Instagram Direct Marketing: Here’s How It Works [2023 Guide]

In this guide we will show you comprehensively how your company can develop an Instagram Direct marketing campaign.

What is Instagram Direct?

Instagram Direct is an Instagram app service that allows users to interact privately or in groups. Instagram Direct allows you to exchange photographs and videos, emojis, talk to a single person, or create groups, similar to WhatsApp but without the same freedom.  It is a very useful feature as it allows you to distribute messages, between general and main, so as to select them according to their importance.

Why do marketing via Instagram Direct

After the introduction of the Reels in August 2020, to fight the competition from TikTok, Instagram was able to continue its growth with the release of its own APIs, which also include Direct messaging.

The growth of the famous social network branded Facebook has long since attracted numerous brands to it, who have found an alternative way to create advertising campaigns, through influencers or opinion leaders.

This guide will provide you with all of the necessary information to use Instagram and its Direct Messaging channel as a marketing tool for your business. You’ll learn why Instagram instant messaging is so important and how you can utilize it to communicate with your customers.

Through Instagram Direct, you’ll be able to develop and manage a real sales or customer service team, allowing you to get the most out of this popular communication channel.

Find out how to use Instagram API Messenger in this article.

What are the Instagram Messenger API

With the launch of the new Instagram Messenger API in 2021, Instagram has revolutionized its Direct instant messaging channel, which is nothing more than a series of codes that allow external platforms  to connect to Instagram (in this case) for more precise management of the social channel.

In particular, with the introduction of the new Instagram Messenger API, companies will be able to communicate with their users in a much more professional way, making it very similar to Facebook Messenger.

It will be possible to use the message channel to receive massive volumes of chats, build sales or customer service teams, and make life much easier for large companies that use this social channel to communicate with their target audience.

In particular, the APIs will make it possible to:

a) Manage sent /received messages through Instagram Direct;

b) Improve the user communication experience;

c) Increase the response rate of messages;

d) Obtain a better overview for each client.

Use Instagram Direct to sell

Instagram is a great channel to advertise your business, in order to make your brand and the products or services offered better known. It is a very powerful marketing channel that is used today by millions of companies around the world.

To begin promoting your products / services immediately you won’t even need a website to sell your products; all you’ll need is a well-structured Instagram feed with high-quality content.

To accomplish this, you must first focus on the product, creating content that accurately defines and illustrates it, remaining active on the platform at all times, and using convincing language that is consistent with the brand’s values.

Starting a campaign with influencers or testimonials can be a solid option if they are committed to properly expressing product features with high-quality photographs and videos.

You can also create ads that link to Instagram Direct, to ensure that sponsors generate conversations on Direct, or add a chat widget on your website, to ensure that site traffic is conveyed to Instagram.

At this point, many of the users interested in your products / services will have the opportunity to start a chat with you, to receive more information about your offer, get good discounts or simply learn more about your brand.

For this you will have to manage the greatest number of inbound conversations, so that you can better look after your leads and finalize the sale of your products or services.

Find out how to use Instagram Direct for sales in this article.

Use Instagram Direct for customer assistance

Another way to use Instagram is to offer support to users via Direct, both in the pre-sales and after-sales phases. If your brand already offers its products or services on Instagram, then it will be very important that users know where to contact you in case of problems.

Allowing your target audience to contact you for help requests will build trust in your business and provide the groundwork for a long-term relationship with your customers.

One of the benefits of instant messaging is the ability to get responses and connect with users in a short amount of time, as well as to respond to their requests quickly.

As a result, you’ll need to make sure that your specialized customer care team is ready for everything, so that it can respond to and answer any potential issues or difficulties that your consumers may have.

Find out how to use Instagram Direct for assistance in this article.

How to start managing a team exclusively for Instagram Direct

To manage large amounts of conversations on Instagram Direct you will necessarily need to create a team of people dedicated to this activity, in order to interact effectively with your target audience.

If you want to get the most out of Instagram and its Direct instant messaging channel, you’ll need to connect it to third-party platforms that let you manage user data and interactions in actual CRMs.

However, be wary of third-party apps that may misuse your data and utilize it fraudulently, causing your company and its image to suffer.

It is possible to use Instagram Direct on multiple devices at the same time through our platform, all you have to do is create a Callbell account, integrate your Instagram page and immediately start inviting your collaborators.

You’ll be able to set up a team of up to 100 agents who will be able to answer to chats created by the popular social media platform and take use of all of Callbell’s features for an organized management of communications with potential clients.

Find out how to manage an Instagram Direct team more in this article.

Using Instagram as a CRM

Thanks to Callbell you will have access to a real CRM for Instagram DIrect, which will allow you to manage and organize the leads generated through Instagram in a professional way. Callbell will allow your team to:

1) Add user tags: you can tag a user so that they are more easily recognized by the team;

2) Add internal notes: the dedicated team will be able to share notes that they can read internally to improve contact management;

3) Create a welcome and goodbye message: you can set up an automatic message that will be sent to the user when the chat starts and ends;

4) Automatic routing: it allows you to automatically distribute chats to different teams based on the type of request, for example sales or support;

5) Integration of the other main messaging channels: aside from Instagram Direct you can also integrate Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Telegram;

6) Access the analytics module: all the information deriving from the chats is available, useful for improving the team’s processes;

7) Smartphone app: your agents will be able to download the mobile version of Callbell to answer directly from their smartphones;

8) Much more inside the platform.

Find out more about Callbell’s features by clicking on this link

These features will enable your team to handle all of your users’ data in a single CRM that has been designed to meet the demands of businesses of all sizes.

Find out how to use Instagram Direct as a CRM in this article.

Create ads that re-direct to Instagram Direct

As previously said, you can begin selling using Instagram Direct, which allows your target audience to contact you at any moment. If you want to make your users contact you directly from an ad on Facebook/Instagram, follow these steps:

1) Log in to Facebook Business Manager and click on “Ad management“;

2) Select the “Messages” goal;

3) In the section Message Destination select “Instagram Direct“;

4) Select the target audience, placements, budget and schedule and click on “Next“;

5) Select the content to be included in the ad, a photo, video or carousel;

6) Select the “Message template”, by creating a new one or using an existing one, then click on “Save and finish“;

7) Complete the changes to your ad and click on “Publish“;

8) Wait for the verification process from Facebook.

Find out how to create ads that re-direct to Instagram Direct in this article.

Instagram Shopping: How to create a shop on Instagram?

Instagram allows you to create a product showcase, without the need for a website to be able to promote them. Just enter the products in the Instagram catalog, so your target audience can view them, get more information about them and buy them directly from the social platform.

Note: You must first convert your Instagram account to a Business account in order to use the Instagram Shopping feature.

After you’ve added the products to the catalog, you can tag them in your posts so that the content your visitors see links straight to the product details page, allowing them to complete the purchase.

Furthermore, product collections can be created to categorize products based on themes or categories, and influencers / content creators can tag the company in the post where the product appears.

How to connect Instagram to WhatsApp

A good way to make the two messaging platforms communicate and thus exploit their synergies is to be able to connect them together, so that Instagram users can easily contact you via WhatsApp.

You can do this in the following ways:

a) Add a button in the Bio section of Instagram;

b) Insert a link in the Bio section of Instagram;

c) Create ads that link to WhatsApp;

d) Insert a link in the featured stories that re-directs to WhatsApp.

e) A last alternative, but certainly not least, is to integrate Callbell Shop in the Instagram bio, in order to have a catalog for WhatsApp from which your potential customers can easily order the products or services they want, directly via WhatsApp. It can in fact be very interesting, for certain conversational commerce strategies, to divert Instagram users towards a WhatsApp conversation, which, based on the cases, can give a better conversion rate.

Callbell Shop is a free tool made available by Callbell to be able to create a digital catalog for WhatsApp , so you can sell without needing a website. The shop on WhatsApp is fully customizable, and you can add many products with photos, categories, prices and much more.

Registration is free, immediate and allows you to start selling your products in less than 5 minutes. Go to the home page and click on “Register with Google” to immediately create your digital catalog for WhatsApp to add to Instagram.

To connect your WhatsApp catalog to instagram, all you have to do is share the shop link on an Instagram post or story, or create an ad that refers to the catalog , so that your Instagram users can easily add products to the cart and order them directly on WhatsApp.

Visit the Callbell Shop website for more information.

If you found this article helpful for your Instagram and Instagram Direct marketing campaign, don’t forget to leave a comment below or share the article! Thanks so much for reading, see you next time!