Brands are reaching out to mainstream and local celebrities to promote their product on social media platforms like Instagram. While Instagram product placement campaigns have been around for a while now, some brands are still testing the waters with it. If your brand is looking to implement an Instagram product placement campaign, here are some do’s and dont’s that you should keep in mind.
The Do’s
Do strike the right balance
Product placement on Instagram is an art, that strikes the balance between sharing something informative/ funny/ interesting, and promoting a product. You want the product and setting to work hand in hand to have the desired impact. Make sure that the theme you choose projects the product in the light that you want. The post should use a tone and language that is conversational, rather than technical jargon that you would find in the product details. Use emojis where it seems apt in the post. Instagram product placement posts are different from traditional ads. How they differ visually is that they try to capture an every-day moment where the product is used, rather than just highlighting the product as you would see in a traditional ad. Whether it is a bottle of beer on the sand or a bucket of fried chicken by the remote on a couch, you want to make your product placement to tell a story that users can relate to.
Do monitor and fine-tune your campaign
It will take a series of tracking, reviewing and fine-tuning product placement campaigns before you realize what works best for your brand. Not all product placement campaigns are about getting leads. No doubt, that is eventually what you want, but an improved site traffic volume or awareness about the brand, are also good signs, and a good place to start. You want to measure the returns that your product placement campaign offers with respect to these different parameters while evaluating how it performs. You want to push the performance needle further by experimenting with different hashtags or collaborating with a different Instagram influencer.
The Dont’s
Don’t only go by just the number of followers that an Instagram influencer has
Brands which go merely by the influencer numbers are not thinking ahead. The main intention behind the influencer marketing strategy is to get someone to act as an advocate for your brand and garner it more customers. What you want to look for is an influencer who is active, and who is genuinely interested in your brand. You also want to weigh their outreach in terms of how many people are engaging their content on Instagram. Ifluenz influencers undergo a review process to make sure that they have a highly engaged audience and that they post good quality content.
Don’t add the product placement as an afterthought
A common concern that businesses have is if audiences will react negatively to product placement on Instagram. What they try and do is to slip the product in so it does not seem too obvious. There is a good chance that your brand could miss out on sales opportunities due to this. Let’s face it, product placement is not new to the Instagram playfield. More importantly, product placement posts perform quite well on Instagram, even when users can see that it is a targeted product placement post. Statistics show that as of 2015, 65 percent of Instagram’s best posts had prominent product placements. Marketers and influencers should be focusing on creating engaging setting and the right picture for the post. You want to build your post around the product, visually and content-wise.