Strategies

Marketing success depends on both creative execution and strategic insight, grounded in real-world research and psychological principals. The strategies outlines are based on proven tactics that work – shaped by my knowledge of psychology, industry trends, and hands-on experience.
These strategies fall into three core categories:

1. Foundational Strategy – setting the tone and structure for long-term brand success.
2. Analytical & Tracking – ensuring performance is measurable, scalable, and optimized.
3. Psychological Influence – using behavioural insights to boost retention, trust, and impact.

Together, they form a dynamic, results-driven framework for sustainable growth.

1. Foundational Strategy

Thematic Content with Monthly Campaigns

Implementing a monthly campaign strategy ensures content remains cohesive, engaging, and purposeful. By creating a central theme each month, brands can:

- Build anticipation and keep audiences engaged.

- Align posts with seasonal trends, customer needs, or industry shifts.

- Maintain a consistent brand voice while diversifying content types (e.g., educational, promotional, interactive).

- Strengthen storytelling, leading to better audience connection and retention.

This approach enhances brand awareness and improves organic engagement by providing structured yet flexible content that followers look forward to each month.

With Engagement, You Get What You Give

Engagement is a two-way street. By following relevant accounts, you increase the likelihood of receiving follows back, and the algorithm will favour and promote your account. Similarly, liking and commenting on posts from relevant accounts boosts engagement on your own content. Commenting back on your own posts and continuing the conversation is also important, as it further boosts engagement. Social media platforms reward interaction, making this strategy essential for organic growth.

Follower-to-Following Ratio

The balance between followers and following impacts brand perception. Following too few accounts can make an account seem unnaproachable or unfriendly, while following too many can make it seem less credible. Maintaining a strategic ratio can help reinforce social proof and authority.

A good guidelone is to keep your following count at 10-20% of your total followers. For example, if you have 5,000 followers, following 500-1,000 accounts keeps the profile balanced – engaged without appearing excessive. This approach helps maintain a polished yet approachable brand presence.

2. Analytical & Tracking

Clear CTA in Ads

A strong call to Action (CTA) is crucial for ad performance. While running ads through Meta Blueprint, I learned that Instagram doesn't allow a direct "Follow Now" CTA. Instead, the closest option is "Learn More", which does not clearly prompt users to follow the account.

If the goal is to gain followers, prompting ads directly through the Instagram app is a better strategy, as it allows for a clearer CTA. On top of a clear CTA, the ad copy and creative should be designed to naturally guide users toward fulfilling the desired action, ensuring a more effective and seamless experience.

By understanding these differences between these ad placements, brands can optimize their campaigns for follower growth while maintaining clarity in their CTAs.

Importance of UTM Parameters in Social Media Tracking

Using UTM parameters in social links allows marketers to accurately track how users arrive at a website via Google Analytics. Without them, social traffic often gets miscategorized as "direct", making performance attribution difficult. While many platforms allow for only one bio link, tools like Linktree or Becons can host multiple UTM-tagged URLs to different landing pages, preserving data clarity.

Even if a brand only includes a single link in the instagram bio (or other social bios), that link should still have UTM tags applied – especially when used in campaigns or rotating offers. I recommend this implementation to my employer to improve clarity in our acquisition reporting.

3. Psychological Influence

Intermittent Reinforcement Theroy

Consistent posting builds momentum, but occasional breaks can actually boost reach. Instagram's algorithm appears to use intermittent reinforcement to keep users engaged, which means it favours users who post consistently and frequently, and then follow by taking a break.

My theory is that Instagram doesn't want users to stop posting, as less activity means lower platform engagement. To prevent users from leaving, the algorithm promotes accounts on the Explore page when it detects an absence. This strategic boost encourages creators to stay active, ultimately benefiting both the user and the platform.

Message Repetition

Message repetition is one of the most important, popular, and historically effective marketing strategies. It involves repeating the same message again and again, and using techniques that connect new information to subjects already stored in memory. Repetition is important because in order to move something from the short-term into long-term memory, it has to be repeatedly exposed to the mind. This method is even more useful if messaging is related to known topics which people already have in their memories, which is proven to positively impact memory effectiveness.

Sensory Marketing

Sensory marketing focuses on activating the audience's senses, through sight, sound, or even smell in order to encode into the memory. Companies have even started implementing imagery of visually appealing candy and food, in products completely unrelated to food in order to activate this part of the brain. By activating the audiences sensory system, messaging is more likely to successfully move through the memory cycle – from sensory, to short-term, and ultimately into long-term memory.

Subliminal or Soft Messaging

Psychological studies have shown that implementing strategic and subtle messaging through content visuals and copy, can strongly influence the audience's mindset, particularly if done repeatedly. This works by implanting messaging cues into the subconscious mind through soft suggestion, which eventually surface into conscious awareness and shape perception and behaviour. Thus, this method enhances brand recognition and can increase purchase intent.