Instagram Business

Feeding creativity: How food culture is shifting on Instagram

Remember the good old days, when Tuesday night dinner was the two-hour roast, fresh from the oven? Neither do we. That's because mealtimes aren't exactly what they used to be: they've become more fluid, and mobile is a big reason why.

Shaping the way people discover, shop for and share new foods, mobile has completely redefined how the world connects with food – especially on Instagram. Whether at the corner shop, your favourite restaurant or online, mobile is being used anywhere and everywhere that people purchase food. And on Instagram, where 81% of people surveyed consider themselves food shoppers and are two times more likely to shop on their smartphones,1 this evolving interaction is creating even more opportunity for food marketers to stand out and inspire action through mobile.

To better understand how mobile continues to inspire the world's palette on Instagram, we teamed up with our in-house insights group Facebook IQ to explore the key shifts in food2 that are currently feeding creativity across our passionate community in the US.
Taking a bite out of meals

As people think of #food3 beyond the old routine of breakfast, lunch and dinner, we're seeing the rise of snacking behaviour challenging traditional eating habits – making mealtimes more fluid than ever. Driven by people's individual lifestyles and priorities, consumers (in the US) are 63% more likely to snack in place of a meal, while 84% choose to snack between meals.4 But it isn't just how people are snacking that's different, but what it means to snack as well.

In today's busy, on-the-go culture, it's no surprise that nearly four in ten consumers in the US agree that anything can be considered a snack.5 And when people are talking #snacks,6 they're also talking about foods that can traditionally be considered part of a meal, such as salads, chips and sandwiches.7
With so many snack brands out there, we needed to find a way to show how delicious our bar is and get people to try it. Facebook Creative Shop helped us create unique creative to catch people's attention in mobile News Feed that successfully lifted brand awareness.
Elena Parlatore, Director of Digital Marketing, INIT Snacks
Stirring up new behaviours

Convenience drives people's food choices and motivates them to shop for and prepare food in new ways. Rather than planning their lives around food, people now prioritise the time-saving aspect of products when integrating food into their lives. Online food shopping in the US is just one example of this emerging trend. Between 2014 and 2016, the amount of people who said that they've purchased food online and would do so again more than doubled,8 while accounts on Instagram are 2.6 times more likely to make packaged food purchases online.9

Similarly, the need for convenience may also be driving the rise of meal kits (subscription services such as Blue Apron or Plated) and app-based delivery services. And recent research shows that on average, for each layer of convenience added to the food purchase journey, people are willing to pay up to 11% more.10
Where food comes from is crucial

For #foodies11 on Instagram, where their food comes from and the story behind it is as important as how it photographs and tastes. Increasingly, more and more want their food to be wholesome in its nutritional content and authentic in its cultural roots. From its regional influences to its roots in nature, the conscious eater continues to shape the food choices and behaviours of people all over the globe – especially around niche ingredients such as spices, baking ingredients and international flavourings.

Matcha, a speciality green tea powder originating from Japan, is one example of a niche ingredient in a trending market. Most popular amongst younger generations in the US, particularly women aged 21+,12 matcha has generated growing conversations on Instagram for its beneficial qualities and its health and visual appeal. Cha Cha Matcha (@chachamatcha), a tea parlour in New York City, has tapped into the trending aesthetic of matcha in its drinks as well as through its Instagram feed.

Whether it's showcasing our shops, new products or even sharing fun facts about our brand, Instagram has helped our business in a myriad of ways. It is pretty much the only social media platform we use. It allows us to interact with our customers on a daily basis and give them behind-the-scenes looks at what we do.
Matthew Morton, Co-founder, Cha Cha Matcha
A place for food, creativity and impact

As mobile continues to reshape the world around us, it's important that food marketers understand its impact and the ways in which Instagram can help connect them with their customers. Whether through stories, feed or other creative tools, our platform is shifting the way people discover, shop for and share new foods on mobile.

To learn more about mobile's impact on the tastes and behaviours of people when it comes to food, head over to Facebook IQ for the full article. And to see how other food brands like Teddy and DiGiorno are finding success on Instagram, discover their stories here.

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Global spotlight: Instagram in Latin America

With over 2 million active advertisers and 15 million business profiles on Instagram using feed, stories and live to connect with customers all over the world, more and more are utilising our unique platform to stand out and inspire action – especially in Latin America.

During this year's Facebook summit in Brazil,1 Instagram's Head of Business Product, Vishal Shah, led a discussion around the emergence of Latin America on Instagram and how businesses can best tap into this thriving market. From global brands to mom and pop shops, businesses continue to be an integral part of the Instagram experience. In fact, 80% of accounts on Instagram follow a business,2 while 59% of accounts in Brazil have used it to successfully buy a product or discover a brand3 – such as Sprite, PicPay or Carefree.
Born to refresh

Using ads in stories to visually inspire young people throughout Mexico, international beverage brand Sprite Mexico (@spritemx) produced a captivating video that put forward the idea that with Sprite, you can overcome any obstacle.

Under the slogan #NacidosParaRefrescar,4 the brand was able to create an immersive ad experience that placed its target audience5 at the centre of possibility where risk, reward and refreshment met head on. As a result, the month-long campaign generated an impressive 18-point increase in ad recall, 4-point top of mind awareness and 2-point increase in favourability.

Sprite wants to speak to the new generation of young people. Everything we want to do is for them, to celebrate their unique view of the world. We want to talk to them in their own language and on the platforms where we know they interact. Instagram was the ideal tool to reach that goal. Instagram Stories let us reach our young audience using content aimed at aligning ourselves with their interests, catching their attention in a matter of seconds and communicating our campaign message. We achieved great results and learned useful lessons that we'll definitely continue to apply as we seek to connect with this generation.

Karen Arreola, IMC Manager, Sprite Mexico
A new way of paying

Looking to go beyond mere App Installs, mobile payment service PicPay (@picpay) used app event optimisation across Facebook and Instagram to increase registration for its swift transaction app. Allowing advertisers to better identify people most likely to take a specific action within an app (after being reached by an ad), app event optimisation helped PicPay successfully optimise its ad delivery – particularly on Instagram.

Through the combination of app event optimisation and an engaging carousel ad campaign, PicPay was able to position itself as the premier way to pay through mobile across Brazil. As a result, the campaign converted 65% of those who had installed the app (via the series of carousel ads) into new registrants – delivering the highest proportion of registrations per install.6

PicPay's value proposition is tied to the time that people continue to use the app for. With recurring use, we can actually transform habits and make a major impact on our users' lives. This is why the big challenge goes beyond simply acquiring new users. Along these lines, the segmenting options and solutions offered by the Instagram platform were determining factors in helping us with this challenge, bringing high-quality users with excellent conversion rates.

Anderson Chamon, CEO, PicPay
The secret to confidence

Tapping into women's everyday secrets to feeling more confident, Johnson and Johnson used the visual power of Instagram Stories to help support the new positioning of its panty liner brand, Carefree (@carefreearg).

The campaign consisted of six short videos that featured various female influencers7 from around Latin America who each shared a secret of something they liked to do – encouraging viewers to then share their own beauty secrets with the hashtag #YouKnow. Not only did the campaign perfectly capture the brand's values,8 but it also generated an impressive 17-point increase in ad recall and a 6-point increase in top-of-mind awareness among its target of women in Argentina, aged 17-27.

Our partnership with Instagram allowed us to focus on how our audience consumes media and how we can generate content that is more relevant to their needs, and we've reaped some incredible results for Carefree.

Martin Zanlungo, Media Manager, South Hub
Going beyond Latin America

Throughout the world, businesses of all sizes are using Instagram to bring their products and services to life in a fresh, immersive way. Whether it's Latin America or other regions across the globe, our passionate community is helping businesses connect with people and the things they care about – inspiring action as a result.

To learn how other brands in Latin America are continuing to find success on Instagram, take a look at their success stories here.

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Expanding access to the branded content tool on Instagram

Since introducing the branded content tool in June,1 creators on Instagram have been able to easily communicate when they are working with a business. This means more transparency for people whenever they swipe, share and explore their passions on our platform. Today, we are expanding the availability of the tool to Instagrammers with high levels of engagement and access to insights. This expansion will allow us to continue to learn how creators, businesses and the community engage with branded content.

Over the past few months, we've been monitoring community sentiment and businesses and creators using the branded content tool. What we've learned is that the branded content tool provides valuable insights2 to businesses, and is making it easier for creators like Xenia Tchoumi (@xenia) to clearly communicate when they are working in partnership with a business.

My Instagram is about sharing my life and my experiences with people. Whether it's my travels or a new product I'm excited about, transparency is a key component for interacting with my community. With the branded content tag, I'm able to be fully transparent about my commercial relationships on Instagram and that transparency extends to the businesses that I partner with in the form of analytics.
Xenia Tchoumi

Now creators that have access to the branded content tool will receive in-app notifications when our systems find content that falls outside of our policy. In these cases, the content's creator will be notified through the Instagram app and will have the option to tag a business. These notifications are intended to make it easier to use the «Paid partnership with» tag and educate the community on Instagram's branded content.
What's ahead?

Better understanding how the community engages with branded content will help us offer more flexibility to creators and businesses using the tool.Over time, our goal is to make it simple for all Instagrammers to identify commercial relationships on Instagram.

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From browsing to buying: Exploring the shopping journey on Instagram

If you've ever worked in retail, you know that a good sales person is as tuned in to human behaviour as a good therapist. Sales people are ever on the lookout for cues. Has a shopper been in the store multiple times? Are they piling clothes into their arms? Are they headed straight for the sales rack?

These cues come together to help a sales person determine when to approach someone, what to say and what to do. But when shoppers go online, without access to the right data, retailers may find themselves «cue-less». But what if they didn't have to be? By giving retailers line of sight into the shopping journey, signals from the Facebook pixel can help retailers understand how their shoppers buy and drive conversions as a result.

To learn how signals can help retailers better understand this unique journey1 and get shoppers from, «Thanks, I'm just looking» to «I'll take these, please,» we teamed up with Facebook IQ2 and explored what drives shoppers in the speciality retail category –particularly higher spenders.
Inspiring action through exploration

With 800 million accounts on Instagram scrolling, swiping and sharing their passions around the globe, retailers are using Instagram's dynamic family of tools to connect with shoppers beyond the storefront. Acting as a window display to the world, Instagram offers a fresh, immersive way to experience a brand and/or product unlike anywhere else. Whether through feed, stories or live, the opportunity for retailers to stand out and inspire action has never been better.

As we learned during our recent fashion insights study, Instagram is a place where people come together to visually express themselves and connect with what matters – whether it's friends, influencers or their favourite businesses. In fact, 80% of Instagram accounts follow a business to feel a closer sense of connection to it – making many feel like they're part of an exclusive group as a result.3 And it's not just this sense of community that makes our platform so unique, but the time people spend on it interacting with our 15 million business profiles as well.

Generating 120 million interactions last month, more and more people are visiting a website, getting directions and contacting a business than ever before.
Instagram data, Mar 2017
The shoppers behind the journey

While the speciality retail shopping category makes up a fairly small subset of online retailers, the behaviours of its shoppers are far from uniform. In a brick-and-mortar shop, a retailer's ability to respond to the unique needs of each shopper can be the difference between someone making a purchase or leaving the shop empty-handed. The same is true online. Using signals to explore the various shopping behaviours of people along the shopping journey, we uncovered two unique shopper segments4 shaping the way that people are browsing and buying on Instagram.

Shopping mavens and fashion enthusiasts

For many, Instagram is a haven for discovery. It's a place where people such as shopping mavens5 and fashion enthusiasts6 can be inspired by the latest trends and shop their favourite brands. In turn, Instagram is actively changing the way that the world consumes content and shops online.

Consuming two times more content than non-shoppers, people shopping on Instagram spend 85% of the week exploring the newest products and services.
Instagram data, US only, Apr 2016.

Using popular hashtags such as #shopping,7 #style8 and #fashion,9 these higher spenders are connecting with businesses on Instagram on a much deeper level – sparking more personal (even loyal) relationships with them. In fact, across the speciality retail category, 40% of shoppers self-identified as being a loyal customer in the category, particularly fashion enthusiasts.10
52% of fashion enthusiasts consider themselves a loyal customer, while 42% own a loyalty membership card for shops in the space.

Facebook data, a segmentation of 1.6 million shoppers captured by the Facebook pixel across the speciality retail vertical, US only, 18+, Feb 2017.

And this sense of loyalty comes from the way that these passions make people feel. For shopping mavens and fashion enthusiasts, fashion and shopping are a large part of who they are as individuals. It's in the fabric of their identities, making them feel important as a result.11

That's why each month, 75% of shopping mavens and 70% of shopping enthusiasts turn to Instagram.12 They are more likely to say that they are using the platform to discover new products or services, to engage with industry experts and browse inspiring content or product/brand photos. It allows them to connect with the things that matter, while defining and sharing their voice across our community.
Moving forward

Because shopping behaviours are varied, it's critical for retailers and marketers to understand the unique behaviours of their shoppers. By giving retailers' line of sight into the full shopper journey, signals can help marketers get their shoppers from «just browsing» to buying. And Instagram is a great way to do this – especially with higher spenders.

For eligible businesses in the US, the shopping feature on Instagram is a great way to reach valuable customers and inspire action. By tagging products in posts, businesses on Instagram can enable people to act by tapping through to learn more about a featured product or visit its website.

To learn more about the shopper segments and what signals can tell you about the shopping journey, have a look at FBIQ's three-part series. And to see how businesses like Country Road (@countryroad) and Pura Vida Bracelets (@puravidabracelets) are finding success connecting with shoppers on Instagram, explore their success stories here.

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5 Ways To Stand Out: Part 1

Ask any growing business about its biggest challenge and one of the answers you’ll hear time and time again is finding customers. After all, building a strong customer base is the foundation for growth. But when you’re running a business, it can be tricky and time-consuming to reach people most likely to be interested in your business, capture their attention and give them a compelling reason to interact with you.

These days, Instagram is a serious business tool, because brands can use it to reach customers online more easily. And because it's now home to a community of 15 million businesses around the world, Instagram offers plenty of ways for your business to get noticed.

In this blog series, we’ll uncover some of the simplest steps to getting started with Instagram and making your business stand out:
Set up your business profile

More than 500 million accounts are active on Instagram every day and 80% of these follow at least one business. Not only that, but 60% of accounts say they learn about products and services on Instagram. So, with all of those people ready to discover your business, it’s time to get serious with Instagram.

When you convert to a Business Profile on Instagram, you’ll access a whole range of tools to help you grow your business. Setting up your Business Profile from scratch, or converting a personal account to a business account, is simple. Once you’ve done that, you’ll be able to:

Add information about your business to your profile, like contact details, location and hours
Get insights about followers and understand how they interact with your posts and stories
See real-time feedback on how your stories and promoted posts are performing

Whether your business is new or already established, your first step to standing out with Instagram is to get your Business Profile set up and ready to go. Do it quickly and easily, right from the app.

Be sure to add any information to your profile that your potential customers will want to know. Briefly describe what your business is all about and add a link to where people can buy or make contact with your business. You can even add a relevant hashtag or two.
Set up your business profile

Online flower subscription service, Bloom & Wild, is one of the first UK businesses to try out Instagram business tools—and it hasn’t looked back. A highly visual brand, it already had a strong following on Instagram. But when it converted to a Business Profile and tried out Instagram’s ad formats, Bloom & Wild was able to share its stunning product photos to even wider audiences. The result? A 62% boost in orders.

By using Instagram’s insights tools, Bloom & Wild also learned which formats its audience responded to best. It found that video earned particularly high engagement, which now helps the business focus on sharing content its community values most.
Convert interest to sales

For sole entrepreneur, Elodie Fagot, Instagram Business Tools have helped place her business in front of thousands of customers and stockists across the world. Her Tea Heritage brand stands out and inspires with beautiful photos of her quirky teabags—but the real difference now is that people can click straight through to her online shop to make a purchase from anywhere in the world. In fact, just a few years after starting out, 40% of Elodie's online sales now come from Instagram.

Stay tuned for the next post of this series, when we’ll be turning our attention to all things creative.

You can also take free, online training courses to help you better understand how to use Instagram to build your business.

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