Paying for promotion on Instagram — Should you do it?

It depends…

When it comes to paying for promotion on Instagram there are a few ways to approach it.

Figure out your budget

This is totally different depending on the size of your brand and how much traction you have so far. Any size budgets is fine. A mistake that I made early on was spending 90% of my capital on producing products and putting them in stock. I had a ton of products and no one to buy them. I see this problem most often in startup brands to this day. Most reading this are probably just starting out and may have $250 — $2500 set aside for starting their brand. It is important to split your money up properly to make it work FOR you. I believe you should use as much of your capital as possible on marketing. Yes, as much as possible. Generating a following and building energy and culture behind your brand is much more important than having items in stock. Pre-sales are the one of the smartest things you can do and will allow you to deploy your capital in ways to build hype rather than gain stale inventory.

Getting the most for your dollar

There are a couple ways that you can work with Instagram personalities / celebrities / promoters. I have payed my fair share of dollars to accounts for promotion and can offer a few tips. You need to first consider who you are trying to get in front of, and what do you want to show / tell them. What type of person does your brand speak to, and where are they located on the gram in mass numbers? These are the accounts you want to try to get on. For example, I was selling some bomber jackets in the spring of 2015. I was right on time with the bomber jacket trend just heating up. I knew that I was trying to get in front of streetwear heads in general. I wanted to let them know where they could get a reasonably priced jacket — my website. I went for accounts that were streetwear fan pages for the most part. 20k-500k followers. Not the million follower acocunts. I went for smaller, cheaper, but more interactive accounts. I also went for link-in-bio deals, so people could click right through. This was before Instagram stories. Those are great place now to get attention, possbly even better than a post.

Working with big accounts

Pricing is always going to be something you need to look into. You will want to go into their bio and follow the instructions they have for contacting about business. Usually an email or DM is what they request. Hit them up and ask if you are willing to work out a deal for. A free product for a post is best for you. If you can get a post in exchange for a free piece of your product, that is almost always better then paying for a post. This particularly good for those of you with a bunch of product in stock that is not selling. Put it to work! Now, you don’t want to just send product to anyone with 1k followers or you will go broke real fast. Hit up 1000 accounts and find the best deals. Check their followers, check their ratio of likes and comments to followers, and figure out which accounts have the most active and loyal followers who fit the description of the type of person you are looking for.

Not all accounts will accept product for a post. Most big accounts will not. They may ask $100+ for a post. You need to figure out if paying the money will be worth it. Will the awareness they bring to you be worth the cost up front. How much product can you sell if they post about you? How many followers will you gain? How much hype will you build? These are questions to ask yourself before tossing around money. Also, don’t forget to negotiate. They are goign to try and up-sell you. Talk them down. Do a product / dollar deal. Mix and match and get the most that you can.

Tracking your progress

Make sure you are sending people somewhere and make sure there is an end goal. If you are promoting product sales, make sure your website works and is ready to be used. If you are having a pre-sale, make sure it is active and ready to rock and roll. Maybe your driving for followers or email list sign-ups. You need a single minded goal to track the success of you marketing campaign. Pick one and drive them there. Remember, people are lazy and you need to make it as easy as possible for them to and your account, website, or product. It is also a good idea to promote with one account at a time in the beginning if you can. This will help you gauge how much each account is doing for you.

There is a ton of details on this topic — I will post more about it this week

For more info see — https://www.udemy.com/streetwear-brand/learn/v4/?couponCode=MEDIUM

Hit me up with any questions!
Ben