential leads. It allows you to deliver
your ad content to those that display the same behavioral trends as your target audience. You will
boost results when you push targeted traffic to your brand site, no matter what your ad goals
might be.
Interaction
The plethora of opportunities Instagram has to offer gives consumers a broad spectrum of
channels to provide their goods and services (Rathod, 2018). Having surveillance behind
consumers, every move makes it possible to accurately market products and services tailored to
meet customers’ demands. The distribution, consumption, and interaction are continuing to work
together for each company to achieve their goals in sales, keeping their old customers, and
gaining new customers.
Customer link across various channels; the use of the Instagram app has played a significant role
in ensuring customer communication across multiple channels and thereby ensuring successful
business operations (Munoz & Towner, 2017). For example, in determining while one is visiting
the organization site, he or she can easily link the manufacturing process being conducted and
therefore attempt to purchase products and services from the company. If the consumer sees
Instagram pictures relating to the business process, they will go ahead and reconnect and support
the process and thus be very helpful in connection with the goods being supplied. Instagram is generally applied to the advertisement by ensuring that the products can be presented promptly
and quickly and thus providing a competitive edge.
If your target demographic is between 18 and 49 years old, Instagram may be a perfect way to
meet your future clients and engage your current clients (Khan, 2018). Instagram is more likely
to resonate with teenagers and young adults if you can share a viewpoint that only you can give,
so show what makes you special. The goal is to blend in to stand out; Instagram users enjoy rich
visual content and sometimes share the content of that high quality on their own. You have to
produce quality images and clips to engage your audience. The young audience of Instagram
loves new, innovative, and useful material. In the survey done by Alfred Lua, teens and young
adults define Instagram as 42 percent new, 37 percent innovative, and 32 percent useful.
Therefore, they would expect this content from Instagram brands.
The frequency to post is not as critical as the quality of the post itself. Posting more frequently is
perfect if your audience wants to see several posts from you every day, and if you have the
ability to regularly generate high-quality content. If your followers are not used to seeing
multiple posts from you every day, you may irritate them, which could lead to them unfollowing
you. If you do not have a team working on your Instagram page, constantly putting out high-quality
content, this can be challenging. A study by Union Metrics has shown that if you run out
of innovative material to post and stop posting as frequently, you will risk losing followers.
It is essential for each channel to have its own unique approach. Young adults tend to be drawn
to Instagram because it is clean, clutter-free, and visual. Knowing why the new platform relates
to your demographics will help you create material that is relevant to your message, but relates to
your target. The advertisement platform on Instagram enables much better targeting and provides
more options. Because Instagram does not have a universal best time to post, this research is perfect for shaping your posting time hypotheses. For example, as suggested by Lifewire, “At
lunchtime is when people get a break to do what they want; this often involves checking social
media.” If posting during or around lunchtime creates the most traffic, this might be a good place
to start.
One way to overcome the decrease in interaction rate is to follow the trend in Instagram user
behavior. Klear, a content marketing site, analyzed 149 top brands in eight sectors to see how
Instagram Stories were being used. They find that at least once a week, 45% of brands in their
study use Instagram Stories. Some of Instagram Stories’ most popular brands include the
McDonald’s, IBM, and Forever 21 (Lucas, 2017). The most prominent use of Instagram Stories
in the fashion industry was the sharing of merchandise promotions. I think it is fair to say that
companies are going to share more of what works for them. In addition, the use of Instagram
stories is probably going to utilize the capabilities of the application as well.
Adding the location of your post and using hashtags both drive the most engagement. Hashtags
are a feature on Instagram, unlike other social media sites such as Facebook. When analyzing the
top 100 global brands’ Instagram accounts in 2014, Clearly Calculated found that at least one
hashtag constitutes 88 percent of their messages. The use of hashtags and location tags leads
people to easily find your account and see your posts more often than not. Simply Measured
found in the same study that posts with at least one hashtag produced an average 13 percent
higher commitment while posts with a location tag earned an average 29 percent higher
engagement. It was verified in their 2015 study where they found that the highest average
commitment was earned by posts with hashtags and a location tag. After analyzing more than
Sixty-five thousand posts on social media, most companies now realize that if they want to increase their
scope and communication with Instagram, they must use hashtags and location tags where possible. TrackMaven found that nine hashtags tend to be the optimal number to get the highest
interaction. However, you want to be careful not to overuse hashtags. According to Icon square,
overuse of hashtags will result in a shadowban on your posts where your posts do not appear
under the hashtags. However, this will popularize the exploration and reach of these posts, and in
turn, lower the level of interaction.
Boosting User Generated Content (UGC) marketing is very critical in ensuring the successful
growth of related organizational sales and traffic. Instagram has recognized the great potential in
user-generated content. It illuminates the lifestyles associated with the brand name by displaying
customer images that are shared when customers use the products. Instagram gathers and
reposts these UGC images displaying the brand name of the company as a boost for more sales.
One of the best reasons for promoting your small business via Instagram is that your customers
spend time on the platform. This provides a large opportunity for small businesses that want to
reach their online audience. With so many customers using Instagram every It will be easy to
communicate with your target audience if you are equally as involved on Instagram. If you are
not already on social media, you may miss a valuable opportunity to communicate with your
customers and take on new leads.
Users are active on Instagram because it offers a fun and convenient way to network while
keeping in contact with friends and family and staying updated on what is happening around the
world. Consumers will be more receptive to your messages when you market your product
through Instagram. Usually, users are not on the Instagram platform, hoping that they will be
vetted for sale. However, that does not mean they won’t adapt and connect to their favorite
brands. Adults online between the ages of 18 and 34 are more likely to follow a brand on social
media. If users follow brands and link them to their social media profile, it is because they find the content and information relatable/useful in these campaigns. If they are looking for discounts,
enjoying content, or just want to learn more about the brand, social media consumers are more
open to engaging with these brands.
The justification that Instagram consumers might have for your brand message is that Instagram
will help you to be more communicative and show off a different feature of your products. The
material you share on these platforms adds to your brand identity and lets you reveal your
company image. Instead of only sending direct marketing messages, you can make real
connections with your leads and clients. It is typically something that customers are more
receptive to. It’s normal for you to meet online customers and companies to address their brand
issues and concerns. In addition, Most marketers see these social media channels as a more
personable way to better understand their audiences. By sharing engaging content that brings
value to your target market, you make your brand more accessible and familiar to new members
and existing customers.
Marketing through Instagram helps increase brand recognition. Instagram will help you boost
exposure, thereby increasing brand awareness. Your company account on any social media
platform will introduce new ways to share your content and show the voice and personality of
your brand. By sharing engaging content that brings value to your target market, you make your
brand more accessible and familiar to new members and existing customers. For instance, let us
assume that a new social media client stumbles upon your brand. They may not have heard of
your company before and are interested in learning more through your Instagram posts about the
product itself and the value it has to offer. The same condition can extend to your existing
customers. After seeing your social media posts on various networks, potential customers may be able to get to know your company better, which may increase their interest in buying from you
again.
You can address various audiences systematically, depending on the platforms of which your
company is involved. In order to reach specific audiences, you should work to bring links that
are more eligible back to your platform, instead of just throwing your marketing message out
there for all to see. By providing a consistent list of demographic values for your target audience,
the better the chances are for viable sales opportunities. This list may include sex, age, place,
preferences, following products, interests, etc. Knowing these values will give you a more in
-depth perspective on which medium of social media you should use to achieve your goal. This
will also help you initiate demographically targeted interactive communication that will have a
much higher probability of a sale. The more relevant this traffic is, the greater the chances of
improving success levels.
Fix
Teenagers have not only significant purchasing power but also control over what their parents
and peers are buying. If you have a teen consumer product or a product that appeals to a teen
audience, it will reap significant financial benefits by targeting this market segment. There are
numerous media outlets that will reach teenagers ranging from product placement in television
and movie series to online advertisements and a presence on social media. Teenagers also have
shorter attention spans than their adult counterparts do, so finding a platform capable of not only
reaching them but keeping their attention is another challenge.
As Instagram aficionados, meeting teenagers where they reside — on their mobile devices, is
cost-effective. Conventional types of advertisements, such as magazines, newspapers, radio, and television advertisements, are not teenagers’ marketing tools of preference. Their preferred
means of communication are less expensive for advertisers. For example, the cost of creating a
television commercial that teens are likely to miss via DVR apps is enormous, but sending
promotions via Instagram costs next to nothing.
Advertising to teenagers and gaining their loyalty and brand awareness will make your company
a customer for life. This stretches your ad dollars and increases your company’s potential
revenues. Establishing a brand identity that you can market to teens, that they market to their
friends in effect, helps you create a successful chain of consumerism repeating (Johansson 7
Engstrom, 2016). Even if teens do not buy big-ticket products with their own money, their
emotions are having an effect on their parents’ purchases. Teenagers, for example, may suggest
buying “cool” cars, brand name items advertised by their favorite stars or sports stars, or even
their parents might make the personal choice of clothing. Teens are also recipients of gifts
purchased by parents and family members, making their approval of a specific product and their
request invaluable.
Although marketing to teens may seem to have multiple benefits for companies, there are also
some possible downsides. Consumer watchdog groups also target businesses that they think are
pandering to or exploiting teens and their buying decisions, so careful messaging is important.
However, if the spokesperson is involved in controversial or unsavory practices, linking the
brand to a current celebrity — a common and sometimes successful practice — has the potential
to backfire.
Instagram marketing also helps you to set up your company as a leading think tank in the
industry. You should support items like forums and free downloadable content instead of simply
publishing advertisements for your goods and services. Advertising-free resources such as forums, whitepapers, and e-books provide useful information for people and build a relationship
with your brand (Sanches, 2018). Using such an inbound marketing strategy is useful for your
company because you can create curiosity among your customers and convince them why they
should be interested in your business.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Instagram is offering one of the best commercial sale outlets for young adults.
Businesses must change their marketing strategies with each new generation that is developing
and becoming part of the customer market. Instagram has revolutionized the market strategy of
targeting young adults for commercial sales. From a monologue to constructive dialogue and
interaction, they are allowing brands and customers to communicate on a more personal level; by
humanizing communication and addressing consumers’ practical and emotional needs. It is a
substantially successful marketing tool, which explicitly and indirectly creates brand loyalty and
confidence.
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