Category: Marketing

With about 1 billion monthly active users, Instagram is an excellent platform to engage with your audience and tell them more about your business. And it’s not just because of the sheer size of the platform’s userbase — people engage with brands on Instagram 10x more than they do on Facebook.

A fun and effective way for brands and marketers to expand their reach and tap into new engaged audiences is through Instagram sponsored posts.

In this article, we discuss what Instagram sponsored posts are, how to get paid sponsorship opportunities, how much Instagram sponsored posts cost — and more! Let’s get to it.

What is an Instagram sponsored post?

An Instagram sponsored post is a type of ad. The person (or business) posting a sponsored post puts a budget behind it to reach a wider audience.

There are two different kinds of sponsored posts: those that brands pay Instagram for (a.k.a. promoted posts), and those that brands pay influencers for (paid sponsorships).

• Promoted posts, boosted posts, and Instagram advertising: Just like the other major social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.), Instagram has a native ad management tool. Brands can use it to create custom target audiences based on age, gender, interests, and location and serve sponsored content to these custom audiences.
• Paid sponsorships: This is when a brand pays a user to promote them via Instagram posts. Typically, this user (or influencer) has a personal brand and an engaged follower base of their own. When an influencer finds a brand in their niche that wants to sponsor them, they can charge a certain amount of money to create an organic post that features the brand’s products or services. This way, the influencer exposes the brand to an audience it might not otherwise have had access to.

In this post, we’re focusing on paid sponsorships—the kind where a brand pays an influencer to promote their products and services.

As influencer marketing became an established, valuable area of digital marketing in the last few years, influencers were not being transparent about their partnerships with brands. To reduce this, Instagram put out its branded content features, which allows influencers to tag the brands they’re partnering with on the platform.

What do Instagram sponsored posts look like?

Have you come across posts like this on the Instagram app?

This is an Instagram sponsored post. Paid sponsorship posts like this are usually indicated with a “paid partnership with [brand name]” tag that comes immediately after the user name.

Posts like this give the brands access to the organic insights of posts that they’re tagged in. They can see the date the post went live, the reach, and the engagement the post got. This data can help brands decide which partnerships bring the most…

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DigitalMarketer

The lovely content team here at DigitalMarketer works hard to make sure you have the best blog posts to read. But some posts require a group effort, and we decided to stop the rock-paper-scissors tournaments that decided the byline so that we had more time to write. Besides, we all graduated from kindergarten: we can share.

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If you’ve never heard of a T-shaped marketer, you might think we just made it up. But, we swear—it’s a thing. And it’s a pretty big deal.

The reason being a T-shaped marketer is something all expert marketers strive for is because it allows them to do more as a marketer. It gives them a basic understanding of all the necessary parts of marketing (like SEO, funnels, social media, influencer campaigns, etc.) and creates a cohesive marketing strategy.

When your marketing strategy flows perfectly from somebody becoming newly aware of your business (the first stage of the Customer Value Journey, Awareness) to ascending into your higher-tier products (in the sixth stage in the CVJ, Ascension)—that’s when you have a winner.

T-shaped marketers create and maintain that perfect flow between all of the different facets of marketing. Here’s how you can become one.

What is a T-Shaped Marketer?

A T-shaped marketer is somebody who has expertise in about 1-3 main marketing facets. For example, you may be great at content marketing. You have a proven track record of doing awesome things with your content and organic strategies.

But they’re also savvy in other marketing facets like email marketing, pay-per-click ads, building communities, and SEO. They’re just not as savvy as they are at the first two facets.

This is a T-shaped marketer.

The horizontal part of the “T” is the broad knowledge about marketing. It’s all of other facets that you’re familiar with—but not necessarily absolute expert in.

Then, the vertical part of the “T” shows the singular depth of knowledge on one subject. It’s the marketing facet that you are an absolute expert on. In this case, it would be content marketing.

T-shaped marketers aren’t specialists, they’re generalists with one specialty.

They can look at an entire marketing strategy and understand each part of it, even if they’ve only run a few PPC campaigns in their day.

And that’s what makes them so valuable.

What’s the Benefit of Being a T-Shaped Marketer?

Being a T-shaped marketer means that you can help clients with their marketing strategy from A-Z. While you’ll have your bread and butter (like SEO, social media, paid ads, or community building), you’ll be able to create winning strategies amongst other marketing facets by collaborating with your marketing team.

This is what makes T-shaped marketers so valuable. They’re not going to come in and create converting marketing strategies only from SEO—they’re going to do it across the board. They’re going to be able to put together an SEO strategy that feeds into a content marketing strategy that feeds into an email marketing strategy.

Businesses need T-shaped marketers to steer the ship of all of their marketing strategies, from SEO to email. T-shaped marketers do this by using their expertise and their knowledge of other…

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The Ad Grid is the method DigitalMarketer uses to increase our ad success rate 20 times over.
It’s how we plan, test, and measure paid traffic campaigns. It’s the way we organize and systemize our traffic strategy.

The Ad Grid takes the guess work out of creating an ad campaign.
It looks like this:

But, the Ad Grid is much more than a spreadsheet… the real power is the process that goes along with the grid.
Systemizing a strategic process is tough. Systemizing the creation of an entire traffic campaign is nearly impossible. But, after 3 years, we’ve developed a 7-step system we’ll share with you today.
At DigitalMarketer, we follow this 7-Step Plan no matter the product or the traffic platform because it works.
The Ad Grid is applicable to ANY business OR traffic platform.
Today, you’ll get all our inside details on the Ad Grid including, but not limited to…

• How we stopped creating “one-hit wonder” campaigns across ad platforms…
• How to achieve scale and move prospects through the customer journey…
• How we create high converting campaigns…
• How to systemize your traffic strategy – whether that means outsourcing, or having an internal traffic team…
• How to create a congruent market to message match…

Even better — we’re showing you a real campaign we launched at DigitalMarketer using this exact 7-step strategy. You’ll get the Avatars, the Hooks, the copy — everything.
Let’s first talk about the trap you’re susceptible to falling into if you’re not utilizing the Ad Grid. It’s one we’ve fallen into plenty, and one we want you to avoid. It’s…

The Dreaded One-Hit Wonder Campaign

One-hit wonder campaigns come about when marketers just make ads.
But there’s a problem with just making ads. It leaves you open to creating “one-off” ad campaigns without a system or a plan.
The one-hit wonder, if you will.
One-hit wonder campaigns usually target one or 2 different audiences, may test a few different images or copy variations, and that’s pretty much it…
…the person on the other side of the computer expects to launch this type of traffic campaign and BAM… sales and leads will start pouring in.
But, most of the time they don’t. And, if they do… the campaign is only successful for a few days or weeks.
Then, said person complains… “FACEBOOK ADS DON’T WORK,” or “XYZ TRAFFIC PLATFORM DOESN’T SCALE.”
What they don’t realize is that they’re creating one-hit wonder campaigns. They’re only giving themselves 1 or 2 chances to sell their offer.
Well, what if those 1 or 2 copy variations still don’t resonate with the audience? What if those 1 or 2 targeting groups aren’t actually people who are interested in what you’re talking about?
The campaign will fail.
Most people quit after this happens. But, you shouldn’t.
You should use the Ad Grid, and give yourself a foundation for success… and 20+ different chances at success, not just one.
One-off campaigns are…

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Engagement rates are the bread-and-butter of social media marketing.

Sure, metrics like impressions, likes, and followers are easy to report on and bring marketers a sense of accomplishment. But engagement metrics like comments, mentions, and shares are what actually tells you whether your social media marketing efforts are paying off or not.

The strange thing is that, despite how important engagement rate is, there’s no standard formula to calculate it.

In this article, we’ll cover what engagement rate actually is and why you should track it, and provide you with 6 foolproof formulas to calculate it properly.

What is engagement rate?

Engagement rate is a metric that tracks the amount of interaction your social media content earns per follower.

On social media, the term “engagement” usually refers to active interactions, rather than passive ones like views and impressions. Engagement can come in the form of likes, shares and comments, DMs, mentions, saves, click-throughs, etc. depending on the social platform you use.

Engagement rate is used to analyze the efficacy and effectiveness of brand campaigns. This is because users who interact with images, blogs, and videos are more likely to convert than people who just scroll past your content.

There are many ways to calculate engagement rate, and different formulas may be better suited for your social media objectives.

Why should you track engagement rate?

Many brands consider an increase in social media followers as growth. While this is true, an increase in followers will not do much for your business if said followers don’t interact or enjoy the content you post. You need likes, comments, shares, and other actions that show that your content resonates with your audience.

That’s why you should track engagement rate. Your engagement rate shows you if your audience finds your content engaging, relevant, and helpful. If your followers are willing to take time to comment and share your post, it means that they’re happy with your content and are likely to buy your product one day.

Some common engagement metrics

In the previous sections, we hinted at actions that count as engagement. But below’s an extensive list of these actions that show you that your followers are interacting with your content. You can include some or all of these interactions in your equations.

• Likes
• Reactions
• Comments
• Shares
• Direct Messages (DMs)
• Post saves
• Mentions (tagged and untagged)
• Profile visits
• Replies
• Clicks
• Click-throughs
• Link clicks
• Quote tweets
• Retweets
• Regrams
• Emails
• Calls
• Texts (WhatsApp or SMS)
• Use of branded hashtags
• Get Directions (only for Instagram accounts)
• Sticker Taps (Instagram Stories)

Six formulas to calculate engagement rate

Here are the most common formulas you need to know to calculate your social media engagement rates.

Engagement rate by reach (ERR)

Engagement rate by reach (ERR) is the most common formula for calculating engagement rate. It measures the percentage of users who interacted with your content after viewing…

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Tracking social media metrics comes down to using real data to evaluate the impact of your social presence on the outcome of marketing campaigns and, ultimately, revenue. It helps you see how effective your social media marketing efforts are and where you can make improvements.

While social media metrics are important, it can be difficult to figure out which metrics really matter for your business.

That’s why we’ve compiled a list of 18 important metrics and how to track them. These metrics give you insights into your brand visibility, audience behavior, and conversions, and will help you make more data-driven marketing decisions in the future.

Let’s dive in.

Breaking down the social media funnel

Before outlining the most meaningful social media metrics, let’s break down the social media funnel to see where each metric belongs.

A typical social media funnel is divided into four major customer journey stages:

• Awareness stage: Metrics in this segment show your existing and potential audience.
• Engagement stage: Metrics in this stage show how your audience interacts with your posts.
• Conversion stage: Metrics in this stage show how effective your social engagement is.
• Consumer stage: Metrics in this stage demonstrate what active customers feel about your business.

Each stage of the social media funnel has its own set of metrics and KPIs that show you the impact of social media marketing on business growth.

Social media metrics: Awareness

These metrics reflect your existing and potential audience.

Brand awareness

Brand Awareness is the attention your business gets across all social media platforms per reporting period.

Brand awareness can be indicated through a variety of metrics, including impressions, shares, mentions, and links. Reporting periods also differ. Some last a week, others last a month, and it can last up to a quarter.

How to track it

• Decide which attention metric(s) you want to measure to show your brand awareness.
• Select the reporting period you want to use for your brand.
• Use a brand monitoring tool to track all the times someone mentions your brand on social media, with or without an @.

Audience growth rate

Audience growth rate refers to how quickly your brand gains (or loses) followers per social media channel.

As more people sign up to social media platforms, brands will also gain more followers.

But you shouldn’t ask yourself, “How many new followers did we gain last month?” Instead, think about how fast you gained last month’s followers, and if you gained them faster than your competitors.

How to track it

• Calculate your net new followers on all your platforms over your reporting period.
• Divide your new followers by your total followers (on each platform) and multiply by 100.

Say your brand’s Facebook account has 10,000 followers in June (end of Q2). For…

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Your ability to track conversions is one of the most important foundational pieces of knowledge you can have in the world of paid advertising. 

Biggest Mistake Marketers Make With Paid Ads

The number one mistake we see marketers make across all advertising networks is incomplete or non-existent conversion tracking. Google and Facebook are the closest things to artificial intelligence that humanity has publicly accessible to us. They are trillion dollar machine learning mechanisms. Believe it or not, they’re working towards trying to accomplish your goal!

We want to make sure you have the principles that help you contend with any ad network regardless of what new ad networks pop up or what changes are made.

If all we do is teach you how to push the buttons and build the specific conversion actions inside of a certain ad network…that’s going to be antiquated information the second we publish this video.

Key Terms For Running Paid Traffic

Every landing page on your site should have a specific goal. What do you want each page to accomplish? This is true even if you’re not running paid ads.

On most pages, you should have a primary call to action. The primary call to action is the thing you want your potential customers to do. It is your conversion action. So the primary call to action is the same as the conversion action.

From a content marketing perspective, the call to action is the thing you want your customers to do. From a paid traffic perspective, the conversion action is the way you track it. 

Example: 

Call to action: Sign up for a free action plan

Conversion action: Fill out the contact form

A transitional call to action requires a smaller commitment from your customer. If the primary call to action requires a lot of time or money from your customer, include a transitional call to action. I would add these to the more important pages in your sales funnel.

A lead magnet is a great way to capture the lead and makes a solid transitional call to action. 

With a primary call to action and a transitional call to action on the page, you have the opportunity to capture the most traffic. And identifying those conversion actions helps tell the search engines what kind of traffic you want.

Examples Of Primary Conversion Actions

Different users engage in different ways. 

• Some people want to chat. 
• Some people want to call. 
• Some people want to fill out a form. 
• Some people love quizzes or surveys. 

Everyone will engage in different ways. It’s up to you to figure out what your target audience wants. It won’t always be just one thing, so offer a few different ways for people to take that next step.

Pro Tip

ALWAYS direct conversions to a custom thank you page. (More on that in just a moment…)

Form Submissions

If you don’t have forms on your site you should. These are one of my favorite ways to engage…

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Kasim Aslam

Kasim Aslam is the founder and CEO of Solutions 8, one of the world’s top ranked Google Ads agencies. Recipient of the Arizona Interactive Marketing Association’s 2017 TIM Award for Person of the Year, Kasim was also named one of the Top 50 Digital Marketing Thought Leaders in the United States by The University of Missouri in 2020. Kasim was hand-selected as the Traffic Coach for DigitalMarketer.com’s ELITE coaching program by their executive team. He is also the co-host of the long-running podcast, Perpetual Traffic. His book, The 7 Critical Principles of Effective Digital Marketing, was featured as one of the Top 100 Digital Marketing Books of All Time by Book Authority. Kasim helped launch the National Association of Child Helplines (NAACH) and worked with the United States Army, Intel, as well as a Gates Foundation-funded nonprofit, a 54,000 member PPO, the largest privately owned bank in the United States, and an Academy Award-contending documentary. He lives in Scottsdale, Arizona with his wife and two sons.

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