Home-based businesses, often referred to as HBBs, are small firms primarily operating from the owner’s home office. Limited in many regards when compared to big brand companies, HBBs are typically run on a very small budget.
Naturally, this financial restraint heavily reflects on their marketing resources. The lack of a sizeable budget severely limits their options when home-based businesses want to promote themselves, and often leaves them with no other choice but to pursue either free or cheap marketing channels.
This is precisely why Instagram Stories are such a great fit for HBBs hoping to promote their brand.
Instagram Stories are approximately 15-second long videos and images that only stay viewable for 24 hours. Highly productive and cost-effective, they are a great option for marketing regardless of what’s being promoted.
There are nearly 400 million active daily users of Instagram Stories, which is a huge audience by any stat or measurement. Furthermore, 20% of Stories posted by businesses result in direct messages with potential customers.
For limited budget HBBs, these kinds of numbers are like solid gold.
Now, for the downside of using Instagram Stories. Obviously, by this point, the marketing potency of this feature is hardly a secret. About 2 million businesses of various kinds use Stories on a regular basis.
This makes Instagram Stories quite a competitive sector for promoting brands, especially if what you are trying to market is a small home-based business.
But don’t let that discourage you – if you know what you are doing, Instagram Stories can do wonders for developing your home-based business’ brand identity.
What Can Home-based Businesses Get from Instagram Stories?
Make no mistake, Instagram and its many features are a full-blown marketing channel at this point. It’s a great place to build your brand’s identity, engage new followers and expand your reach.
Instagram Stories will enable you to do all of that.
This feature offers an immediate way to engage with the community in a direct, casual and amicable manner.
This approach is an ideal fit with home-based businesses. After all, friendliness is one of HBBs’ main natural selling points and it’s what separates them from big companies and makes them unique, so you should do your best to highlight it.
Furthermore, with Stories, you can add a personal touch to your company. Behind-the-scene looks at your brand and team help develop personality and build authentic relationships with your followers.
How Home-based Businesses Can Use Instagram Stories
While using Instagram Stories is easy to pick up, making them an effective marketing tool is a whole different story (no pun intended).
Here are some tips you should keep in mind if you’re just getting started with promoting your home-based business through this Instagram feature:
- Time the Stories well – Since Instagram Stories only last for 24 hours, you should try to time them as best as possible. While this can vary based on your followers, studies have shown that Instagram user engagement levels are at their highest on Mondays and Thursdays between 7 and 9 p.m.
- Make an impact in the first four seconds of your Story – Viewers’ attention drops significantly after four seconds with this feature, so it’s important to get to the point as fast as possible.
- Include a geotag in your post – By simply including a geotag, you’ll get into the relevant Stories for audiences in your geographical area. This can gain you 79% more engagement, and it will also feature your post on the “Stories of Interest” section for your specific location.
- Always include a link in your Story – Putting a link to your website in your Story will give you a 15-25% view-to-click rate.
- Use polls whenever possible – Asking followers to help you make decisions here and there can give your engagement a significant boost. Polls tell your audience that you value them as a community and that they have input into your brand.
- Carefully promote your products or services – As in all other forms of marketing, posting stuff that blatantly exists solely to sell your products is a big turn-off for potential customers.
Still Not Convinced What Instagram Stories Can Do for You?
If you’re still not persuaded just how much Instagram Stories can do to improve your business’ reputation, we suggest taking a closer look at the infographic below.
By analyzing some of the world’s leading firms’ activity on Instagram Stories, like Airbnb, Adidas, McDonald’s, Twitter and Mercedes-Benz, the infographic demonstrates just how much voice and personality brands can get from this Instagram feature.
A total of 30 different case studies were placed under the microscope for this infographic which, as a result, perfectly illustrates just how powerful Instagram Stories can be as a marketing channel – if they are utilized correctly.
While HBBs will certainly not be able to reach the marketing skies like the leading companies examined here, the infographic shows what promotional benefits Instagram Stories can yield for businesses of all kinds, regardless of their scope or bank accounts.
