How Instagram’s Marketing Strategies Helped Me Grow a Small Business

How I formed a new demographic for a 30-year-old business

It is no secret that Instagram is a great place to market your business and grow your social media presence. Many companies have used social media to grow their brand and reach a demographic that traditional media just can not do. Over the past few years, it has become increasingly relevant for businesses to have a social media presence.

Growing up in a family business, I was always around people who had an amazing work ethic, determination, and truly knew the value of the dollar. One side effect of having a business for 30 years is sometimes they can be reluctant to change. As time went on I knew in order to continue to advance, my family’s business needed to start a social media presence. Instagram has built many tools to get insights for your posts and really created a way for anyone to know about your business.

I created an Instagram for my family’s small dry-cleaning business and did not think much of it. At first, the growth was small having anywhere from 40- 100 followers for about six months. Once I followed a few of Instagram’s marketing strategies, I started to get increased engagement and a rapid following. People started to follow and come back week after week to see what we were posting. Many people even voiced they only found us through Instagram. The business started to see a whole new demographic of people which might not have been possible without Instagram. Here are some tools that I’ve learned running a business’s social media account.

Promotional Options

One of the first features that increased the business’s exposure was the promotional options that Instagram has. When choosing to make your Instagram a business instead of a personal account, you gain the feature of paying for your post to be promoted across the area. This feature was a game-changer that allowed some of our posts to be distributed across the area. It showed people what kind of work the business does and started to gain the attention of people who never heard of us before.

Hashtags

I was always a believer that hashtags never worked until I started to use them the right way. I started to incorporate them in the background of a picture on Instagram stories so the user would not see them. I would also use hashtags that fewer people posted in to hopefully get noticed more. I think this really helped with engagement because posting in smaller hashtags allowed for a more niche group of people to find it.

Reels

Instagram Reels was a new feature that was added in August 2020. It was Instagram’s way of trying to compete with the popular TikTok app. To learn more about how to influence TikTok has on social media check out my article, How TikTok Revolutionized Social Media. Instagram Reels are pushed onto a dedicated explore page that lets millions of users see your post, even if they’re not following you. We started to participate in Reels and uploaded different stain removal processes and showcased the other services we provided. To my surprise, thousands of people started to view the Reels.

Post Unique Content

Even though Instagram provides all of these tools and services to get your content out there, if you don’t post quality content, then people are not going to click on it. We started to do fun weekly posts of our services and hashtagged them using alliterations. Every Saturday would be #sneakersaturday and every Tuesday would be #takeouttuesday for stain removal pieces. We post Instagram stories of our retail stores and showcased anything going on that day.

Our Reels would consist of 10–15 seconds videos actually showing the stain removal process, pressing a garment, and actually showing the before and after the process. Video has become super popular on social media due to the familiarity the audience feels when they watch something. Instead of just posting a before and after, the audience gets to watch the stain be removed like they were there with us.

The Unspoken Rule

I started to see many trends of people following a rule that showcased how many times a week you should post on Instagram.

The rule basically states that you should post at least three Instagram stories, three in-feed posts, and triple the Reels. So if you post three Instagram stories you should post nine Reels. I don’t think this is a legitimate “rule” but it certainly helps to post this amount of times in a week. By doing this, it creates the algorithm to favor your page and continue to recommend your page to others. I tried this rule out for a week and was very surprised at the results. I created a list for myself to schedule out the post and make sure I achieved the amount I was supposed to post.

Results

I started the challenge on a Thursday and by Saturday my Reels were getting upwards of 3,000 views. For a small business with only 950 followers, that is quite a lot. Throughout the week, people were engaging more on my post and began to see an increase in followers. In one week the follower count went from 950 followers to 1107.

After only one week of doing this trendy TikTok challenge, I think it certainly paid off. Not only did we gain more followers but the audience reached more people than ever before. I will certainly be using this strategy every week and I think many other small businesses should incorporate it too. This trend just showcases how powerful Instagram really is. If you consistently post on all of the features Instagram provides, then it will favor you back.

The Change in Demographics

One thing that Instagram has really taught me is it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been in business, things are constantly evolving. From the beginning of 2020 to now, the business demographic has changed so much. Before having a social media presence the demographic was people ages 40–65, families, people who worked a 9–5, and people who live within a twenty-mile radius of the store.

After having a social media presence, the demographic did a complete 180. There were still the regular customer's ages 40–65 but now younger generations ages 18–39 were coming in. They would come in and say they found us through Instagram and never knew that we were here. Also, people that live in a 25–60 mile radius were starting to make the trip to see us. This is thanks to the geographic promotional tool that Instagram has implemented.

Another factor of the new demographic was people started to bring in different items to get dry cleaned. One of the most popular items to clean now is sneakers when a year ago the business did not even offer that service. Showcasing our before and after’s and other weekly posts, allowed the younger generations to feel like they could trust us with their delicate pieces. The audience got to know us more on a deeper level and started to become invested in what we were doing.

Going Foward

Instagram is a powerful tool that can completely change your business. The use of their different marketing tools allowed my family’s small business to develop a whole new demographic. Posting consistently and posting good quality content will definitely distinguish you from other companies or brands.