With new features being introduced regularly and a rapid growth in the number of users, Instagram has inspired marketers to develop and expand their social media toolbox in order to engage with and entertain their audiences.
One of the hardest feats to achieve when creating content is to maintain consistency to ensure you reach your various goals whilst also catering to your customers needs.
At Flashmat, we use Augmented Reality to reach and engage with new audiences. We listen to your story and work closely with you to design and produce tailored Instagram filters that give your audiences an opportunity to be part of your story. Think of all the possibilities this can bring – to name a few:
- Creating heightened brand awareness
- A low-cost way of building a community of loyal and engaged customers
- Natural and genuine user-generated content
- Strengthening your position in the market
Expectations for creating your first Instagram filter
Our in-house experts are taking a systematic approach to finding the best cost-effective, creative idea and strategy for your brand. For more information on the creation process, check out our Custom Instagram filter article.
Once your fitter has been published, Instagram will capture metrics to follow it’s popularity – these can be accessed through your Facebook account. You will be able to see the number of times the AR filter has been shown to users, either via the Instagram camera or on Instagram Stories – which is known as an Impression; and the number of Opens, Captures, Shares and Saves. You can also follow the daily data captured to see who the filters are reaching.
What do metrics say about your Instagram filter?
Trying to make sense of your filter metrics can be a daunting process. However, one doesn’t need to know all the nooks and crannies of analytics to understand their content performance and their next marketing move.
One basic, yet important thing to note when reading your filter metrics is that the number of Impressions might give a false sense of achievement – some mistake the number of impressions for the number of people reached.
Instead, an impression represents the number of times the content was shown to users. For example, a 45 seconds video posted on Instagram stories will be split into three 15 second stories. Therefore, the Impression number will show the stats for each 15 seconds of that recording i.e if 1,000 people are watching the video, you will get 3,000 impressions. Not to mention the fact that if someone scrolls past your content 10 times without looking at it, it counts as 10 impressions.
Learning from your data
The best way to identify the failure or success of an AR filter is to look at the metrics and analytics. While the number of impressions is a metric, the capturing and sharabilty growth is an analytic which can give a deeper insight into the overall performance of the filter. Let’s take a look at the data of a sample Filter 1 we created.
While the impression metric is very high, it doesn’t give us the valuable insight we are looking for or any indication of how many people we reached with our filter. For more insight, Opens, Captures, Shares and Saves are more accurate measurements. Now let’s review the analytics of our sample filter:
These analytics all indicate positive interest in the filter. If the numbers of Opens, Captures, Saves and Shares are reaching high percentages, it is a sign that people are taking the time to engage with your content. We simplified the analytics to highlight the following:
- 25% of the people who opened the content have used the filter
- 16% of the captured content was shared
- 5% of the people saved the effect on their phones
By studying data like above, and comparing the numbers between different styles of filters, we are able to see what kind of filters work best; this helps us to predict trends and ensure we are making filters that match our audience’s interests.
We also kept an eye on the stories created using the filter – who was posting, why, how, and in what context. How could we make the existing filter more relevant for this target group? Could we see a trend in what they were posting about? Were there repeat users? So, we created a new filter, Filter 2, keeping the style and tone of Filter 1.
We observed the following changes in the data:
- 31% of the people who opened the content, have used the filter
- 31% of the captured content was shared
- 15% of the people saved the effect
What is important to remember is that the number of times a filter is used, shared or saved offers a valuable indicator as to whether a filter is popular amongst your audience. From here, you can tailor your filter in response to your data.
How can you promote your Instagram filter to get the best results?
It takes more than one share to make your filter go viral, that’s why working with brand ambassadors who will use your filters and post content regularly will get your captures, shares, and saves up quicker so your brand can dominate the online space.
Promoting your new filter through other channels is also recommended – you can share a link that directly launches the filter on the Instagram application. Anything for adding a QR code to a receipt to banners, imagination is the limit. Don’t forget to make your own posts and stories using the filter, as Instagram allows a direct “swipe up” linking to the filter linked to your profile.
We can help you create an impactful filter campaign that converts your brand’s goals into actionable, empowering content that drives engagement amongst your followers.
Send us an email at contact@flashmat.co.uk or DM us on Instagram for more details.
