How to Generate Leads with Instagram Influencer Marketing

Here's a simple truth: in order to survive and also prosper, businesses need to be profitable. For this, they need customers. And customers were once leads.

So it's not surprising that lead generation is at the top of the mind of any business, no matter how big or small. But with the business environment becoming increasingly competitive, it's getting more and more challenging to generate high-quality leads and fill the top of the sales funnel.

Attracting potential clients has never been easy and today fighting for their attention is proving to be even more challenging.

There are many ways to generate leads but one strategy that has been getting more traction recently is Instagram influencer marketing.

In this guide, we'll explain how to generate leads with Instagram influencer marketing and also include practical tips that you can use in your next campaign.

But first, why Instagram?

With billions of active users, Instagram is a lucrative platform for brands. It's a place where businesses of all kinds can find their target audience, connect with them through influencer marketing, or get in front of them with aptly targeted paid ads.

And there's more to it. Besides its popularity, Instagram also has a big variety of features and tools that help create engaging and high-quality marketing content and also promote it and push it to followers.

Just think about it. There are short- and long-form videos, sponsored posts, posts created in partnerships and collaborations, and many other options. If your leads are not interested in Reels, they might be interested in beautiful drawings. The possibilities of different types of marketing content on Instagram can feel endless but in a good way.

All of this makes Instagram a go-to platform for people to consume content on a daily basis. Your leads can find almost everything there, from entertainment to self-education.

This is what makes Instagram so attractive for lead generation. To put it simply, it is an extensive database of both influencers and target customers.

Besides, Instagram influencer marketing can go in different directions: you can use it to generate leads or to create brand awareness… or even both.

Understanding why Instagram is such a popular channel is one thing but using it successfully to generate leads requires a bit more than a mere understanding of the reasons behind its popularity.

If you decided to use Instagram influencer marketing to generate leads, you first need to find the right influencers, as obvious as it might sound. The right influencer is the person who can help you facilitate the dialog between your brand and potential clients (also known as leads).

Here are a few ways you to look for an influencer for your brand.

Run a contest with your followers to find out if there are any potential brand advocated among your followers. If you have an account on Instagram, chances are that you might have several influential people who follow your brand and can even be fans of yours.

And the good thing is that we're not talking about celebrities here. A micro-influencer with a few thousand of engaged followers might be the sweet match you're looking for.

Looking within is not the only option.

Sometimes you need to venture out and keep an open mind. Even if you have millions of followers on Instagram, your competitors probably also know what they are doing and they are also out there trying to generate hot leads.

So open their Instagram brand accounts and have a look around their followers. Is there anyone you consider a good fit?

The two methods above are manual and time-consuming. You might not have time for this.

The good news is that there are a lot of tools for identifying and finding the right influencer. Since Instagram influencer marketing has been around for a while, influencer search is a rather automated process. For example, you can use HypeAuditor, a platform with access to millions of public Instagram accounts.

By using tools, you can find the right influencer faster and more efficiently (assuming that you already know what type of influencer you're looking for).

Once you've identified the right influencer, it's time to reach out to them and get them interested in a collaboration. Depending on whether they already have some sort of a relationship with you, it might be either very easy or quite difficult.

But as soon as you secured a good partnership, here are a few things you can do to make the most out of your efforts on Instagram.

It's all subject to your brief and individual agreements with each influencer but they'll probably be posting something about your brand on their accounts. After all, getting the word about your brand is what can generate leads in the first place.

You can amplify their efforts by reposting their endorsements and sharing them with your Instagram followers. This way, not only the influencer's followers but also yours will know about how great your product or services are.

This is one of the ways to boost your efforts by using social proof mechanisms.

Any relationship is about both giving and receiving, so when you work with an influencer, make sure that you offer them something valuable in return and that you fairly compensate them for their services. By respecting and acknowledging the work influencers put into promoting your brand on Instagram, you get a better and more beneficial partnership as well as generate more leads on Instagram.

Instagram is constantly introducing new features. For example, as of now, in some regions, businesses can add Action Buttons to their Instagram accounts to guide leads away from the social media platforms and drive them closer to conversion.

If you don't have the button yet or don't want to use it for some reason, you can put a link to your bio.

The main goal of using Instagram influencer marketing for lead generation is, as you can easily guess, to generate leads. So don't forget to use a clear call-to-action (CTA) and a link that will bring leads to a page where they can take the desired action: be it a registration, a free trial, a purchase, or anything else.

Don't limit yourself to only one way of promoting your brand. Repetition is a strong thing in marketing to generate warm leads. If you decided to use Instagram to generate leads, make sure that you repeat your message several times and via different types of content. Posting a Story with a link is a solid idea.

Free advertising is free advertising when an influencer uses the branded hashtags you provide to their audiences. Measure their audience's engagement level by seeing if the use of those hashtags is increasing in popularity. The #justdoit campaign launched by Nike is a good case in point.

The power of the Instagram community is sometimes underrated.

Hashtags are a very simple way for people who are not your followers to encounter your brand. By introducing specific hashtags that are unique to your brand and that associate with you, you can make your campaign more effective.

Who doesn't like a free sample?

If you're a product company, consider running a contest and offering free products to a few winners. It is one of the most effective lead generation tactics. It'll also help invite potential leads to engage with your content and share their contact details with you.

If you're in a service business, you can offer a free consultation, a free trial, or anything else, depending on what your business is doing.

By running a series of lead generation ads on Instagram, you can reach more people. The trick is that these ads are not pushed from your account but rather from an influencer. And let's be honest: people trust influencers way more than they trust brands.

You can either run paid social campaigns and promote the influencer's content where they endorse your brand or you can also run simultaneous ads from your own account with branded materials. In either case, ads are a good way to generate leads.

Using Instagram influencer marketing is a power move that will help you generate more leads if implemented correctly. But don't keep your influencer marketing in a silo separated from your other marketing activities.

Ideally, you want all of your efforts and channels to be aligned. By creating this alignment, you can guarantee that your marketing efforts will yield better and more tangible results.

Here's a list of best practices in influencer marketing to generate more leads on Instagram and build better partnerships:

A poorly chosen partnership can confuse your existing customers and attract the wrong kind of leads.

By having a balanced selection of influencers, you can get better results.

Make sure that their followers are authentic users. Working with an influencer marketing agency is also a good way for ensuring the quality of the selected influencers.

Don't micro-manage a content creator. If you've done good research and been careful with your influencer selection, chances are you've found a good fit for your brand. Trust that they know their followers and how to communicate with them in the best way possible. Be open to their ideas and don't try to control their creativity.

Clearly explain your expectations and requirements and don't hide any important information from your influencer. Your relationship (and the success of your marketing efforts on Instagram) will depend on how much trust you manage to build.

Once everything is up and running, it doesn't mean that you need to step away and leave the influencer on their own. Check in regularly on them and see if you need adjustments.

Even if Instagram influencer marketing is not something that you'll be doing very often, treat this partnership as something both meaningful and long-term. Influencers have accounts on many platforms: a good collaboration doesn't have to be limited to Instagram only.

In influencer marketing, there are various metrics you can measure: starting from engagement rates to website traffic and even customer sentiment.

But if you can measure many things, it doesn't mean that you should.

To generate leads, you need your KPIs to be about how many leads you managed to generate through a particular campaign. That's why the conversation rate will be one of your key performance indicators.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind when measuring the success of your influencer marketing and lead generation efforts:

• Determine your KPIs in advance. You need clear goals and objectives long before you start any planning.
  
• Monitor the ongoing campaign. By looking at your KPIs while the campaign is still running, you'll be able to course-correct if needed.
  
• Track the ROI of your efforts. For this, you'll need to calculate the true cost of your influencer marketing efforts. It can include agency fees, subscription to some tools, contract creation fees, and so on.
  

Influencer marketing is a powerful tool to generate leads on social media, especially Instagram. When used correctly, it can help your business drive sales and get new customers.

To use influencer marketing effectively, you need to keep in mind three important things:

• Your goals, expectations and communication should be clear.
  
• Finding the right influencer is one of the most important steps for your success.
  
• You need to measure the performance of your campaign consistently.
  
  

In short, influencer marketing is a great way to generate new leads for your brand. But if you're not sure where to start, drop us a message.

HypeFactory is a leading influencer marketing agency that has a lot of experience in running lead generation campaigns on Instagram.