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If you are not boosting your video marketing with Instagram Stories, perhaps it is time you get started. Instagram has over 1 billion active accounts every month and according to a study, 47% of its users actually enjoy video ads in Stories. Just imagine how much potential you have in reaching and discovering new audiences with a single video ad.
But with more than 500 million accounts using Instagram Stories every day, how can your brand stand out from the crowd? With a little creativity and branded content that’s on point, you can use these five tips to help make your video marketing strategy more effective with Instagram Stories.
Instagram started out as a mobile-first platform. So it makes perfect sense to design your videos to be optimised for mobile when creating ads for Instagram Stories.
While ads in your Instagram feed once required a square format, Stories utilize a vertical format that follows the dimensions of a mobile phone. This gives it a more organic feel and makes it look seamless between friends’ stories as users swipe through their feed.
Clinique Korea created mobile-optimised ads for Instagram Stories for the launch of their new skincare product, Clinique iD, and found that it improved overall ad recall by 16 points. They used videos to simplify product instructions, even using split-screen creatives that optimised the full length of the vertical screen in Stories. Their success is a testament to how something as simple as ensuring your ad creatives are mobile-optimised can be highly effective.
With Instagram Stories, you only have 15 seconds to make an impression. But to truly grab the attention of your audience, you have to have powerful imagery that catches their eyes even at first glance. Otherwise, you might lose their attention and they won’t stay on for the full 15 seconds.
If done well, powerful imagery can also evoke people to action. This proved true for a food delivery app in India called Swiggy. By creating ads that featured mouth-watering images of food in a short video ad on Instagram stories, they saw a 17% increase in app installs compared to their other campaigns.
GIF stickers, polls, hashtags, quizzes… these are a few of our favourite things about Instagram Stories. So why not use it to create more engaging ads?
Hapa Kristin, a beauty brand from South Korea, used this strategy in their cross-border campaign which they ran in the US. Using polls to engage their audience and creating branded GIFs that they used to highlight call-to-action buttons in their ads, they were able to increase their click-through rate by 1.3x and received 50% more landing page views.
Such features, like GIF stickers, allow your brand not only to engage your audience in a fun manner, but also gives you a chance to show off your brand personality. Nearly two-thirds of millennials said that GIFs spoke louder than words, so by utilizing these fun features in your ads that are unique to Instagram Stories, you can connect with your audience better.
Stories touch people and make marketing messages much more relatable and effective. Instagram Stories is the perfect platform to, well, tell a story (no pun intended).
Popular fashion brand in India, fbb, took their Instagram Stories strategy to another level with a highly engaging, and interactive storytelling experience for its users. Instead of being a passive viewer, fbb created a series of ads that empowered their audience to decide what would happen in the next episode. Viewers could engage with their ads using features like emoticons, GIFs, polls, answers and filters. Their Instagram Stories campaign, called #PujoPerfect Love Story, drove a 28% increase in coupon redemption and even drove more than 20,000 store visits compared to their other channels.
Instagram is an influencer’s haven. There are around 500,000 active influencers on Instagram and more than half use Instagram Stories for sponsored campaigns. The numbers alone should be enough to convince you that influencers are a powerful force when it comes to driving an effective Instagram Stories campaign.
They are a great way for influencers to engage with their followers. As they are already organically part of their followers’ feed, you are more likely to grab the attention of your target audience. Endorsement from their favourite influencers also helps to drive better brand perception besides increasing your reach.
One way to do it is to identify influencers and get them to post a sponsored story, as part of a paid partnership with your brand. That is what Asus, an electronics company, did for their ASUS Zenbook Duo campaign. They worked with local lifestyle influencers in Thailand to create videos that highlighted the laptop’s best features and found that it helped to boost their top-of-mind awareness and also resulted in a 13% lower cost per reach.
As Instagram is a highly popular social platform among millennials that is always evolving and updating its features, be sure to watch out for new trends. Don’t be afraid to play around with new and different features and test what works best for your brand. By adding your own brand personality and putting your own creative spin to it, you can use these five tips to help you create a more effective video marketing strategy with Instagram Stories.
