Instagram 101 for Spray Tanning Businesses

Instagram is a visual platform that spray tanning businesses can use not only to promote their services but also develop a more personal connection with customers.

With more than 1 billion monthly active users worldwide, Instagram is one of the most popular social networking sites. It is also a leading platform for small business promotion.

Instagram gives you the opportunity to create a visual feed that can reflect your brand’s uniqueness, curate customer content, and differentiate your business.

Below are some tips for using Instagram to market your spray tanning business, salon, or spa.

Share Great Content

Instagram is all about the visuals, so it’s important to have a recognizable visual identity.

To make Instagram work for your business, you’ve simply got to have great images on your page. But you don’t need to be a professional photographer, and you don’t need a lot of equipment.

First, think about what you will showcase in your posts. In some cases, the content will be obvious: a clothing line might showcase its clothes, and a restaurant might post photos of its food.

Spray tanning businesses, then, need to:

• Showcase brands, products and services
• Display customer before/after shots
• Create short animated videos made with Instagram’s built-in features
• Post representative images (such as shots of the beach or a celebrity looking tan on the red carpet of a Hollywood premier)

Be creative! Some ideas would be taking awesome photos of the products or even making (quick) videos about the products. 

Your content should also attract your target audience. If your biggest buyers are females between the age of 24-30, make sure your pictures have a representation of that image in your content.

Once you decide on a content theme, go for a consistent visual look. That means consistent colors and filters and an overall aesthetic that is easy to spot as your fans scroll through their Instagram feed.

If you are launching a new product or service, you can use Instagram to provide a sneak peek into your latest offerings to your followers.

Utilize Instagram Stories and Shopping

Instagram is the perfect place to be creative when marketing your brand. Instagram Stories, in particular, is designed to boost audience engagement.

You can use Instagram Stories to offer discounts and run flash sales for your products. You can also run contests to keep your customers interested.

Instagram Shopping gives your business an immersive storefront for people to explore your best products. With Instagram Shopping, you can share featured products through your organic posts and Stories, or have people discover your products in Search & Explore.

You can add product tags on your post that would link to the products on your webpage. Doing this makes the buying process easier for the consumer.

Use Insights (Instagram Analytics)

Analytics are everything! You need to know how many people have viewed ad engaged with your post, visited your profile, and what types of posts give you the best engagement.

Instagram Insights are powerful because they can tell you when and how often people are interacting with your posts, viewing your profile, and many other key factors that should influence your overall Instagram marketing strategies, so make sure to check these regularly.

The exact metrics to measure and track will vary for each business. However, you should focus on metrics related to the social funnel. That means your business goals should align with one of these three stages in the customer journey:

• Awareness: Includes metrics like brand awareness, follower growth rate, and post reach.
• Engagement: Includes metrics like engagement rate and amplification rate.
• Conversion: In addition to conversion rate, this includes metrics like click-through rate (CTR) and bounce rate. If you’re using paid ads, conversion metrics also include cost-per-click and CPM.

Promote Your Spray Tanning Business on Instagram

This is just the beginning of what Instagram can do for you. Whether you are starting a new business or are a veteran of the spray tanning industry, we have some additional tips for you for making the most of Instagram:

View similar businesses outside of your market as well as your direct competitors. 

Examine which types of images and video content those businesses are posting. 

• What seems to be working in terms of getting a lot of engagement. 
• Are there mainly hard sells or soft sells? 
• How often are those businesses updating their accounts?
• Are they posting photographs? Graphics/fliers? Videos? Boomerangs?

Consider using a drag-and-drop graphic design tool.

• Canva and Adobe Spark are affordable tools that enable you to create a wide variety of posts, including videos, animations and more. Each platform offers free templates for Stories and posts.
• The Adobe Spark Post app makes it easy to create effective stories from your phone (a good way to kill time in between appointments!).

Experiment with Instagram’s features.

There’s no better way to understand a platform than to roll up your sleeves and use it.

• Check out the animated stickers and tagging options in the Instagram Stories editor.
• Follow hashtag feeds such as #spraytanning.
• Follow the brands you use and recommend, as well as healthy and beauty influences.

Once you see what is possible with Instagram, you won’t want to stop using it!