How to Identify and Reach your Target Market on Instagram?

According to a survey by e-marketer, the number of social commerce buyers in the US was 80 million in 2020 and is expected to reach 90 million in 2021. This is why having a presence in social media has become very important for small businesses. Instagram is a photo-sharing mobile app that was launched in 2010 and soon took the world by storm. It has become a great platform to connect and engage with your audience and is one of the most popular places to sell things.

Instagram is becoming highly competitive with millions of channels-from technology to fashion, and wellness travel. There are currently more than a billion users on Instagram. For a newcomer, it is increasingly becoming difficult to get followers and conduct business on Instagram. One of the most common questions that small business owners ask is how to find their target audience on Instagram. In this article, we will show you how to find your target customer on this app, and get more leads for your business.

If you want to have a large number of followers on Instagram, you have to pinpoint your target audience, and figure out how to convert them into paying customers. You have to consider your audience first before you post. Move away from the idea of ‘customers’, to the idea of ‘audience’.

Easy Ways to Find Your Target Audience on Instagram

1. Awareness

When it comes to increasing brand awareness, Instagram is one of the best social media platforms to reach a new audience quickly. You have to make yourself searchable, and easy to find for people. You should get targeted traffic coming into your Instagram account.

2. Use Hashtags

You can use hashtags and research to find your target market on Instagram. For example, let us suppose you have a Travel profile on Instagram, where you advise on how to travel in a budget-friendly way. Your target customers are women, who would like to travel around the world, but can’t afford it. You have to find out what do these women or their families generally look for on Instagram. So, for your kind of business, you can create a hashtag “#budgettravel”.

If you search this hashtag on Instagram, you are sure to find lots of posts from people who are interested in budget travel. You can follow these people, comment on their posts, and have conversations with them. In this way, you can make them followers of your Instagram account.

You have to post high-resolution content of good quality. Once you post interesting and original content, you will get followers. These followers, in turn, will tell their family and friends about your awesome content. In this way, your subscriber base will increase.

3. View the comments on other posts

A great way to find your ideal client is to browse through the comments section of a post that is relevant to your business. Read the descriptions and look for people who would fit your ideal client market. Start interacting with people, and soon you will build a loyal audience.

4. Define and Create Buyer Personas

Having an in-depth knowledge of your target audience is an important part of Instagram marketing strategy. Small business owners must find out who their ideal buyer is. If your business already has defined buyer personas, you can re-use the same information. These personas will help you in product development, catering to the specific needs of potential customers.

Ask yourself for whom is your product designed for? And, what is your target audience looking for? You can also create an imagined buyer persona by collecting data on the habits of your shoppers.

Let us suppose, for example, that your company makes products that help people to take notes and organise information. So, your target audience might be busy professionals who are looking for tools to schedule their tasks, and increase productivity.

5. Find out your business’s Key Performance Indicators (KPI)s

Posting content and designing graphics on Instagram is not enough you have to find out the benchmarks and goals for these efforts, and thus calculate the ROI of the campaigns. While developing the strategy of how to use Instagram for business, determine what direction your company will move in the next 3, 6, or 12 months.

Suppose you have a KPI of growing your business by 25 per cent over the next year. To achieve this you can try out the following Instagram strategies:

• Add shopping icons to your Instagram posts.
• Offer discount codes to your followers.
• Promoting your products or services before launch, to build up expectations.

6. Look for accounts using job-titles

Suppose you are targeting coaches or virtual assistants. If you search for ‘virtual assistants’, you will get to see a bunch of relevant accounts. After browsing through their profile, you can connect with them.

7. See Suggested Accounts to Follow

You can look for accounts that have a similar profile to what you are looking for, and you can engage with them. Instagram suggests people that you might want to follow, based on the accounts you are already following. How exactly do these suggestions work? The developers at social media platforms are getting better at making algorithms that provide you with fresh and relevant friend suggestions.

8. Try to be seen in viewer’s feeds

It is not necessary that whatever you post will be seen by your followers on Instagram. Instagram uses some parameters to determine what feed a user can see on it. These are:

• How passionate a user is about a particular post?
• The type of accounts you regularly interact with.
• How recent your posts are?

Out of these three, the interest that a viewer shows towards a post is the most important.

9. Use the Discover People Feature

First, go to your profile and click on the menu on the top right side of your screen. Then you will discover people who have a similar profile as your target customer. The built-in contact-finding tool will access your phone’s contacts and tell you who among them are active on the app.

10. Look for Accounts Having Similar Target Audience

You can find your target audience by searching the ‘comments’ or the ‘like’ sections of posts. If these are similar to your target customers, you can follow them. If you find accounts similar to yours, you will find people who will fit into your target market.

More Instagram followers mean more credibility for your brand.

11. Create Shareable Content

In the world of social media, what good is content, if no one sees it? You need to create content that makes it easy for someone else to share on their platforms as well, besides liking and commenting. The reason why this is important is that when someone is sharing your content, their audience then has access to your content.

12. Conduct competitor analysis

One of the best ways to know your client is by looking into your competitor’s Instagram audience. If you are looking for a target audience, chances are they are following your competitors. To find out, you can go to your competitor’s accounts, and click on ‘Followers’. You will find a whole list of people who are following them.

People are sharing everything on social media, right from the breakfast they had, to the vacations they are going. Instagram is popular with marketers of brands but it requires user knowledge to succeed. We hope that this article will help your business on Instagram, a roaring success!

Also read:

1) Which of the Social Media Platforms is Important for Marketing?
2) How Can Social Media Help Drive Sales?
3) What is Facebook Marketing? Here's all you need to know
4) Business Idea: How to Sell Furniture & Home Decor Online?
5) OkCredit: All you need to know about OkCredit & how it works.

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FAQs

Q. What is the number of visitors on Instagram?

Ans. According to a report by SEMrush, the number of unique and active visitors on Instagram in October 2020 was 1.2 billion.

Q. What is the largest age group on Instagram?

Ans. Instagram is a young adult’s social channel. Studies show that more than 70 per cent of Instagram users are aged 35 and below.

Q. What is the auto audience on Instagram?

Ans. It is a feature that helps brands target a specific audience. Instead of sending the ads to the general category, it will send them to those people who might be interested in your product or service.