What Instagram Marketers Can Learn from Brands that Ace at Polls

Interactive marketing is not a recent concept. It existed well before social media ever came into play. As such, social media marketing comes with a bigger responsibility and a larger target market, with influencers guiding the decisions of hundreds of millions of followers. Instagram has clever ways to promote brands and drive sales up. It provides cool interactive marketing tools like polls, questions, quizzes etc. It’s constantly coming up with new and creative ways to make audience engagement fun and interactive. The marketer’s job is to make the most of the tools provided to them.

While this doesn’t sound like much, it can be quite tough to navigate. The newest addition to the Instagram interactive marketing arsenal is the poll sticker feature available for stories. Instagram polls allow marketers to interact with their audience by asking them questions and having them vote on an answer. Instagram has over 800 million active users. This is why it remains to be the social media marketer’s dream platform. The potential clientele is massive and opportunities for brand promotion and growth is endless.

The Allure of the Instagram Poll

The Instagram poll can be a very useful tool for marketers. The poll feature itself can play a vital role in driving traffic to your page and promoting follower engagement. Not only does it provide an additional level of brand engagement, but it also enables you to gather very specific insights. Your marketing team can further use these insights to plan campaigns, come up with future products, and even change the entire outlook of the brand.

From an audience perspective, Instagram polls are very hard to skip. There seems to be an innate need in the human psyche to respond to and interact with a poll. Especially when the poll belongs to an account that the follower has no personal connection with. Polls tend to pique the typical Instagram user’s natural curiosity, pushing them to engage with the question being asked.

Over 60% of the businesses that post Instagram stories, use interactive features like polls, hashtags, and mentions to drive traffic and promote brand engagement. With all the new features Instagram has introduced for marketers, there’s never been a better time to grow your business and build your clientele. Whether you’re selling cupcakes, or offering courses online, Instagram’s interactive features like polls are there to help your growth.

How do Polls Work?

Instagram polls help in keeping your content exciting, novel, and fresh. You can add the poll sticker to your stories by:

1. Tapping the sticker icon in the top-right corner and
2. Scrolling down until you find the ‘Poll’ option.
3. Now add your question and customize the responses. Instagram has no character limit for the questions so feel free to get creative.
4. Check how your followers voted by swiping up from your story. The insights also show you how many people have viewed your poll and how many voted for each response.
5. Share the response with your followers after the poll ends in 24 hours. When you share their responses, you’re letting them know that their voices are being heard and that you do value their thoughts.

Ever since the Instagram poll feature came into play, top brands have utilized this opportunity to further promote and build their customer base. Here are some ways you could do the same. 

Creative Ways to Use Polls in Instagram Stories

1. Play a quick round of trivia.

Asking simple yet engaging trivia questions is a great way to use Instagram polls. This idea is especially great for brands who are looking to establish their presence outside of the products they offer. Trivia polls are flexible, allowing you to make the poll your own. You could ask general trivia questions, questions referencing the products you offer, questions about current events, etc.

You can make these trivia questions as detailed as you please, like starting with easier questions and progressing to the more difficult ones. You can play with difficulty levels until you find a level of trivia that works best for your audience, allowing you greater brand engagement. A smart way to take the trivia polls up a notch is to plug the link to your website at the end of the trivia. This way, your followers have the option to explore your brand further.

2. Make a quiz.

Like trivia, quizzes are a fun and light way of interacting with and engaging your audience. There probably isn’t a single person who hasn’t heard about the media giant that is Buzzfeed when it comes to quizzes. They manage to keep the same energy going on their Instagram polls, by creating fun and playful quizzes for their followers to engage with.

For example, Buzzfeed News puts up a weekly poll asking their followers whether they can spot which news is fake and which is real. Not only is this informational because of its news value, but it’s also playful, boosting Buzzfeed’s brand image and follower interaction. These kinds of quizzes keep the audience engaged, entertained, and coming back for more.

3. Curate content.

A really easy way to find out whether your audience is actually engaging with the kind of content you’re posting is by asking them directly. Instagram polls can be of great help in this area. Before you post content on Instagram, it’s your responsibility as a social media marketer to make sure that what you’re putting out into the world is what your followers want to see. You can use Instagram follower insights, your brand’s personal marketing strategies, knowledge of your target audience, and as a bonus, the intel you’ve collected on your polls.

Instagram polls can be used to “test” your content, before the actual take-off. If you’re planning on branching out from your usual content, you should throw up a quick poll to determine whether your new content is actually what your audience is looking for. This way, you also have a bigger picture of your followers’ interests, which is sure to come in handy down the line. Another benefit of polling before you post is that you ensure that you’re not going to lose any followers over unrelatable content. Asking first is not only polite but also beneficial to your brand.

4. Show off your products.

A picture can speak a thousand words. So why not show your audience what you can offer them? You can show off your various products and ask your followers to vote on which ones they prefer in particular. This way, you bring awareness to the variety of products that you offer, while also gaining insight into which products would do better than others. Market research has never been easier.

IKEA USA used this approach, asking their followers to vote on which range of kitchenware they preferred the most. These polls can work on all products as long as there are at least two products you can use to compare. This approach is especially helpful if you want to boost the visibility of a line of new products.

5. Ask your customers what they want.

Marketing to the customer’s needs is one of the most important responsibilities of a social media marketer. With the Instagram poll feature, this responsibility becomes ten times easier to manage. Are you unsure about what kind of products your follower base really wants? They can now let you know directly via the poll feature. Leading swimwear brand Mimi Hammer used the poll feature to ask their followers what kind of swimsuits they preferred. This involved going into detail about designs, colors, cuts, etc.

Polls are an intelligent way to essentially create a customer survey. The questions should be accompanied by high-quality visuals so that there is absolutely no confusion as to what is being asked. It’s important to maintain a good visual consistency for your brand so that your followers are not left wanting for more.

6. Drive your Instagram followers to your website.

Instagram polls allow for a seamless way for you to drive traffic to your website. This is free traffic with no ads, no payments, and no promotions involved! You can customize this approach however you want, driving traffic to category pages, product pages, or even a specific article that you want to give prominence to. This approach can work with any of the poll ideas such as trivia, quizzes, or choosing between two products.

Target makes use of this approach by offering their followers choices between two products on their polls. They then drive product sales up on their website by having customers swipe up, and directs them to the website. The redirected page usually lands on featured and similar products, the followers would be interested to get. This technique is not only limited to retail stores. Even service providers like salons and spas can avail this feature.

Instagram polls can be used to gather invaluable information about your followers’ preferences, allowing for brand growth. Although there are certain limitations like there being only two possible responses, it still provides you with clear feedback from your customer base.