See who built their businesses on Instagram.

Do you know Instagram has been around for twelve years? When Instagram started, it was a minimalist online space for people to share and “like” photos. There were no business accounts, sophisticated advertising platforms or ecommerce tools to enable in-app payment transactions.

Some business founders may assume Instagram is younger, because its $1bn acquisition by Facebook in 2012 – which now looks a bargain price – has transformed the app from a niche space for creative expression (more akin to the way Pinterest is regarded today) into a commercial powerhouse.

Instagram now accounts for more than 25% of Facebook’s global advertising revenues – upwards of $20bn a year, according to Bloomberg.

The photo-sharing app has become known for the photogenic celebrities who use it, such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Ariana Grande and Kendall Jenner, with hundreds of millions of followers.

But Instagram and Facebook have become a vital and, in some cases, pre-eminent growth vehicle for many small businesses.

“One in three UK companies that have Facebook or Instagram pages even say that they have built their businesses on these platforms,” according to the Advertising Association’s 2019 Advertising Pays report. 

“You’re joking. Instagram has been around for 10 years? Ten years?” That was the reaction from the business owners who spoke to Campaign for this feature about the social media photo-sharing app’s first decade.

When computer programmers Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger launched Instagram on 6 October 2010, the iPhone had only been around for a few years and the front-facing camera to take selfies had just made its debut.

Instagram was a minimalist online space for people to share and “like” photos. There were no business accounts, sophisticated advertising platforms or ecommerce tools to enable in-app payment transactions.

Some business founders may assume Instagram is younger, because its $1bn acquisition by Facebook in 2012 – which now looks a bargain price – has transformed the app from a niche space for creative expression (more akin to the way Pinterest is regarded today) into a commercial powerhouse.

Instagram now accounts for more than 25% of Facebook’s global advertising revenues – upwards of $20bn a year, according to Bloomberg.

The photo-sharing app has become known for the photogenic celebrities who use it, such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Ariana Grande and Kendall Jenner, with hundreds of millions of followers.

But Instagram and Facebook have become a vital and, in some cases, pre-eminent growth vehicle for many small businesses.

“One in three UK companies that have Facebook or Instagram pages even say that they have built their businesses on these platforms,” according to the Advertising Association’s 2019 Advertising Pays report. 

Facebook’s Ads Manager (which Facebook makes users employ for Instagram ad buys, too) is seen as an essential tool for small businesses because of its sophisticated targeting capabilities. Entrepreneurs can select the specific location and demographics of their target customer, such as age, gender, relationship status or educational qualifications. 

Now let’s look at some big companies that have successfully built their business on Instagram, and their success stories.

Vicky’s Donuts

Former content marketer Vicky Graham launched Vicky’s Donuts in 2015, having previously channelled her love of fried dough through home cooking and blogging. 

She decided to “turn her whole flat into a bakery” and formed a business plan driven by a frustration that “everything became all Krispy Kreme”. Before the coronavirus pandemic, she had even set up a Covent Garden-based kitchen, and begun taking corporate orders and moving into events catering. 

Having started using Instagram as a place to post delicious photos of sweet treats, Graham has tried to seize on the features the platform has added over the years as well as be proactive in reaching out to like-minded people, as opposed to just creating content. “[Instagram] is particularly great for finding people in your community and sourcing small businesses around you to collaborate on projects. The geo-tagging is really useful… it’s important for people to know exactly where we are.” 

The platform quickly became indispensable – after two years, Graham found that 90% of Vicky’s Donuts customers were coming to the brand via Instagram. However, with more than 95,000 followers (only about 12% of whom are in the UK), she estimates Instagram traffic now accounts for only about 10% of sales and she finds herself having to post a wider range of content for an international audience, such as recipes and less London-centric videos. 

“Instagram is still really crucial, though,” she insists. “People expect every brand to have a consistent feed that’s updated regularly.”

Graham does not believe you need to pay for sponsored posts to be successful as an Instagramming brand, but you do have to appreciate how the platform’s algorithm tends to serve wider Facebook goals. “You just have to try stuff, you have to post a range of different things: your [picture] grid, stories, and create a reel. When Instagram launches a new feature, they need content for it and are more likely to boost what you do. Instagram Reels [a playful, short-form video feature in the mould of Snapchat and TikTok]  is a good example of that.”

Top tips
“Carve out a clear brand and be consistent with brand guidelines. Make sure if you decide to post pics of everything you create, that it looks good. Be active: comment on other people’s posts, DM people and introduce yourself, reply to all the comments you get, and most of all, be genuine. 

“Also make sure you get a business account. It’s crazy how many businesses don’t have one and don’t put where they are as a location. It enables people to see they can buy from you – the ‘shop facilities’ and buttons on your bio so people can contact you.”

What not to do
“Don’t be obsessed with followers. They are there to give us business and the whole point of this is to sell your product. Trying to gain followers by paying for them is just pointless. You might get your following up a bit but those people will unfollow you after a while – you just need to remember the sole purpose is to sell the product.”

Prick

“I couldn’t believe one didn’t exist,” Gynelle Leon recalls, after a Google search revealed no London results for a cactus shop in 2014. The former banking-fraud analyst and masters graduate in forensic science was then inspired to open her own shop, which she did in July 2016, after taking up part-time work in a florist to learn the trade. 

Despite having a plethora of unusual plants to photograph, Leon is less enthusiastic about posting images to “the grid” as much as using the Instagram Stories format to show behind-the-scenes videos, using Instagram Live for tutorials about how to  repot plants, or running special sale events on the platform. 

Leon is clear that demonstrating her love for the products and sharing the knowledge she has gained is what sparks engagement with the 39,000-plus followers she has amassed to date. 

“Sometimes I get a flurry of followers if an influencer has posted about us or if we posted an image that gets a lot of reshares, but I don’t tally up followers to our performance, because you could have 100,000 followers but only 10% of them buy from you – conversion rate into sales is most important. Engagement is also important, something that’s thought-provoking or a conversation starter is also just as important – it’s not always about the coin.” 

Top tip
“Start the Instagram page before you start the business so you can document the steps you took to get there. If you scroll back far enough on mine, you can see when I was painting the shop and when I built the greenhouse. There’s a lot of ‘process’ there rather than ‘Bam, here’s a lovely shop’.”

What not to do
“Do not rehash the same content over and over again. When you scroll on someone’s page and you see the same content come up six or seven times… If you posted it a year or two years ago and you want to throw back, that’s understandable, but reposting after a couple of months is a bit excessive.”

Hype

Having won a T-shirt-printing competition on Facebook in 2011, ex-high-street retail suppliers Liam Green and Bav Samani launched lifestyle clothing brand Hype as a counterpoint to the “lad culture” then dominating men’s fashion. From opening a shop in London in 2013, the duo’s floral clothing brand has grown to now operate from a 52,000-square-feet distribution centre in Leicester, been worn by Cara Delevingne and Tom Hardy and is sold in major retailers, such as John Lewis, Asos and Next.

While a visual medium such as Instagram provides an important shop window, it’s the communication with followers that best sums up how Hype uses the platform. Samani says: “Priding ourself on creativity is what we strive for. We’ve recently started using Instagram Reels to showcase new product and relaying that into everyday-life outfits.”

Green and Samani used to run all Hype’s social accounts themselves, but now employ a team of people who use the “brand DNA” to create campaigns, influencer activity and relatable content for Hype’s more than 300,000 followers. ”Our Instagram used to be pictures of what we got up to on a daily basis whatever that might entail,” Green says. “We were using influencers before we even knew what influencers were. We gifted product to people we thought fitted in with the brand values.”

Top tips
Green: “Don’t overthink it, be genuine and don’t go for the hard sale – build a community.” 

Samani: “Influencer and celebrity activations play a huge part in Hype’s Instagram success, [but] if no-one is wearing the brand and you have a million followers, where is the relevancy?”

What not to do
Green: “We don’t measure Hype’s Instagram success on followers and engagement, as you never know what modification [Instagram will make to its engagement algorithm] next. We measure its success through insights, setting goals to ensure the numbers are improving each week.”

The Body Coach

Joe Wicks’ meteoric rise to household-name status during the pandemic, thanks to his wildly popular YouTube videos, is just the latest chapter in a successful online fitness coaching career that was born and raised on social media. 

The Epsom-born 35-year-old is now a bestselling author and TV presenter and, this year, was awarded a Guinness World Record for “most viewers for a fitness workout live stream on YouTube”.

It all started on Instagram, Wicks tells Campaign. “Instagram is at the heart of my brand and joining the platform was a massive game-changer for me. The real turning point was when they launched video. I started posting 15-second video recipes (you could only share 15 seconds when video first launched) of healthy meals you could make in 15 minutes.”

The use of the hashtag #LeanIn15 proved to be the spark that propelled Wicks’ Instagram fame, helping @thebodycoach reach about 50,000 followers before he was offered a book deal. Lean in 15, published in 2015, has now sold more than three million copies.

Wicks then called in his older brother Nikki, a former journalist, to take charge of his social-media strategy. Nikki is now an integral part of The Body Coach as chief operating officer and creative director. Nikki has learned over the years that certain types of content work best on different platforms. “Instagram is a great place for food content, but longer-form workouts are much better living on YouTube,” he says. The brothers agree that Instagram remains the most important platform.

Top tip
Joe Wicks:  “I’ve never had a content calendar or a schedule. I post when I feel like sharing something. You need to be consistent and always try and share content that’s valuable. Never stop engaging with your audience.”

What not to do
Nikki Wicks: “Instagram is an incredible platform. But if you’re building a business, I would say to never focus purely on one platform. Focus on creating great content that has value, and then figure out how to use that content across different platforms.”

Sincerely Nude

Sincerely Nude was founded by London nurse Michelle Asare in 2018, and she continues to run the business in her spare time. Having noticed that existing offerings of nude clothing were “the same shade of beige”, Asare also discovered a wealth of accessories and make-up products were not serving a diversity of body colours. “So I decided to be that change that I wanted to see in the world,” she says. 

Having joined Instagram in 2012 with a personal account, Asare had spent years looking at how small and big businesses began to use the platform as a marketing tool. While using hashtags and paid Facebook ads have helped people discover Sincerely Nude, Asare is clear that setting up a business account has been crucial for enabling people to “tap and shop” for products. 

“We’ve worked with Instagrammers who do it as their full-time career to help reach more people. We can’t call up Rihanna and her stylist, but we can engage with a lot of people who support what we’re doing and Instagram is a great platform for that.”

Asare estimates that 70% of her customers are driven by Instagram traffic. 

Top tips
“Learn about Instagram and tips and tricks to use to help with your business. You should definitely start a business in something you’re interested in, because it can get tedious and you have to love the type of posts that you want to put out there and to not compare yourself with others. There will be brands that have been doing it for years and have amazing content – just stay true to yourself and make the content that your customers will just love, don’t try to compare or see yourself as ‘not doing flitzy glamorous’.”

What should you not do?
“Don’t buy followers. It’s the worst thing you can do. Especially if you have a brand that sells things. Even though it looks good to have 30,000 followers, those people are not real. They can’t buy anything from you, they won’t engage with your pictures, you won’t have the real people on your IG and, to be honest, it’s really obvious.”

There are of course thousands of people that have grown their businesses overtime on Instagram. You too can join that train, All it requires is great content and consistency. If you need help managing your social media content, Don Dada Technologies has proven strategies that works. Get in touch today.