As more than 200 million Instagrammers visit at least one business profile daily, the likelihood of boosting your eCommerce sales on Instagram is high.
Instagrammers have the chance of exploring and finding the brands that they are most interested in and start engaging with them.
Since Instagram provides features and tools that make sales easy, it is also profitable for brands and businesses to use Instagram for their online sales.
If you have an eCommerce business, you should consider Instagram as a fertile online platform in your eCommerce marketing for online sales. Reading this article will help you learn how to plan your Instagram marketing strategies to boost your eCommerce sales on Instagram.
In this article
Why Use Instagram to Increase Your Sales Online?
Now let’s see what the reasons for using Instagram as a platform for your eCommerce sales are.
Instagram Marketing is Economical
Instagram is a free app and has no in-app purchases. Many marketing strategies for Instagram have no costs. If you switch to a business account, you can access Instagram analytics and insights for free. Therefore, you can get a lot of information about the preferences of your followers. Using this information, you can plan for your future strategies effectively.
Instagrammers Are a Fan of Online Shopping
Imagine you sell on a platform where its users tend to be shopaholics. According to a report by Sproutsocial, 79% of people searched for more information after seeing a product on Instagram, and 46% actually made a purchase. So, the conclusion can be drawn that Instagram is the right place to consider for your eCommerce sales.
There is Audience Diversity
As Statista declares, there are more than one billion monthly active users on Instagram. Therefore, there are lots of new tastes and interests for almost any kind of business on Instagram.
More Engagement
Instagram is by far the most engaging social platform for brands, with 2-7% percent of users interacting with each post. Consequently, focusing on Instagram as the main social media platform for your eCommerce brand marketing can increase your sales online.
How Can I Boost My Online Sales on Instagram?
Now it is time to discover the steps you can take to increase your eCommerce sales on Instagram.
1. Optimize Your Profile
Check your username, display name, profile picture, and bio. Include the keywords or keyphrases of the category of your business in them. It would make your profile easier to find when users search those words.
For example, if you are a nails specialist, it is better if you include the word “nails” as your main keyword:
In addition, you can add your social media link in Instagram bio and prompt your followers to click on your link to check them out. You can do this either in the captions of your posts, your stories, live streams, or IGTV videos.
2. Make the Sales Funnel Short and Easy
Sales Funnel is a marketing concept that refers to the steps and stages that a user has to take to become your customer and actually buy from you in the end. The stages are depicted here:
One good characteristic of Instagram is that you can accelerate all or most of the stages for your potential customers. Moreover, it has some tools that can increase your brand awareness easily.
If you have strong content marketing strategies, you can illustrate or explain your sales funnel in the posts that you share on Instagram. As videos on Instagram can attract more engagement in comparison to photos, you can create real videos or short animations with interesting yet simple graphic designs.
Keeping your sales funnel smooth and easy to follow can help you boost your eCommerce sales. The importance of this facilitation comes into light when you truly understand that people may be there on Instagram for different reasons such as its ease of use. So, complicated processes can definitely make them bored or even frustrated.
3. Make a Request for Instagram Shopping
Instagram has recently added the ‘Instagram Shopping’ feature to make shopping through Instagram itself possible. As a result, people can stay on the app to buy the product.
There are some requirements when it comes to Instagram Shopping which should be followed:
- Only selling physical products is possible and not services for instance.
- You should have a Facebook Page and a Facebook Catalog to nourish your Instagram Shop.
- You should have a geographical base that is supported by Instagram.
If you think you are eligible for having an Instagram Shop, you can submit your request and wait from days to some weeks to get approved. After the approval, you can sell directly on the app. If you are not eligible, there is still enough opportunity and tools for selling on Instagram through your posts, stories, and link in your bio.
4. Encourage User-Generated Content
User-Generated Content (UGC) is a great way to gain more trust that leads to purchase. Such content makes you unique and authentic. Many well-known brands use this method to engage more with their followers. To gain UGC, simply ask your followers to upload their photos using your products or services with a special hashtag, so you can track them.
Make sure that the posting UGC does not affect the aesthetic theme and design of your feed negatively. Share the ones that go well with the appearance of your feed. If you cannot make a match between the UGC and the theme of your account, you can still share them as stories and save them as highlights so that they are always on your profile.
5. Organize Contests and Giveaways
Contests and giveaways are encouraging activities to make your followers excited about your products or services. To promote your contest, you can give one or several of your products or a discount code as a prize for the winner(s) of your contest. You can also make a partnership with another brand and give sponsored prizes to your winner(s).
Here is how Mustliving has organized a contest:
You can also share another post to announce the winner(s):
You can set conditions for your followers to take part in your contest. For instance, you can ask them to “Like and share this post” or “Tag three friends”, etc. It is good for increasing both the awareness of your product or service and the engagement of your account as many new users will interact with your post.
6. Consider Influencer Marketing
Advertising on social media including Instagram is totally different from traditional advertising. So, leave your professional advertising ads for the TV or other media. In the present world of social media, people have become hard to convince using traditional advertising methods. Therefore, modern advertising has kind of replaced traditional advertising in recent years. Today, people prefer recommendations over traditional ads which is why influencer marketing has become so popular on Instagram.
Influencers can play the role of a friend who recommends your followers to buy or try something. One great advantage of influencer marketing over traditional marketing is that it is not costly. You can use micro-influencers and still promote your products on a quite low budget.
No matter if you are using a micro-influencer or macro-influencer, you should keep in mind that you should never dictate something to the influencers. Give them enough freedom to advertise your product or service in their own language and tone to keep everything as natural as possible.
7. Do Email Marketing
Instagram is not the best platform to do email marketing but it can help you grow your email subscribers list anyway. Email is a much more stable tool for your marketing plans as you can keep the connection even if your audience stops engaging with your social media. Moreover, there are several options that you can have in emails such as various call-to-action buttons, adding more high-quality photos of your products, etc.
There are ways you can encourage your followers to subscribe to your email list. All you need to do is to offer worthwhile things to exchange for the emails of your followers. For instance, you can offer e-books, live workshops, courses, checklists, promotional codes, etc.
Another way is to share the link of your email landing page in your bio and then prompt your followers to subscribe to it.
8. Use Flash Sale Technique
Due to the recent Instagram algorithm, not all your posts are shown in the feed of your followers. Therefore, they miss your new posts if you do not use the flash sale technique. In other words, you set a promo code for a limited time and ask them to be the first person who sends you a DM to win the code.
Another effective way is to ask your followers to turn on their post notification so that they will be notified any time that you post. If you offer exciting promo codes or products, they will be eager to turn on the notifications and buy from you.
9. Use Hashtags and Locations
A false belief has recently been widespread among businesses and that is to stop using hashtags and locations because they seem not to work.anymore. However, taking a short look at the post insights tells you that hashtags are still effective if used in the right way.
You should avoid using hashtags with high usage. Instead, you should choose the hashtags with a reasonable amount of usage so that you do not get your post buried beneath the traffic of upcoming posts.
Using locations is also helpful in a way that helps you find local followers and get them to engage with you.
10. Count on Instagram Ads
Instagram ads are similar to Facebook ads as they are dependent on them. The difference is that Instagram ads are 2.8 times higher in ad recall in comparison to other social media which makes it a great platform.
Here is how Patrickstarrr has made a partnership with Crest using Instagram ads:
Instagram ads have some advantages:
- You can choose your target audience by age, sex, location, and interests.
- The cost of the ad depends on your budget conditions.
- The duration of the ad presence on Instagram is also up to you.
Conclusion
Selling on Instagram is an opportunity that you as an online seller should not miss. Regardless of your business niche, there is enough room on Instagram for you to find your customers. So, use the guidelines above to find your own place and gain a lot out of your eCommerce sales on Instagram.
