500 million people now watch Instagram Stories daily.
These 15 second videos and images, which disappear after 24 hours, have soared in popularity since their launch in 2016, and show no sign of slowing down. Adding an element of immediacy and often showing behind the scenes footage, not quite polished enough to make the main feed, they are instantly engaging. Instagram have been contributing to our addiction, launching new Stickers that encourage interaction.
Brands have been quick to maximise the opportunities and last year one in three Instagram posts containing “#ad” was a story. Influencer marketing is its perfect partner, giving content creators another way to make the most of their close connection with their followers. Vamp regularly works Stories into campaign strategies and are able to achieve a range of results with this versatile medium.
Driving traffic to ecommerce
Boohoo partnered with Vamp to drive traffic to their site and raise awareness of their fashion offering. Vamp selected 14 fashion-focused influencers in Australia who could create high-quality content for Stories and whose values and aesthetic aligned with the brands. To ensure authenticity, the creators were allowed to choose the looks that best suited their style.
Each was required to post 3 stories, with a minimum of 3 frames. Influencers were encouraged to make full use of a discount code, plus the Story’s Stickers and ‘swipe up’ functions. ‘Swipe up’ is available for accounts with more than 10k followers and a game changer when it comes to seamlessly directing audiences to a web page, at the moment inspiration strikes.
In this Stories-only campaign there were 79,270 unique Story views and 92.7% of those completed all of the frames. Proving what an engaged audience they were, Story Stickers with Boohoo’s @ or # on were tapped a total of 1,091 times. Even more people swiped up to see more – 1,4569.
Customers driven to the e-commerce site via these Stories generated $14,423 in sales revenue. Since the campaign spend was $10,000, that’s a solid ROI of 1.4.
Creating digital tutorials
In other campaigns, Instagram Stories can be highly effective in conveying a level of detail not available in straight forward posts. When Adobe Rush partnered with Vamp, they wanted show off the capabilities of the software and encourage downloads, so Stories were used to compliment traditional Instagram posts.
Top-quality video creators across five markets within Asia Pacific were briefed to post curated and polished videos to their feed, with a download link in their bio. Then via Instagram Stories, they posted tutorials, sharing their step-by-step experience.
The goal here was the same, to showcase the benefits and drive downloads, but followed a completely different execution. It allowed followers to take a look behind the scenes and contributed to a well-rounded campaign that demonstrated all aspects of the user experience.
As Adobe’s Head of Social in Asia Pacific, Pauline Linton, said: “Working with the Vamp team to create content for the Adobe Premiere Rush campaign has been the most effective and efficient way to put our tools in the hands of passionate and talented content creators. It allowed us to put more creative control in the hands of the true creatives, sit back and be blown away by the response.”
In this campaign, a total of 189 high-quality Instagram Story frames were created, garnering 19,434 unique views. 88% of followers remained engaged, watching through to the final frame and 2.53% took action and followed the swipe up to download link.
