When it comes to promoting your D2C brand, you can adopt a digital-first approach rather than going after traditional marketing methods.
You need to be on a digital platform that can get your brand directly in front of your target customers.
Among all digital platforms available out there Instagram perfectly fits into that role.
Instagram has plethora of opportunities that you can take advantage of when it comes to building brand awareness, driving sales and revenue for your D2C business.
Let’s get started.
What is Direct-to-Consumer (D2C or DTC) Business?
A company that follows D2C business model manufactures products at its own facility and sell them directly to consumers without the need of a middle-man entity.
A middle-man entity can be wholesaler, distributor, retailer or an online marketplace (like Amazon, Rakuten, or Flipkart).
As you know, global ecommerce industry witnessed a boom for the past few years thanks to improved logistics, higher adoption of digital payments, availability of affordable internet and smartphones.
This helped many manufacturers and FMCG companies to embrace ecommerce for selling products to their target customers online.
With the popularity of social media platforms and direct messaging apps, these businesses can now interact with their customers directly.
This paved the way for D2C business model in which manufacturers and FMCG brands will have greater control over product pricing, branding, marketing, and sales.
Nowadays, new D2C businesses are popping up in every retail segment, whether it be consumer electronics, fashion, cosmetics, food and beverages.
Even traditional retailers and FMCG companies have realized the potential of going D2C.
Some of them have launched their own D2C brands and others have started acquiring D2C companies in their respective niches.
If you look at D2C ecommerce sales in the US, it is being projected to reach approximately $175 billion by 2023.
Even in emerging markets like in India, D2C brands are popping up fast and it is being projected that the country’s D2C market estimated to reach $100 billion by 2025.
D2C is here to stay in the long run and social media played a critical role in carving out this segment from the B2C ecommerce space.
Among all the popular social media platforms out there, Instagram is the ideal marketing channel to promote your D2C business.
Why Use Instagram For Promoting Your D2C Business?
As we know, Instagram is world’s third most-popular social media platform with over billion monthly-active users.
After being acquired by Facebook in 2012, Instagram has become a major communication, marketing, and advertising platform for businesses irrespective of their size and niche.
For the past few years, Facebook has been incorporating many features into Instagram that are ecommerce-friendly.
Instagram in its recently published Instagram Trends 2022 report says that over 1 in 4 teens and young adults are expecting to shop directly from social media feeds and special in-app features.
In addition, nearly half of young people who are interested in new shopping experiences are keeping up with their shopping interests on Instagram.
Compared to other social media platforms, people like to see and interact with content posted by their favourite brands on Instagram.
When it comes to Instagram, about 90% of users at least follow one brand/business page.
Also, 50% of the users are more interested in a brand when they see ads for it on the same platform.
Instagram has been pushing its short-video feature (called Reels) as online video consumption has been on the rise since the pandemic.
And, they have been supportive to content creators by introducing monetization and brand collaboration opportunities.
This made Instagram the most-preferred social media channel for brands to run influencer marketing campaigns.
Hope the above-mentioned reasons are convincing enough why Instagram is the perfect D2C marketing channel.
13 D2C Marketing Tips for Your Instagram Business Page
Here are 12 marketing tips to promote your (newly launched or already existing) D2C brand using Instagram.
1. Optimize Your Instagram Business Page
When you set up your Instagram business page make sure that you optimize it for creating a (great) first impression for your target audience when they visit your page.
- Choose your brand logo as your profile photo as it is instantly recognizable to your target audience. The image should be of high quality and not pixelated.
- Make sure your Instagram page name is same as your brand or company name. Do not use the name of your Instagram handle (or username) as your page name.
- Include your brand name in the Instagram handle. Don’t add weird characters in it and try to make it simple.
- Make sure that you add your page in the right business niche category so that your business page appears in the ‘suggestions’ feed of people who follow similar business accounts.
- You can incorporate target niche keywords in your Instagram bio that will help people easily understand what you’re all about. You can also insert a branded hashtag and your brand tagline as well.
- Add a perfect call-to-action (like visit my site, shop now, grab the offer, etc) before the website link in the bio.
- You can add certain Stories into ‘Highlights’ placed below your bio.
- Include your WhatsApp number as well in the contact info section of your profile. You can check out this article on how you can leverage WhatsApp to build local business presence.
For example, check out the Instagram page of Mamaearth which is a D2C personal care brand based in India.
You can see that the brand has well-optimized their page in order to target the right audience.
Also, the company uses their brand colors (from its logo) in most of its posts as it help in establishing trust and familiarity to your audience.
Since Meta has integrated WhatsApp in Facebook and Instagram, you can add your WhatsApp number on your Instagram page as well.
2. Set Up Your Instagram Shop
Since your D2C brand comes under ecommerce segment, you can set up an Instagram Shop on your page.
It will help your target audience (or followers) discover your products easily. You can showcase your new launches, best sellers, and products with limited offers.
This increases your sales as your customers can make a purchase decision much quicker.
For example, check out the Instagram Shop of Dollar Shave Club which showcases all of their popular and newly-launched products.
With an Instagram Shop, you can use photos, carousels, and videos to make shoppable posts and thereby lead to sales.
It also helps in collaborating with influencers and you can find more about it in the later part of this article.
This way Instagram Shop helps in diverting tons of sales traffic to your Shopify or BigCommerce based shopping website.
3. Tagging Your Products on Posts and Stories
Using your Instagram Shop, you can tag products on your posts and Stories.
Since Instagram doesn’t allow URLs anywhere else other than in the bio, product tagging is the best way to entice users to clickthrough and purchase.
You can tag up to 5 products per image or video post and up to 20 products for carousel posts.
When it comes to Stories, you can tag only one product per Story and you have create more Stories to tag more products.
You can also customize the product tag by changing the text and color of product stickers.
4. Push Out More Reels
Thanks to platforms like Youtube and Tiktok, people consuming video content has been on the rise and it has been accelerated thanks to the pandemic.
Also, video is more engaging compared to image content on social media platforms.
This made Facebook to compel users to create more video content on Instagram in the form of Reels.
We know that Reels is the short-video feature introduced on Instagram after witnessing the huge popularity of TikTok.
When it comes to ecommerce and D2C brands, short-videos help in building product/brand awareness, acquire new followers, provide useful and value-added information.
For example, US-based smoothie delivery service Daily Harvest makes tons of recipe and how-to videos based on their smoothies and other vegan food products.
Here are 9 awesome Reels ideas for amplifying the reach of your D2C brand:
- Product highlights or tutorials
- Share customer feedbacks
- Record yourself giving tips
- Introduce your team and showcase routine office activities.
- Behind-the-scenes videos like product manufacturing, packaging, delivery, etc.
- Share quick and encouraging messages
- Recreate old Instagram posts and Stories into Reels.
- Address burning questions
- Provide useful checklists
Also, Meta has started showing Reels on Facebook platform and that means you can target your niche audience on Facebook also.
Also, you will find new content ideas for your next Reel from the comments section.
You can check out this blog to get more Instagram Reels tips to promote your small business.
5. Instagram Checkout
For the past two years, Instagram has been testing new feature called Checkout.
It enables users to purchase the product found on Instagram without leaving the app.
The process of buying the product via Instagram app is same you do on an ecommerce website.
Currently, Checkout is a closed beta program that is available for a dozen of larger brands and the feature is available to people in the US.
When it is out of beta, Checkout-enabled posts will look like organic shopping posts but they keep users within the app even after making a purchase.
It may impact your ecommerce website traffic, in the short term.
Your customers will get a great first impression when they get faster and seamless shopping experience. In time they will come back to know more about your brand.
These Checkout-enabled posts will appear in people’s Instagram feed, Stories and in the Explore tab.
There might be a selling fee that charges brands rather than from customers.
Even though the amount is undisclosed at this time, Instagram will make sure that it is affordable and worthwhile for ecommerce brands.
Once this feature is out of beta you can let Instagram know that you are interested in using Checkout.
6. Create Highly Engaging and Shareable Content
Posting only sales content on a daily basis gives you zero results and it will be a complete waste of time and resources.
Instead, you need to create highly engaging and shareable content.
When it comes to single image posts, you can use memes, infographics, memoirs, photos of your team and happy customers.
You can even use single-line, catchy tweets and brand conversations from your Twitter marketing campaigns.
Some of these posts especially memes will get shared many times (as DMs, reposts, Stories) by your followers and other brand pages.
For multiple-image or carousel posts, you can use the same ideas mentioned in tip #4.
If you have an active blog on your website, you can reuse the blog content to create carousels.
Make sure that you respond to all the (relevant) comments under your posts as people will start to take interest on your brand and will come back as followers.
This way your Instagram page can build an active and engaging audience as followers. At this stage posting sales and promotional content will indeed convert into sales.
7. Make Stories that are Interactive
Stories is one of the best ways to connect with your target audience and make them coming back for more.
Other than using Stories to promote your new Instagram post, you can use it tease new product launches, upcoming live sessions, or company events.
You can reshare your followers’ content (UGC) via your Stories.
Also, you can utilize interactive stickers (like polls, quiz, and ask me a question) to make your Stories more engaging.
Among all the stickers available, use ‘Link sticker’ to divert Instagram traffic to your website. It’s very helpful for blogs and product pages on your site.
Above screenshot is the Story created by Indian eyewear brand Lenskart to showcase their eyeglasses and used Link sticker to divert their (interested) audience to their product page.
You can also use the Reels ideas shared in tip# 4 to create awesome Stories.
8. User-Generated Content for Building Trust
User-generated content (UGC) can help in establishing trust for your brand. It is a great way to involve your existing customers in your promotional campaigns.
You can start by reaching out to them and ask for a review of your product they purchased. You can ask them to share a photo on Instagram and tag your brand to their post.
This way, you can easily reshare it on your page and give credit to the customer.
Not only this makes the customer feel special, but it will help your D2C brand look trustworthy, and draw in more profile views.
For example, Away (which is an American luggage and travel accessories brand) leveraged UGC to promote their pet carrier bags.
Another of way getting more UGC is by asking your followers to tag you (place a message in your bio) in order to get featured in your posts and Stories.
9. Collaborate with Influencers
Most content creators you find on Instagram are influential in their respective niches.
The social media platform has rolled out collab feature that enable two Instagram accounts to collaborate each other.
You can use this feature to invite content creators in your niche for a collaboration. It can be for a new product launch, awareness campaign, or a product tutorial.
Keep in mind that most influencers (especially those with 100k+ and 1M+ followers) ask monetary payment for product promotion and others ask freebies or product samples as payment.
Instagram has rolled out branded content tools that help an influencer to tag you in their branded post as “paid partnership”. It is applicable to image post, Reel, Stories, or Live.
There is small subset of creators called nano-influencers with >10K followers who create content for their highly niche-specific and engaging followers.
They can spread brand awareness and create word-of-mouth publicity for your products. They are much more affordable (to collaborate) compared to their bigger counterparts.
You can use influencer marketing platforms like Aspire.co, Klear, Influence.co, Upfluence, and #paid to simplify your search and connect with influencers.
10. Engage with Other Brand and Creator Accounts
If you want to increase profile views and followers organically then the best way is to engage with content from other brand accounts.
First, you need to find and follow those brand accounts that fall in your business niche. Also, follow content creators that have audience you can target.
Instead of just liking posts that appear on your feed, comment on those posts that you think relatable to your brand.
Respond to Stories of other brand and creator accounts as well.
If a creator or a brand finds your comment thoughtful or entertaining, they will choose your comment as ‘Pinned comment’ under their post.
Since your comment is placed at the top spot of the comments section chances are people will visit your profile and follow you.
Sometimes, your comments may get featured by other pages in their posts or Stories.
In time, other brands and creators start to engage with your posts and boost its organic reach.
11. Going Live on Instagram
Going live on Instagram gives your D2C brand an opportunity to interact with your target audience (or followers) real time.
Instagram allows you to schedule a live session and your followers will get notified via Stories and push notifications.
You can conduct an ‘Ask Me Anything’ session, live interview with an industry expert, product announcements, and company news updates.
In the beginning, you can conduct live sessions for few minutes to half-an-hour. Note the time when majority of your followers are online.
Through live sessions, you can build trust, authority and expertise in your niche.
12. Instagram Ads for Faster Results
Like its bigger counterpart, the organic reach on Instagram is now very limited.
But you can expand your reach and visibility further by investing a part of your marketing budget in Instagram Ads.
If you want to reach your target audience based on location, demographics, interest and behaviours then paid advertising on Instagram is an effective method of doing so. Keep in mind that Instagram ads work on following marketing goals:
- Brand awareness
- Traffic (website clicks)
- App installs
- Instagram post engagement
- Video views
- Reach
- Conversions (on your site or app)
If you are new to paid advertising space, check out this awesome Instagram ad tutorial created by Ben Heath.
Don’t just rely on paid advertising alone as it will lower your ROI and increases your overall expenses.
The best way is to run both organic marketing and paid ads campaigns for your D2C brand with more importance to the former if you are playing the long term game.
13. Reach Out to Your Existing Customers via DM
Find existing customers in your follower base then reach out to them via DM. You can request them to bring new referrals in return for cash rewards or other incentives.
Final Thoughts
I hope this article gave you valuable insights on how to promote your D2C brand on Instagram.
Keep in mind to experiment with various tactics mentioned in this article and you will definitely come up with your own strategy that give you desired results in the long run.
Let me know what do you think about D2C marketing using Instagram in the comments.
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