Digital marketing can be challenging to navigate as it can be hard to keep up with prevailing trends and movements across our social feeds.
Consumers have never had more access to products and features, and these have never more ubiquitous and seamlessly integrated as they are on platforms like Instagram.
On the one hand you have classical adverts taking up some of the feed, with the platform’s own social advertising algorithms pushing unique adverts to users that correspond with their social graph of preferences and interests.
This alone makes advertising on these platforms challenging as in some cases this means you’re competing directly against these algorithms.
What’s more, the evolving sophistication of the dialogue on social media means it’s all too easy to look irrelevant and out of touch with the current attitudes towards advertising, promotion and product placement on your accounts.
The best course remains to drive for deep integration and presentation of your personal brand, in a uniform way across your accounts.
The art is in striking the appropriate balance that makes this come off as if it’s effortless and unintended.
Low Information Processing
There are a variety of unique and interesting ways you can seamlessly integrate your personal brand, products and messaging into your social feeds in such a way that the focus is entirely redirected, or sublimated away from the promotional angle.
The way our brains process information means that we are taking in far more from our environments than we are actively aware of.
This fact has been recognized and utilized by marketers for many years and underlies the basic mechanics of how product placement in media passively drives consumers to point of sale for the product.
Lifestyle marketing is another manifestation of this wherein you present a slice of your experience to prospective consumers, such as your Facebook page, with the intention to up-sell them on greater exposure to the lifestyle and services you advocate.
After all, people don’t just want to know about the thing that is being sold, but also the type of lifestyle that is linked with the service, product, or experience.
Examples of lifestyle marketing run rampant on social media platforms like Instagram
Real Life Instances of Lifestyle Marketing
Examples of this popular marketing strategy include poker athlete, spokesperson and TV presenter Maria Ho who uses her Instagram feed (@maria_ho) to share her experiences travelling around the world participating in high stakes poker matches.
In addition to this, Maria shares footage and stories of her experiences behind the scenes of her TV presenting work on the likes of Deal or No Deal USA and American Idol.
This accomplishes several things at once, it pushes up viewership and web-traffic towards the enterprises she’s involved with, and it passively increases the clout behind her personal brand and name both in those spaces and beyond.
With these posts, Maria’s followers are given a unique, in-depth look at her day-to-day work, increasing the likelihood of loyal interaction now and in the future.
The same applies for celebrities or influencers oriented towards selling a range of physical products, for example Rihanna.
The superstar singer blends snapshots of her opulent lifestyle, and experiences on tour, with promotions at her page @badgirlriri with coverage of her new Fenty skincare range.
These are replete with calls to action and directed links to the brand’s own social presence on the platform.
There’s no doubt that these strategies directly allow sales revenue and customer engagement rates to skyrocket.
Featured Products
Instagram now offers the ability to click-through to feature products in social posts, which brings customers closer to point-of-sale with a minimum of friction.
Additionally, because posteres can also choose to display the product’s price tag directly on the photo itself, customers can browse items with ease, just like they would on a regular e-commerce site.
As such, looking at ways you can artfully include products you’re hoping to sell in your stories, videos and photos has great potential to draw in new customers.
In fact, 87% of Instagram users say influencers have convinced them to purchase products, and 70% state they use the platform explicitly for shopping due to the convenience and easy navigation experience.
As such, you can rest assured that if you are able to market your products effectively, there are consumers ready and willing to buy them.
While this amounts to turning Instagram into a giant product catalogue, it is important to note that the difference between a deeply integrated personal brand and a normal business profile, is in managing a synthesis between advertising, and personal authenticity.
As a rule of thumb, dedicating at least one in every three of your photos to simply sharing and interacting with the vibrant communities on these platforms will put you in good stead of achieving this goal.
