How To Market On Instagram For Free: Handy Tools & Potent Tips

Surveys conducted by reputed business & analytics agencies such as HubSpot and Campaign Monitor show that numerous MSMEs across different sectors cite social media sites as a significant source of enhancing brand awareness and acquiring new leads.

And Instagram has been one of the leading social platforms for businesses across all sectors. Scores of start-ups and many mega-corporations utilize the visual nature of the social site to attract, engage and convert their audience and have been doing so with high levels of success.

What's more, an array of free auxiliary tools and several powerful marketing techniques allow businesses to market themselves utterly free of cost.

So, let’s take a look at how to market for free using Instagram.

Free Tools and Fantastic Techniques For Zero Cost Instagram Marketing

One of the biggest reasons behind Instagram’s swift rise as a powerful marketing channel is its visual nature. Visuals such as images, videos, graphics, etc., are much more appealing and easily digestible by the typical audience.

Whether online Assignment help services to start-ups promoting their word counter or AI analytics tools, Instagram is the best place for businesses to engage with stellar visual content. With more than 1 billion active users, exceptional features designed for the marketing. A plethora of free third-party planning & analytic tools, and decisive marketing strategies make Instagram marketing extremely profitable.

Below is a list of free third-party tools that make ‘FREE Instagram Marketing’ a veritable reality.

Five Of The Best Free Instagram Marketing Tools

1. Crowdfire

If you are looking to expand your follower base on Instagram, then the Crowdfire application is one of the best free tools that will provide you with everything you will ever need.

Use the desktop, Android or iOS version to manage your followers using different options such as:

• Copying followers to new accounts

• Crowd controlling

• Viewing new followers, looking at people who un-followed you and much more.

2. Social Insight

Curious about the effectiveness of your recent Instagram advertising campaign? The Social Insight App helps you monitor impressions & interactions, control level of engagement & follower growth and much more. The tool also allows businesses to link multiple Instagram accounts together and provide insightful information about the trending contents & the best publishing periods.

3. Smartly.io

This app is an automated Instagram marketing tool that allows businesses to reap the maximum benefits of their Instagram promotional endeavors. How?

All you need is to provide the tool with a campaigning idea, and the tool will generate thousands of variants for your ad campaigns. Choose the one that suits your business the most. Create, modify and monitor with Smartly and do so in the most dynamic way possible.

The app comes in both free and paid versions.

4. Buffer

Buffer helps marketers plan out their marketing & publishing schedules well in advance. The tool allows you to craft, curate and schedule both single-image & video post in a seamless and well-organized manner.

The free version of Buffer allows one to connect with three accounts max. Buffer for Business is the paid version that offers a central hub to manage more than three accounts at a go.

5. Canva

One of the best free tools for Instagram marketing, Canva is a design tool for creating unique visual content for different social networking platforms and blog posts.

Use Canva’s excellent features to create amazing Instagram Stories and customize them easily. The tool offers different kinds of templates with varying aspect ratio & size, allowing the marketer to design without any worries.

Just change texts, image or video, color and background as you want and publish them without hassle.

Now, let's look at some productive Instagram strategies that will boost brand exposure & enhance marketing ROI exponentially.

Tactics To Successful Instagram Marketing, Without Spending A Penny!

Whatever the nature or size of the business, Instagram can act as a perfect marketing channel that offers substantial ROI with minimal investments.

• Spice Up Your Feed The Right Way

Monotony is a curse for any content marketing. The same goes for the kind of content that people comes across on your Instagram feed.

1. It is important to shake things up and spice up the nature of the content that you publish. While audiences will love to know what you have to offer, posting the same stuff over & over again or repeatedly product/service promotions can have an aversive effect on both your viewers and your followers.

2. Instagram is a social networking platform first and an advertising platform second. Soc, socialize with the masses by offering them- a look behind the scenes, snippets of special events & achievements, etc.

Remember to mix and match for the best results.

• Use Instagram Stories

Instagram stories are an excellent way to connect and inform your followers about your brand. While visual content has its effectiveness, Instagram Stories can help you tell your audience more about your brand and business.

Stories allow you to use short video clips to deliver information, showcase your products, offer a glimpse of something new & exciting and keep them engaged & interested in you.

Here are some more tips about creating different kinds of Instagram stories for your business:

1. Tell a story about your brand. How it all started, the ups & downs, the struggles and the success stories.

2. Offer a glimpse behind the scenes. Show your followers how their favorite brand works and all the people who strive each day to keep them happy & satisfied.

3. Try to avail Instagram Business to schedule publishing Instagram stories.

• Use Branded Hashtags

Hundreds of thousands of businesses, both large and small, Operate on Instagram. It is easy to get lost in the crowd and never surface in the feeds of your target audience ever.

Branded hashtags are social media's version of word-of-mouth marketing. If you want to stand out amongst the crowd and reach a larger audience, then creating a loyal & engaged follower base and promoting your brand account name with a hashtag is the way to go.

Hash-tags helps connect like-minded followers and can even sow the seeds of a massive online campaign. Hash-tags need not explicitly promotional, but the topic & content they promote should align with the parent brand.

Branded hashtags can be instrumental in expanding the follower community of a brand, as evident from the popularity of @herschelsupply’s #welltravelled tag.

• Become A Verified Business

A verified business on Instagram commands significant authority. Followers look up to them, and potential leads flock to them due to their credible reputation.

Getting your business verified on Instagram will take some effort on your part. You need to establish your brand as an authority in its domain and offer great quality information & resources to your followers & audience. Post link to free ebooks, guides, blogs on your feed and publish how-to content on Instagram Stories or IGTV.

Share as much relevant information as you can bad become a reference point for customers in your sector. Plan proactively, strategize intuitively and deliver great content to earn that blue tick for your brand.

Well, that’s all the space we have for today. Hope this article helped readers find out the best ways to successfully market their business on Instagram without investing a single dime.

Author-Bio: Karen Hamada is a marketing professional working with a major digital marketing company in Louisiana, the USA. She is also a part-time writer & tutor with MyAssignmenthelp.com, the USA's biggest writing service offering tools & services such as APA referencing generator, CDR Engineers Australia, assignment maker, etc.