Insurance Lead Generation From Instagram
With approximately an average of one billion monthly users, the Facebook-owned Instagram is one of the biggest social media platforms on the planet today. It would be absurd not to seize this opportunity to find new audiences that could be interested in your brand and services.
In this article, we will explain how to utilize Instagram features to engage with customers you already have and how to market your brand to new prospects using this platform. From posting engaging stories, to collaborating with influencers, we’ve got you covered.
As the platform’s customer base grows and its coverage expands by the day, it’s only a matter of time before your competition realizes the potential that Instagram has for generating new leads and its crucial for your brand to not get left out.
Why Use Instagram For Lead Generation?
While Instagram may not seem like an obvious channel for lead generation, if used right, it can be a very powerful tool. Since this platform mainly focuses on videos and pictures, your Instagram marketing efforts will consist of creating such media for your profile.
Instagram marketing is different from other social media platforms since it doesn’t use a chronological feed. Simply put, the feed of any given user won’t show new posts in sequential order. Instead, Instagram uses a rather complex algorithm that shows content based on its popularity and user engagement rates.
If you haven’t done it already, a little bit of initial research will allow you to figure out what kind of audience you can reach using Instagram. Fortunately, the app comes equipped with an Insights function that enables you to research the demographics of your audience and followers in just a few clicks.
Digital analytics and analytics software used by Instagram are powerful tools. But just like any other tool, they are only as good as the person using them. Hence it is important to understand how exactly the Instagram algorithm works and how you can leverage it for your marketing campaign needs.
Similar to other methods of generating leads, becoming a part of an affiliate program is a solid way to start out on Instagram. In short, affiliate marketing on Instagram is a good avenue of generating leads since you can cooperate with fellow insurance agents, as well as with Instagram celebrities – influencers. The latter group usually has a significant following, which increases your chances of visibility.
There are hundreds, if not thousands of affiliate marketing Instagram accounts that wait for businesses to approach them with offers of collaboration. They were accumulating followers for a reason, right? So, it essentially boils down to your ability to research and negotiate, to find the right person for your Instagram marketing strategy.
How To Drive Website Traffic With Instagram
Right off the bat, you will need to make an Instagram account for business. This can easily be done via the Instagram app, by switching from an existing profile or making a brand new account. The only caveat to this is that you have to sign up with an e-mail instead of using your phone number. This way, you will be granted access to a business profile and to multiple users that will be seeing it.
The shiny new badge on your profile indicates that you’re not a regular page but a business. It is now probably a good idea to set attainable goals you want your marketing campaign to achieve. This can be anything from creating an online presence for your brand, raising the bar of your brand awareness objective, or finding new leads. The most crucial part of this is that your ambitions and specific goals of gaining Instagram traffic is attainable.
Use Built-in Visual Features And Metrics
The best thing about having a business account instead of a simple creator badge is that it gives you access to better analytics tools that provide insights into the performance of your account on the platform.
In case you don’t want to use third-party apps, don’t worry, you can still use the stock Instagram edit option to tweak the visual features of your posts to a great effect. Editing will be crucial, since Instagram is — contrary to other social media platforms — a visual medium, so your posts should look good naturally. That is, if you want to find an audience and grow your follower base.
Creating your own style will make your profile stand out from other companies operating in your sphere. But creating an aesthetic for your brand that will be recognizable is no tea party, especially if you are an inexperienced Instagram user. For this reason, we have a few tips that will help:
Add Website Link And CTA In Bio
When it comes to adding links and calls to action to your Instagram profile, the edit button is your best friend. Some users may wonder: “But how do I put a link in my bio?” or “How to link Instagram to my business website?” Let’s take a look at this feature in detail and try to answer these questions.
Assuming you have already created a business account, you can go to your profile and choose the edit profile option. After that, it’s fairly straightforward. Simply select the business information and contact options. Once you’re there, you can add an interactive button that you can use as a call to action with a clickable link. Due to Instagram’s limitations, you can only add up to 150 characters in your bio, so use it wisely!
Use Clickable Links From IGTV
Instagram action buttons aside, there are other ways to add clickable links to your Instagram profile. Get some video action by creating a short, 1 to 3 minute video, and post it to your IGTV (Instagram TV). Once posted, you will be able to add a link to your Instagram story. You can do this by pressing the link icon that will appear at the top of your IGTV video screen. This way, you will be able to select the video that you want to link to.
Create Content Plan And Post Regularly
To gain new followers you will have to post. Often. That being said, posting often won’t necessarily guarantee the instant success of your marketing efforts and a flood of new potential leads. Consistency, on the other hand, can help bring new followers and retain the bulk of those that are already subscribed to your account.
“Work smarter, not harder” is certainly an applicable phrase in regards to Instagram as a marketing tool for your insurance brand. For example, pinpointing a time of day when your target audience is most active is a good way to increase the reach of your content. Setting a certain time frame to post can have a greater impact on your audience.
Bear in mind that people who frequent social media platforms and follow your account, are not there to watch your sales pitches. They are on Instagram to be entertained and in some cases, educated. Although some might suggest that it is important to deliver as much content as possible, you need to make sure that your content and posts are of good quality, all the time.
Your options are not restricted to creating photo and video content only. Instagram also gives the opportunity to generate leads on its ads platform. You can create targeted ad campaigns to promote your services or offer special deals, or do both in one campaign.
Ask The Audience To Turn On Push Notifications
For the most part, people disable their Instagram push notifications completely. However, if they find content that is entertaining or has educational value, they may as well turn the notifications on. So, if you think that your content is strong and meets the criteria, you can run an ad between your insta stories to ask your followers to turn on push notifications on your profile.
Use Call To Action In Post Descriptions And Images
Conversely, you don’t have to run full-blown ads to achieve specific goals. Thanks to the power of editing, it is possible to add pretty much anything to an existing photo or video. Text, links, stickers, emojis, you name it. Using this to your advantage can be all the difference between success and failure.
Utilizing Instagram stories will make your brand stand out from companies that don’t bother with creating content that has a daily expiration period. Stories on Instagram are part of short-lived content, so it’s important to remember to update links and tags regularly, given that they disappear after 24 hours. Ideally, you would want to convey your message in the first few seconds of your Instagram story, considering how quickly a user can flip through or skip them.
Add Action Buttons To Your Instagram Profile
On top of the regular call to action options, there’s another Instagram feature worthy of highlighting – action buttons. At the time of writing, only business profiles on Instagram are allowed to have action buttons so turning them on will help your brand stick out more, compared to regular accounts.
Aside from the contact details and links to your company website and services you can also add a FAQ section that will answer the questions of your customers quickly and concisely.
It is also not a bad idea to use the “Highlights” section for its intended function – highlighting your best-performing stories. That’s right, stories that are added to the highlights section won’t disappear after 24 hours. You can use these sections as a means of archiving previously posted story posts that you’d like your audience to turn back to.
Use Hashtags Properly
Hashtags help in categorizing the content on your page so users can find it easily using search filters. For you, however, they should act as keywords that people use to find the content they need. Researching popular tags will help you understand the time it will take for your post to go up the ranks of positioning, and into the first section of recent posts. Take what you learn during your hashtag research and frequently use the best ones to predict how long your post will be trending in user feeds.
Albeit you can add up to 30 hashtags to any single post, it is recommended to use them sparingly so your post description won’t look too cluttered and you don’t drive down engagement with your followers. Although it is possible to use hashtags in a creative way to drive potential followers to your profile, you have to remember that their main purpose is to be informative and describe your posts in the best way possible.
As your follower count grows, it is probably a good idea to use tags less liberally. At the end of the day, you should keep in mind that the visual quality of your posts is just as important as content and tags. Whatever you post should be appealing to your target audience, since using hashtags will put your content alongside other accounts that use the same tags. By keeping the photo and video quality of your content high, you are making sure that it drives more traffic to your profile.
Utilize Cross-posting To Your Advantage
Thanks to Instagram’s integrations with other social platforms, you can automatically share the same posts to Twitter and Facebook, if you enable this function on your profile. If you use Instagram as an additional force of driving traffic to your main website or a blog, it is important to track the user clicks.
Adding a website link to redirect users to your company site is a good way to promote your brand and to get more traffic directed to your website.
Running Instagram Ads
One of the main goals of any social media ad campaign is to get users to click the links that lead to your company’s website. One of the most effective ways to do that on Instagram is by running ads. Most businesses with Instagram accounts use stories one way or another — it’s important that your company keeps up with competitors.
Instagram CTR
While you run an ad campaign on Instagram for real targeted traffic, it is vital to monitor how well the campaign is going. To do that, use the simple, yet efficient metric – CTR, or click-through rate. CTR will help you determine how many people actually visit the Instagram links you provide in your stories, posts, and in your bio section.
Tracking CTR helps measure website traffic from referrals and sponsored ad campaigns. A dropped CTR report is usually a good indicator that your content is missing its aim and something needs to be changed.
Work With influencers
Seeking endorsement from influencers can be an important step towards better brand recognition, since they already have a massive following and can promote your services quicker than regular advertisement campaigns.
In a way, teaming up with celebrity instagrammers will be beneficial for both your company and them. That being said, you need to make your brand attractive to them so that they’re more inclined to partner with you. Alternatively, you can give them free subscriptions to your services for them to review.
Depending on the goals you want to achieve, you may want to hand-pick people you would like to work with. While it can be difficult to find the right individuals to represent your product, you need to approach it strategically, with clear standards. After all, this person will be associated with your brand for a long time, regardless of contract terms and length. Surely, it will take some time to research potential candidates but the rewards can be favorable to your business.
Promoting Your Business Instagram Account for Lead Generation
Alternative avenues of generating leads through Instagram do not end with influencers. You can still push your pictures and videos to the trending section, using targeted ads. Depending on your target audience, the pricing can vary dramatically, which means that this method isn’t the most financially viable. Once you familiarize yourself with the Insights function, selecting a target audience for your content won’t be an issue. Casting the net too wide may not bring great results, so selecting a niche for your brand is a better solution when it comes to bringing new prospects using Instagram as a marketing platform.
Targeting The Right Audience
Proper targeting of your audience is key in generating insurance leads. Using Instagram stories lead generation is a good place to start. Without targeting, however, you probably won’t bring too many qualified Instagram leads straight away. If you have done your research, created a perfect target audience, and ran a targeted ad campaign, and still didn’t reach the expected results, there are a few more options to try.
Optimizing Instagram Profile
As an insurance business first, your main goal is to drive people towards your company website. This can be done using the methods we have covered earlier. With that, here are a few more unconventional tricks that you can utilize:
- SEO: Write keyword-optimized captions for your posts and combine them with the hashtags you normally use. Just remember, hashtags should be relevant to the content you’re posting.
- Geotagging: Geotags can tell users about your location, which can sometimes help if your business operates locally. Aside from giving context to people that might visit your location, it’s just another search filter that prospects can use to find your content. Since it won’t take a lot of time to add to your posts, use them as often as possible.
Even the most basic geo- tags and hashtags can help with reaching new audiences, which eventually will lead to generating new leads or building up the followership of your Instagram account.
Don’t Use Black Hat SEO Tactics
While it might be tempting to use underhand tactics such as black hat SEO in moments when you struggle to gain enough exposure, it is best to steer clear of them. Of course, you can get a short-term boost in the trending section, but it’s important to remember that using these techniques risks compromising your business account.
Promoting Your Brand
You can improve your Instagram CTR noticeably, when you use proper tools such as Google Analytics, Instagram’s Insights feature, or other proprietary web analytics plugin. Once you define who your potential customer base consists of, you can get to work and resolve the dilemma of how to generate insurance leads.
If you are a member of a referral program or work with influencers, you should encourage your partners to tag your profile in their posts. Whenever they post a story or photo that is somehow related to your company or insurance in general, encourage them to tag your profile, so other users can also visit your page.
One of the most effective ways of promoting a brand is simply by interacting with your audience. Things as simple as answering questions in the comments, liking the “hottest” comments made by your followers, and replying to the top posts in the “tagged” section will make the audience feel valued and appreciated by your brand.
Keeping Track Of Your Leads
Having a sophisticated system that can both track and manage leads can have its benefits. This is especially true in regards to qualifying your leads, old and new.
Generating leads on Instagram is not a walk in the park, and once you get them it is vital to keep track of them. Profitise lead management system (LMS) makes tracking your leads simple in a few ways:
- With just a few clicks, it is possible to get any information you need on your prospects. Age, location, source of the lead, you name it. The concise and convenient filtering tools of our software allow sorting potential prospects and finding the qualified leads your business needs.
- Additionally, we provide our clients with a call tracking system as an optional feature. With this in your sleeve, you will be able to track live calls and information that comes with them, including but not limited to: call duration, location, source of the inbound calls, as well as number of calls from a single lead.
- The whole system can be integrated with Google Analytics, which makes it a fairly powerful tool when it comes to researching new leads. This will allow you to inspect and analyze all prospects gathered via Instagram lead generation and other sources in one place.
- Finally, all data on your leads from all sources and services can be exported into a spreadsheet or a digital document in a single click, which makes storing the collected information a breeze.
Key Takeaway
Affiliate marketing is all about using a lot of different channels to find new, qualified leads but with the abundance of different associate programs out there it can be tricky to find a good one.
By signing up for the Profitise affiliate program you can ensure that you will work with a team of professionals. We offer support to our affiliates and advertisers that want to get an upper hand and use only the best lead generation techniques.
