Instagram shopping is quickly gaining attention as one of the most convenient ways for consumers to discover new brands and products and purchase them with a few clicks. Business owners worldwide are quickly adopting Instagram shopping to boost their sales.
Keep reading to find out how to set up Instagram Shopping to get more sales.
Studies show that 90% of Instagram users keep up with business profiles, with over 200million users visiting at least one business profile daily. These numbers show the effectiveness of Instagram shopping for business owners and motivate them to create an online store, tag products, and simplify the whole consumer journey.
Furthermore, an analysis report from Instagram suggests that 44% of Instagram users buy from Instagram stores every week. The same analysis also shows that 28% of it was planned for. And with Instagram’s provision of new e-commerce features, it’s much easier for your followers to quickly buy your products. Consider this a step-by-step guide on setting up Instagram shopping to drive more sales to your business.
14 Ways To Set Up Instagram Shopping To Get More Sales
Diving into the steps to get more sales through Instagram shopping, let’s take a look at these tips:
Be Eligible For Instagram Shopping
To be eligible for Instagram shopping doesn’t require you to reach a specific follower count. If your business has an active presence, that alone should get you on the go. The requirements to be eligible for Instagram shopping are:
- Your business should be located in any of the Instagram markets
- Reading and agreeing to Instagrams policies
- Having an available domain to sell from
Make Your Instagram Profile Your Store Front
After you must have been qualified for Instagram shopping, the next step is to quickly turn your followers into potential customers by creating an eye-catching business profile.
For instance, in your bio, make your customers feel welcome and add a solid call to action. Providing a way for customers to reach out to you can be very helpful as well so that they can quickly contact you if they need further assistance.
You might want to attract customers more by offering free shipping. If you actively post on your stories, you should consider creating highlights to keep your offers and new arrivals. Be sure that the highlight albums are kept simple with eye-catching covers.
Your followers who are getting to like your brand will never forget to check in on your business profile to browse for new products. Use Instagram stories just like how the store across the street uses its windows. Display your products, share incentives, etc.
Create A Catalog
To make sales on Instagram, you should have an active catalog and link it to your Instagram profile. To do this, simply log in to your Meta commerce manager. This is a feature in the Facebook business manager where you can quickly set up an online store on Facebook and link it to your Instagram business page. In the commerce manager, tap the ad catalog and select the type of catalog you want. If you are into retail, you should go for an eCommerce catalog.
After that, you should go over to upload your inventory. You can use several small business software to design your inventory. If you are dealing with small products, you can update the product information in the catalog manually. Or you can simply connect to a partner platform to help you upload your products.
Acquire Engaged Followers
With the hype about Instagram, it’s easy to be lured in and overlook the basics. If you aim to make sales from Instagram shopping, you should try as much as possible to be authentic.
Spamming users, buying followers, and dishing out content might just help you with followers, but they won’t know much about you, what you offer, or why they would want to patronize your business.
Forget about spamming or other strategies and focus more on getting real and engaged followers who are active in your business. You should consider a time management strategy to plan your content ahead of time and use the Instagram scheduling feature to broadcast your content at your preferred time. You can also use funnel templates to know where your customers are on the sales funnel to help you target them effectively.
Also, instead of following and unfollowing users continuously, an act that Instagram is working to terminate, you can simply like and comment on content in your target market.
Make Use Of Product Tags
As users get to discover your products on Instagram, product tags let your customers make the purchase within Instagram or know more about your business and the product through your provided website. With the help of shopping tags, businesses get to tag their items on Instagram so customers can conveniently shop within the platform.
Business owners can tag their stories, posts, and reels. If your Instagram shopping has a checkout option, you can as well tag your live feeds. If you aim to reach out to more customers, tagging your products can help you with that, as they can be featured on explore pages.
With the recent announcement from Instagram to extend product tagging to users in the United States, users can get to tag items from businesses in their various posts. This is a favorable upgrade because initially, only the creators could tag items from businesses with Instagram shopping.
Now, if you should tag any business in your post, the owner of that business gets notified. You can quickly go through tagged contents and regulate who may and who may not tag you via settings. Instagram stated that at least 1.6 million users tag a brand weekly. With the help of product tags, promoting your products and reaching out to more customers is made easy.
Only Post Quality Pictures
As Instagram is visual, you should focus more on posting images of high quality. The idea is for your images to be eye-catching and promote your desired product. As customers visit your Instagram profile, they should quickly identify your brand.
Be sure that all pictures you post on your feed are in line with your business branding and make your customers feel the authenticity of your brand. Is your business minimalist? Then it should be the same on your Instagram profile.
Select an aesthetic pattern and stick with it. This also has to do with your captions. Try as much as possible to avoid sounding in different tones. Remember to keep it simple and consistent. Visual appearance on Instagram could be the first impression on your customers, so make it count.
Leverage Instagram Ads
Studies show that 87% of users would follow a brand to get to know more after seeing an ad. As online shopping is estimated to reach $552 billion by 2024 in the United States, Instagram has provided advertisements to enhance the eCommerce space.
Shoppable Instagram ads are just similar to normal Instagram ads, but the difference here is there are product tags. When your promoted product catches the attention of a customer, they will be directed to the detailing page to get to know more about that particular item.
If your business is based in the United States, you put out ads with Instagram checkout as well so that customers get to buy directly in the app. Instagram ads are just like posts; they appear on your feed or explore pages with pictures or videos showing the product.
They work pretty well like normal ads. You get to create them in the ads manager and are displayed to your target audience or related audience to reach out to potential customers.
Use The Retargeting Scheme
To increase the power of your Instagram ads, you can also make use of retargeting to further reach out to users who have browsed through your website or shown a level of interest in your business.
The idea of retargeting is to specifically target visitors who left your website without buying any product. This feature was initially made available on Facebook in 2015 before it was included on Instagram in 2016.
While using the retargeting scheme, you can focus on a product or use relative items to help direct customers toward the right path. To use this feature, you can quickly install the Facebook pixel and upload your catalog. After that, the ads will kickoff depending on the items viewed on your website, with Facebook picking up the most relevant based on the way your ads are categorized.
Partner With Instagram Influencers
Influencers are simply individuals with a huge number of active followers. Their audience looks up to them for product recommendations, and that’s why a lot of brands are partnering with Instagram influencers and brand ambassadors to promote their products.
About 91% of luxury brands use influencers to drive more sales and engagement. With a good Instagram influencer, you can get increased traffic which in turn fetches you more sales and profit.
If you would like to boost the sales that an influencer is getting your business, you should consider providing them with promo links. If you prefer to use more than one influencer to do the job, provide each of them with a unique link so that you can easily monitor their traffic.
Partnering with influencers is also a great approach to increasing your SEO ranking because a lot of people get to know about your brand and would talk about it.
Don’t Forget To Use Live Stream Shopping
With your Instagram store and product catalog available, you should consider incorporating a live shopping stream. This is where brands sell their products over a live feed. You can use the idea of a TV shopping network, but this will be over the phone and with more interaction.
With live-stream shopping, businesses get to display new products, get to know their customers, and get into partnerships with similar brands. During the live stream, you can simply pin your tagged catalog to display on the screen, and all the customers need to do is add to your cart and checkout.
Show Pictures Of Your Products Being Used
Even though the pictures of your products are of high quality, they may not just do the work of driving sales. To make your content catching enough to drive sales, display how your products are used.
Explain to your customers through educational content of photos and videos showing the products you offer in action. For instance, if you are selling paints, you can post pictures of buildings or rooms that were painted using the paints you sell. In the caption, you can describe the color mix and mood to fit in different rooms.
Similarly, if you sell clothes, you can post pictures of people putting on the clothes you offer. You should as well write a caption that describes the fabric texture. Put feelings in your content by showing your customers different ways they can use and enjoy your product.
Offer Incentives Like Discounts Or Giveaways
Offering incentives like discounts, free shipping, or giveaways is also a nice approach to making more sales on Instagram shopping. Thinking of promoting your products and driving sales, this is a pretty much cost-effective means. You can incorporate an Instagram chatbot to personalize your message and offer your discounts and giveaways in a friendly and conversational manner.
As your customers spread the word because of the mouth-watering offers you have, you also increase the awareness of your brand and that particular product. In turn, this could take your customer engagement rate off the charts.
As your followers engage more and more with any content you post, you can recognize them and offer them discounts during purchase. As you provide discounts, it is enough to encourage others to visit your profile and patronize you. And if after they buy your product and love it, most of them promote your brand and recommend it to family members and friends.
Use Captivating Hashtags
Using hashtags is a highly recommended way to boost brand awareness and link your content to a particular conversation. With hashtags, your shoppable content becomes discoverable in explore pages and reaches out to more customers. As you share shoppable content with hashtags, it displays on users’ feeds with a bag icon indicating that it’s a product.
If you have a lot of hashtag ideas that are in line with your brand, you should use them more on shoppable content. If you sell clothes, you can go with hashtags like #fashion and connect with a broader audience.
Be Relatable
A little sense of humor helps to get customers engaged with your brand. To drive sales, you can include puns and humor in your Instagram content. Your aim should be to improve Instagram users’ perception of your business. And by now, you should know how positive perception can improve sales.
However, if humor is not in line with your business, then you can come up with thought-inspiring content. Instagram is a great platform to share aspirational content that a lot of people can relate to.
Know How To Set Up Instagram Shopping
For businesses with the main aim of making more sales, Instagram shopping should not be a secondary choice. From boosting your brand awareness to increasing traffic to your brand, the mouth-watering advantages of adapting to Instagram shopping are clear enough.
Even if you are planning on building a brand from scratch or driving more traffic to your existing brand, the helpful tips listed in this guide should help you work the magic. If you are not already on board, be sure to get up to date on ways to get your brand the awareness it requires to get more sales through Instagram shopping.
I’m a digital marketer, and digital marketing is a great avenue to express one’s interest in business, technology and communication. I love helping small business through Digital Marketing like SEO, SMO, PPC, Link building, Email Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Content Marketing.
Author – Sakshi Bharadwaj