This is where you need to focus if your brand’s audience is women.
If you are browsing through marketers’ and specialists’ insights, trying to figure out what to watch out for when planning your marketing strategy for 2018, then you are sure to have noticed they all keep saying the same thing: Focus on Instagram and its tools, from micro-influencers to its ephemeral Stories content. This platform is all the rage right now.
Well, you know the numbers, of course. Instagram has today 800 million monthly active users, 500 million daily users, 75% of them located outside the USA. Plus, 25 million businesses are already active on the platform. Its popularity comes alongside with another big 2018 marketing trend experts keep mentioning: the emphasis on the human factor of the brand-consumer interaction. New research, with terms such as emotional analytics, focuses on the need to reconsider the use of social media in business and to treat it not as a means to boost sales, but as an emotions generator. It’s not just about likes, clicks and shares; it is also a matter of creating emotion and measuring the customers’ feelings towards a brand, since the market-moving millennials, as well as the younger Gen-Zs, are digitally savvy enough to know when they are being bluntly treated as buyers. This is the case for all social media, of course, but the direct, quick, effortlessly impressive (praise the photoshooting smartphones!) and ephemeral character of Instagram is ideal for authentic, emotionally charged interaction.
Especially if you are targeting millennial women. Social media in general is still considered by far the best way to reach an audience, but, interestingly, recent research revealed that 40% of millennial women, in particular, actually say that Instagram is the most effective way to connect with a brand (read more about it here > http://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/40-of-millennial-women-say-instagram-is-the-best-way-for-brands-to-reach-them-per-bustle/).
This finding naturally sets the trail for brands with a female audience, but it should not be surprising, considering that 68% of Instagram users are actually women. The platform is since day one being loved by them, a fact that has been studied already back in 2016. It is actually quite simple: Instagram is based on appearance. Since its main social function is sharing photos, it is ideal for fashion, beauty and design – fields that interest largely a female audience. What’s more, its tools give every female Instagrammer the opportunity to stand out with their looks, to be liked and adored. This does not mean that men are not interested in the platform; on the contrary, they are equally engaged and quite active. But there is a difference: more than often, the way they interact with their fellow Instagrammers does, in fact, strengthen the currency of female beauty on social media. The feeling of being admired and likeable cannot be overlooked; it is a very strong reason to keep returning to your feed…
Additionally, Instagram taps on an old need that drove people of the past to take pictures of their families, friends and family events, and present them by creating large, impressive, hard-cover photo-albums. This was a task usually taken on by the women of the family. Instagram is just a new, enhanced way to capture and share these moments and feel good about our way of lives, sociologists say (https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/06/why-are-more-women-than-men-on-instagram/485993/).
So it all comes down to positive feelings – and social interactions that generate them. Brands have to be part of this – to be another source of humane interaction that reinforces engagement. This actually works: 200 million Instagrammers actively visit the profile of a business every day.
Of course, social media success (or Instagram marketing success, for that matter) for a brand does not happen automatically. The popularity of social media has inevitably created a lot of social media noise, which means businesses need now more than even an effective strategy, in order to stand out and start making real connections with their audience. That’s where our social media marketing experts come in. Contact us to plan your strategy together.