B2B Marketing on Instagram

For all its many benefits and advocates, Instagram remains a mystery to many businesses. Particularly B2B. How can you reconcile the traditional norms of B2B marketing – strait-laced, professional, formal – with a platform that’s monopolized by influencers, foodie-filters and wanderlust? With the help of Render Perfect Productions, let’s look at some ideas for B2B marketing on Instagram.

Show the Numbers

We all know how important numbers are – and they can be a significant advantage on Instagram, too.

Not only does original data make up interesting, original, shareable content, it can help build the case and show how sorely your product or service is needed. (In short, it’s a good way to sell without actually selling.)

It’s incredibly easy to build surveys and generate original data using SurveyMonkey and then share your findings with the world.

Promoting the stats through images or basic animated graphics helps spread the word in a creative, visually appealing way

You don’t have to generate the data yourself, though. You can simply use graphic design software to visualize interesting data generated by other brands (with credit given, of course.)

And of course, as always with Instagram, you don’t have to simply add these posts to your feed. You can use Story functionality to create content.

Lifestyle Product Shots

Dealing in physical products? Product photography is an obvious choice for Instagram content.

What’s important, though, is to recognize that the product photos you share on Instagram shouldn’t be the sort of plain, white-background product detail shots you see on website product pages. Bluntly, that’s too dry. Too boring.

Instagram, if nothing else, is an aspirational lifestyle platform.

It’s at its best when it offers excitement and inspiration – spiking the senses with vibrant colors and authenticity.

That’s why you should show your product in the ‘real world.’ In use, if possible.

“Ok sure, but that’s easy for B2C. What about B2B?”

Well, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel here.

Instead of showing your products on a plain background, photograph them ‘authentically’ in environments where you’d see them actually being used.

Behind the Scenes

The saying that ‘people buy from people’ has shown itself over decades to be true.

As a visual channel, Instagram offers a tremendous opportunity for brands to personalize themselves by showing the ‘making of’ their products, or sharing candid shots from around the workplace.

This can be done quickly and inexpensively.

It often just requires the forward thinking of grabbing your phone and snapping something.

If you want to invest more significantly, follow the IBM model – they actually have a ‘lifeatIBM’ Instagram account which serves two purposes: humanizing the brand, and advertising daily life at IBM to potential hires.

But don’t run before you can walk: sharing ‘behind the scenes’ content on your main company account is a great first step.

Day in the Life

This is an expansion of the above idea – but post and show what actually goes into a whole day making/selling your product.

This helps humanize your brand and show how hard you work.

You can do this as a series of posts, or use Instagram’s stories feature. (The latter is probably better, as stories disappear after 24 hours and your followers won’t get mad at you for spamming their timeline with multiple posts. HOWEVER, you can ‘highlight’ stories so they remain on your timeline forevermore.)

Create a Dialogue

Social media is at its best when it’s a conversation – a two-way street.

So, as much as the onus is on us as publishers to put content out there, it’s also incredibly valuable to listen!

Instagram can be a great way to invite opinion and kick-start debate on a topic.

Some great questions to ask might be:

• What do you think about the latest industry events?
• What do you love about your job?
• What do you NOT like about your job?
• What’s your biggest frustration at work right now?
• What advice would you give your 21-year-old self?

There’s a double benefit here: not only is it good for you to learn a little about your audience and understand them better, it’s also a good way to generate engagement – likes and comments.

Your audience engaging with your content sends a powerful signal to Instagram’s content delivery algorithm: “We like this content and we want to see more of it!”

This can increase your serve rate and make sure more of your audience sees your future content organically. A real win-win!

About Render Perfect Productions:

Render Perfect has been built from the ground up to service growing businesses and help them realize their full visual storytelling and digital marketing potential. We’ve created a service offering and skill-set that spans video production, post-production, motion graphic design, 3D animation, web development, and video marketing strategy. Our insight and experience allow us to help clients make better planning decisions and get more out of their video production effort.