How To... Make an Inspiring Instagram Campaign

There is no magic recipe for success. All I can tell you is how to possibly create an Instagram campaign by examining what obstacles should be eliminated to stop it from becoming a failure.

But the best way to share this information, is to relate to our DxO ONE programme (which launched last September) which featured ten instagramers - with over 100k followers each - documenting a week in their lives. The point of the campaign? To take the snaps using our DxO ONE camera, a small plug-in that attaches to an iPhone but guarantees high quality images. Each week the campaign followed another one of the talents, escalating weekly as their followers remained tuned in to see what the next person would shoot. So I'm going to share some tips on how to tap into this marketing success.

TIP 1: Think like a strategist & act with intuition

To come up with the idea... firstly, you need to define your audience. In this case, we knew that we wanted to sell the product to professional photographers, so Instagram would be the best platform to distribute it on. Lots of Instagram users apply filters to improve their picture as a way of expressing who they are. We knew we could tap into their way of sharing photos if they realised that the best photos on Instagram are taken using our camera... The question was just how to convince them of this.

TIP 2: Find talented people & listen to them

It's always worth getting a professional in. But it's a lot of effort to then learn to fully trust their experience. For the DxO campaign, we brought in instagramer Nathan Namniak - who's luckily a friend’s son - to counsel us and help structure our work. It's never going to be completely smooth sailing listening to the 'experts' but he informed us that we would have to resign majority control and instead give it to the Instagrammers we'd brought on-board the campaign. In a digital age, you can give a few pointers here and there but the talents - who are ultimately leading the campaign - need to take it by the reigns to make it feel genuine. Trust is what it takes for talent to blossom.

Tip 3: Let it go!

And then learn to loosen those reigns. You're not hiring talents to tell them what to do; you're hiring them so that they can show you what to do. Select talents based on your criteria – in this case, their photographic style - and then set them truly free. That way, you should receive surprisingly-interesting results.

Don't immediatedly question sales and what the ROI would be, not yet. The beginning stages of an online campaign are often used to generate interest and raise awareness rather than hardcore profits. But these will eventually convert into sales and you'll be able to introduce the product more visibly further down the line. 

It's also very difficult to measure whether a sale was made from having an in-store presence or through a social media campaign; but it should be a combination of the two. It is a vain debate; and one that you can only really evaluate in a few years once the level of distribution has plateaued.

TIP 4: Measure

Don't completely ignore your original KPIs; you just need to redefine more specific ones. Think about how many people the campaign reached, its percentage of engagement, how many likes it gained and how many subscriptions it resulted in.

Measuring is crucial. And you need to be able to have clear targets to know how well the campaign is doing. There's always a risk with digital work; but make sure you keep your team in the know so you can learn from your mistakes and move past them quickly. 

Once you've reached these targets, consider what you should do next and look for opportunities as they present themselves throughout the campaign's lifespan.

TIP 5: Success is a possibility

While good strategic intuition, talents on board and a strong idea/product, "you are never completely sheltered from success,” a phrase previously coined by my Evian team. We subsequently won over a 100 prizes for our work, which I kept above my desk as a reminder that the digital world is a volatile space in which there's no step-by-step rulebook to follow.