Instagram Marketing: How Hot Pockets is Getting Engagement on Instagram
Instagram has proven to be an effective marketing platform for businesses all over the world. By now, it is almost expected that most businesses will have some content on the social media platform. But you might be wondering if Instagram marketing is right for you and your business. Instagram, after all, is an image-sharing platform. Businesses whose services do not rely on visual appeal don’t need an Instagram account, right?
It turns out the answer is not that simple. Instagram can still be a powerful marketing tool for you, even when you wouldn’t expect it to be. For proof of this, we need to look no further than Hot Pockets. As of March 2022, the official Hot Pockets Instagram account has nearly 60k followers. The account is fairly active, usually offering 2-3 new posts each week.
This might seem bizarre. There are only so many times you can share an image of a microwavable sandwich online and keep people engaged. So how does a company like Hot Pockets have such an engaging Instagram presence?
Instagram Engagement and Marketing 101: Brand Awareness
For Hot Pockets and many other brands, Instagram is not necessarily used for actively selling their product. Instead, Instagram is a tool for growing brand awareness. Instagram’s visual medium makes it a great setting for customer engagement. Commenting and reacting to images is quicker and easier than reacting to text posts for many users.
For a brand like Hot Pockets, the opportunity for fun and engaging visual content is endless. It certainly helps that Hot Pockets was an established brand before the advent of Instagram. Even more fortuitous, their target audience (young males) is one that is already active on the platform. But these factors do not entirely explain the brand’s success on the platform.
Hot Pockets has managed to keep a new generation of customers engaged with light-hearted, humorous content. The brand’s Instagram posts are a blend of product images and memes. This humorous content keeps their followers engaged with the product and maintains brand relevance on a major social media platform. While nobody is buying Hot Pockets on Instagram, they are maintaining brand awareness there. And that brand awareness is crucial to sales and success.
How to Increase Instagram Engagement
Hot Pockets relies heavily on humor to increase Instagram engagement. But humor has long been a marketing staple for their brand. This works for many brands, but it is not always right for others. Hot Pockets has a young audience that responds positively to humor and has come to associate humor with the product.
Other forms of engaging Instagram content include polls, image submissions, and announcements. For instance, a recent Hot Pockets post on the platform shared a screenshot of “poll results” determining their most popular flavor. This post resulted in a feisty comment section filled with followers discussing their favorite Hot Pocket flavors. Other brands can encourage users to submit photos of their product or photos relevant to their service. This can be a great way to engage your Instagram audience and also to endear your brand to customers.
Instagram also presents opportunities for corporate partnerships. Another staple of Hot Pockets’ Instagram presence is posts related to video games. Given their predominantly young male audience, partnerships with video game studios and professional gamers have proved effective for the brand.
Great Content Grows Brand Awareness
Having strong customer engagement on any platform relies on understanding the audience and their expectations on that platform. Each business will have its own target audience. Platforms like Instagram provide a creative, personal, and accessible medium for your customers to engage with your brand. Unlocking that engagement through great content is often a tremendous step toward growing brand awareness.
