How to Use Instagram Questions Stickers to Market Your Business

How often should you post about your restaurant on social media?. Karolina Grabowska via Pixabay

Table of Contents

How to Use the Questions Sticker
7 Ideas for Question Stickers
Other Examples of Questions to Ask
The Bottom Line

By

Updated on 10/16/19

During the summer of 2018, Instagram introduced a new feature called “questions” stickers that can be added to your Instagram Stories; Instagram Stories are similar to SnapChat where the pictures and videos you share can only be viewed once and disappear after 24 hours.

Instagram Stories are an engaging and fun way to start conversations with your followers, and when used properly, can help you stand out from a crowded marketing field, create a solid relationship with your prospects, and help people get to know your brand.

Of course, many individuals use this feature as well, but with a little creativity, it also has many different uses that can help you market your business.

How to Use the Instagram Questions Sticker

You can use the question sticker to ask questions or to let your followers ask you questions.

Here’s how to use the Instagram questions sticker:

Go to your Instagram account
Take a photo or video, or select from your camera roll
Select the question sticker from your sticker tray
Type out your question and then place the sticker on your photo or video
Share your question to your story

Your followers will then be able to see your question and can tap to reply. You can also reply to your followers’ answers – creating positive engagement with your brand.

It’s a good idea to make sure the photo or video you use is related to the question that you’re answering.

If you already use Instagram to promote your business, you’ll find that using the question sticker is simple. If you aren’t on Instagram yet, you may want to get your account established first and get familiar with the platform before using the questions feature.

So now that you know the basics of using questions, how do you use it to maximize your marketability?

7 Ideas for Using Instagram Question Stickers to Market Your Business

There are many ways to use the Instagram Question Sticker to grow your brand and your business. Here are seven different ideas that you can implement right away.

1. Answer Questions About Specific Products or Product Lines

Entrepreneurs and business owners tend to be an innovative bunch of people—always introducing new features and services. Sometimes followers don’t know why they would need a new feature or service, or they may not understand what it does.

When that happens you need to educate your customers and followers in order to let them know what problem the new product/feature/or service solves.

Instagram questions are a great way to answer customer questions in real time about any product or service, and it’s particularly good for answering questions about new and innovative lines that you’re bringing to the market.

For example, the company Thinkific has used this process to get feedback for a new logo. When they launched the new logo the company asked their Instagram followers what they thought about the change using the Instagram questions sticker.

This kind of feedback is invaluable to business owners. It can help you address any shortcomings in the product or feature, give you new ideas for innovation, and help you develop sales copy around the features that your customers really like.

Another big benefit of using Instagram Questions Stickers to get feedback is that you can more easily sound like your prospects. This can help build rapport. Getting feedback directly from your followers is one of the best ways to make sure you sound like your target market.

2. Create Custom Audiences

People who engage with your brand are more likely to buy from you. You can use questions to increase that engagement. Once someone engages with you on Instagram you can then create what’s called a “custom” audience, meaning you can create ads that are only shown to people who already interacted with you – often referred to as a “warm” audience.

Then you can show this engaged warm audience ads the appropriate ads that promote your products and services. Often engagement audiences are some of the most profitable ads you can run.

And while you will always need to find ways to attract new attention to your brand, it’s important to advertise to those people who already like you and engage with you.

3. Use Instagram Polls to Create Short Surveys

People love to take polls. Just look at any social media feed and you can see just how many people are giving their opinion on “best hits of the 80s” or just about anything else at any given time. Using polls can help you gauge interest around a particular product line so that you know where to put your advertising spending, and have a better idea of what your customers are more likely to buy.

Starbucks often uses polls to ask their followers which drink of two is their favorite. This not only helps them decide what coffees to feature but also can build engagement and desire around new products.

If you have a small amount of inventory and are figuring out what to spend more money on, this type of poll can also really help to gauge what might move better for you in order to maximize your sell-through by picking the most popular item to hold inventory in.

4. A Traditional Question and Answer

If you have a business where people are interested in what you do or who you are behind the scenes, then this approach can help to create raving fans.

For example, if you’re a chef you can ask people a question like “What do you want to know about making risotto?”
And if you make original artworks to sell on Etsy then you can ask people “What kind of art inspires you?”
Or if you’re a life coach you may ask “What questions do you have about anxiety?”

These types of questions can help your followers get to know you and can help you find new avenues of interest and communication with your followers.

For instance, in the life coach example, you may get answers that allow you to develop a new mini-course or email marketing series around a specific type of anxiety that your community brings up over and over. If you do your research this way then the solution you offer will be tailored to your community and be likely to get higher conversions.

There is another big benefit to asking a question like this as well. When people like you, they’re much more likely to buy from you and this type of Q&A helps to create a more personal bond and closer connection with your prospects.

5. To Get Ideas for a Robust FAQ page

This is a bit of an unusual way to use Instagram Questions, but it works well. By simply asking your followers to “ask you anything” you can find out what’s on their mind and what their most frequently asked questions actually are. This approach beats guessing what your followers have questions about by a mile.

What works well is creating a spreadsheet with all the questions that you get. Then you can sort the spreadsheet to see the most common questions. You can use those to create a high-quality FAQ that your customers will love, both on your website and in the Stories Highlights section of Instagram.

6. Real-Time Engagement

This is a great tactic if you are a brand that relates to any kind of event or activity that takes place at a specific time and place.

For instance, if you are a licensed reseller for athletic gear or other products for a college sports team and your team is playing, you could ask “How many points do you think XYZ player will score?” You can even have a giveaway that you promote beforehand to incentivize engagement. And don’t forget to build those engagement audiences mentioned in #2 to advertise to later.

7. “How Can I help?”

If you’re an influencer or an expert, this can be a powerful strategy to build trust with your audience. The best bet here is to set a time limit on how long you’re going to be online. Say something like “I’ll be answering questions for the next 20 minutes. Ask me anything.” And then answer the questions. This can be an amazingly effective strategy at building credibility as an expert in your field.

The Bottom Line

There are more than 1 billion Instagram accounts worldwide and 80% of those accounts follow a business on Instagram. So, the potential reach of your business on Instagram is huge. To take advantage of that potential you need great product shots and visual elements, and you need to be savvy about how you use the platform.

Creating engagement with your audience is a great way to build trust and get them to like you. It’s also a way you can create a warm audience to create advertisements for, as mentioned above. Instagram Questions are one of the most powerful ways to do that.