Demystifying Instagram marketing for tire dealers

If you’re not using Instagram to promote your business, you should seriously consider it. The world’s biggest photo-sharing social network offers incredible opportunities for companies to engage with consumers and reap the financial rewards with little outlay aside from time. Marketing using Instagram is fee-free, is easily done and, done right, can really boost your business.

What is Instagram?

Instagram is a mobile-based photo- and video-sharing social network with more than 400 million monthly active users. More than 40 billion images have been shared to date and Instagram generates an average of 80 million photos a day. It’s only been around for six years, but the community has shown incredible growth in the U.S. and worldwide and will only get bigger.

I sell tires. Why should I be on Instagram?

Simply put, marketing your business through Instagram works. The platform offers a unique way to showcase your culture, people, products and services to users in a more informal and engaging way than other social networks. It’s clearly good for business as 85 percent of the world’s top brands are on Instagram. In the tire world, these include Continental, Pirelli and Michelin, to name a few.

Of the platform’s 400 million users, 30 percent are in the U.S. So we’re talking about a big potential audience. Instagram posts generate a per-follower engagement rate of 4.21 percent, which is 58-times more engagement per follower than Facebook and 120 times more than Twitter.

How do I market on Instagram?

Instagram is an easy and efficient way to show off what you do. You can post images and short videos of new products and services or photos of your people at work. Behind-the-scenes pictures or videos can offer interesting content for your followers, especially if it’s something your customers frequently ask about.

Another way is to ask customers to share their photos — perhaps images of your tires on their new ride, or showing off their new UHPs at their car club weekend rally. Just let them know you’re on Instagram and which hashtags they can use, and remember to like and comment on the photos they share. Ask if you can repost the photos to your own followers.

Share photos that are relevant to your business and of potential interest to your followers. Is the new Lexus featuring Bridgestone tires? Do you stock them? Post a picture or share one posted by Lexus or Bridgestone.

How do I build an audience on Instagram?

Once you are on Instagram, you have to let people know. The first step is to add the link to your Instagram account to your website. You can post on your Twitter and Facebook accounts (if you have these) that you are now on Instagram. Instagram works with these networks, so it’s easy to put an Instagram post through to your other social media platforms. If your website has a blog, write a “check us out on Instagram” post or add your Instagram account to your other marketing.

What kind of pictures should I post?

Try to keep on point and post things that are only relevant to your business and industry, but keep it varied. People will get bored if you only post images of new tires for example. You need to post regularly to maintain engagement with your followers.

Consider whom your customers are and what they’re interested in. If you’re at the racetrack or a drifting competition, get up close and take some pictures. Don’t post them all right away — post a couple on the day (use lots of relevant hashtags) and then post one every now and again over the next few weeks. Don’t forget your audience is really folks in your local community, so if you sponsor the local baseball team, take some photos at the game (get your signage in the background, if you can) or get their public relations person to give you some images you can post. Again, use lots of relevant hashtags (for example, #baseball, #jackson, #vikings, or #govikings) so interested users can find you more easily. If you have a stall at your local county fair, take pictures to post to show you’re involved. Do you run competitions and giveaways? Post images with the winners.

Instagram is primarily a photo- and video-sharing platform, so the most important thing to remember is to only post high-quality photos. Instagram is where people and companies like to show off their images, so if your pictures are blurry and second-rate, you won’t look professional and you’ll be outshone by the competition.

Photos on Instagram are usually square (because that’s how the platform displays them) so keep that in mind when using a camera or smartphone to take pictures. Most smartphones will have an option in the settings to take square images — or you can crop the photos afterwards in the app itself.

If your photos aren’t the right size, there are also free apps like InstaSize or InstaFit that make it simple to crop your image to the right dimensions.

How do I convert that audience into customers?

The best way to convert your followers into customers is with a call to action. Post exclusive deals on your Instagram or run giveaways and promotions. You can post an image offering discounts to your customers if they show they follow you when they are at the register, for example.

Giveaways are a great vehicle to get people talking about your brand or business. You can post an image advertising your giveaway, and ask users to enter the competition by reposting the image using a special hashtag. You can then search that hashtag to see who has reposted it and pick a winner. This will get people doing your marketing for you by sharing your image and talking about your business and promotion, and it will drive more people to your Instagram profile and, in turn, create more followers.

Advertising on Instagram

While it’s entirely free to post pictures onto the platform, businesses can also post “sponsored” pictures — which are essentially ads. This means your image will be seen by many more people because, even if they don’t follow you, your image will appear in their stream. There is more information on the Instagram website.

Measuring results

You can easily track how well your Instagram content is performing, see what works and what doesn’t, adapt your strategy and tweak the kinds of images you post. Check each post and analyze the number of comments, likes and shares and see what kind of content engages people best. You might be surprised at what kind of posts do better and what content your customers and followers will share and like. You can check your engagement rate for each post by dividing the number of likes and comments on a post by the number of followers of your account at the time the post was sent.

As long as you are committed to posting good, regular content — making sure to interact and respond to your followers and engage them in interesting ways — you can make Instagram marketing work for your business.