How Companies Use Instagram to Turn a Profit
Big companies will utilize any tool at their disposal to turn a profit. It is the nature of capitalism that profit turns the world. And as much as you may or may not agree with it, it is the world we live in.
The best weapon you have at your disposal is knowledge. How you use that knowledge is up to you. But today we want to level the playing field by helping you learn about professional instagram accounts and how companies use them accounts to turn a profit.
The Power of Knowledge
You might be wondering why you would ever need to know any of this. If you are approaching this article as a business owner, then the information provided will give you an insight into how powerful a marketing tool Instagram can be. When used correctly, you can boost your business and turn a profit easily.
From the consumer side, it is important to understand what tactics businesses use to market themselves to you. This helps you better spend your money and allows you to notice things that might not seem like an advert at first, but on closer inspection, you might see it actually is.
Direct Marketing
Most big companies these days will have a number of social media accounts associated with their brand. Coca-Cola has a Twitter. Mcdonalds has a Facebook page. And all of them will make use of Instagram.
The most obvious advantage of Instagram for these companies is the ability to visually market their products. Nothing helps sell a product better than seeing it with your own two eyes. Especially with food-related products. In the past companies would use billboards and posters to achieve this. But this required physically being near the marketing to experience it. With Instagram, they can reach millions of people for free.
By adding to their stories they can actively engage with their customers as well. This doubles down as it tricks people into engaging with them, without realizing they are being marketed to.
Indirect Marketing
The more sneaky ways of marketing are what you need to be aware of. It is through these methods a company is able to secure a lot more profit and spread their influence.
The main way of doing this is with product placement. Companies will pay popular Instagram accounts to sneak their products into their live streams or photos. In the same sense of doing this with a TV show, it lets their product be seen without drawing direct attention to it. Studies have shown that this form of advertising affects us subconsciously.
Companies will pay out hundreds upon thousands of dollars to influencers to have them talk about their products. But they manage to mask this by having the influencer talk about the product as if they aren’t being sponsored. This practice is slowly dying out as Instagram is putting safeguards to make sure users are informing people if their content is being sponsored and by whom.
Another sneaky advertising method comes in the form of comedy. Companies like Wendy’s have seen massive success by using their Twitter account to roast people and tell jokes, rather than advertising their products. But this has the knock-on effect of making people associate happiness and laughter with the product in question. These unconscious associations are worth more to a company than any direct advertising. Once a brand is in your unconscious mind, it has secured profit from you.