Your advertising agency should leverage Instagram marketing

Early in my advertising agency days, I remember whipping out my first generation Palm PDA (personal digital assistant) to check my schedule. It was around the time the agency I was working with was spitting out “furniture circulars.” For those that have no idea what I am talking about, circulars were sales flyers co-oped with the local retailer for newspapers across the country.

Ick! And ick!

Not sure what was worse: the huge-dot, blurry-web-printed circulars or the horrible yellow-blue screen of my PDA.

As a marketer with an advertising agency art background, Instagram marketing amazes and thrills me. It solves so many problems that our industry used to struggle with only just a few years ago. Our new phones with their big, bright, beautiful, high-resolution screens resonate visual clarity for the viewer.

The hashtag category search in Instagram, such as #Decor, gives us the ability to find consumers who are in the mood to shop for furniture. Replaced are the ugly circulars and newspaper ads that used to be delivered once a day.

And even better… You can partner with style-influencers to add emotional branding to the images and move consumers to purchase.

The furniture industry relies on captivating aspirational images. Instagram shares these images to an international audience with just a click. What about using video production for product demonstrations? Instagram can handle that, too. In fact, Instagram can even provide you with a link to that exact furnishing you liked, so you can buy it and make it your own… all without turning the newsprint page that left your fingers ink-stained like you were just arrested for lousy marketing.

There has never been a more exciting time to be a marketer, and I must say, an advertising agency. For a best-practices advertising agency, we brought video production and editorial photography in-house a few years ago. That way, we can control more of the content creation for such tools as Instagram marketing. We need to act fast for our clients. We have video editors and photographers on staff to respond quickly as trends take shape in the home furnishings industry.

Not only can we act fast but we are much more immersed in all the details of the product and that gives us an edge when crafting messages and stories. We become better equipped to tie in product attributes to consumer trends.

Me? Yes, I have to admit I have purchased from Instagram. It knows how to capture me in that gotta-have-it-now mood. Damn them : )

Photo Credit: ©2018 Crobar | Creative Leverage • Location: Sea Island, GA • Purpose: Editorial photography for home furnishings event