Today, Instagram is not just a photo-sharing app. It has come a long way to become a real powerhouse that offers a whole host of potential for online business, especially after the company officially launched the Instagram Shops, on May 2020. With over 2 billion monthly active users, and more than 60% of users come in contact with businesses and brands, Instagram eCommerce is undoubtedly the way to go in 2023.
However, just like with every eCommerce or social media channel, success is not guaranteed just by being there. You still need to possess a proper strategy if you want to leverage business performance and skyrocket your eCommerce sales.
In this post, we will share some of the most practical tips that help to drive large volumes of traffic and generate more qualified sales on your Instagram. You can jump right to the method that piques your interest the most!
Table of Contents
Polish your Instagram profile and bio
Because your Instagram profile is the summary of your brand’s identity, you need to take care of every single aspect that turns a basic account into a well-put-together and professional mirror of what your brand represents.
If you have not switched your profile to a Business account, do not hesitate to do it right now. You will love to own an Instagram business account because it provides a professional-looking profile and lets you pull your contact information from Facebook while retaining Instagram’s shoppable links.
Converting your personal Instagram account to a business account is quite easy. You can enable this by going into the settings tab. It will enable a few options, such as promoting your offers and posts, sell your products, and you can look at the insights and analytics of your posts.
One more tip to optimize your Instagram profile is writing a compelling bio. Since the space for bio is so limited with no more than 150 characters, make sure that customers can know who you are, what you do, and the products you sell by looking at a short and compelling bio.
Now, take a look at the Andie Swim, a successful women’s swimsuit company writes in their bio:
Within nearly 30 characters long, Andie Swim takes all the information and compress them in a perfect bio
Make the most use of the hashtag
One of the most effective ways to bring your product closer to a wide audience is through the Instagram hashtag, which is similar to the keywords you use to rank on search engines.
If your Ebusiness is branded itself, then you the branded hashtags in your post description and stories. Big brands such as Coca Cola, Red Bull, and Dove has utilized branded hashtags to spark conversations and encourage user-generated content.
Even if your business is not a brand yet, try to search and use generalized and relevant hashtags to your products in every Instagram feed. You will see how wonderfully hashtags maximize the reach of your posts after a period of time.
Increase sales with contests and user-generated content
Instagram is 10% sales and 90% user engagement. To breed the customer’s trust and massive engagement, you need to create an artistic and motivating feed for your potential audience.
Posting the content or stories generated by your satisfied user is one of the best marketing strategies out there. That not only shows how you value your existing customers but also works as a kind of social proof, encouraging other target clients to trust your brand because of real-life and conceiving evidence.
Now, we will show you a CocaCola post, a picture of their customer, working like a charm.
Many Instagram users follow their brand just because of the giveaways they offer. Therefore, running a contest with appealing rewards that they have eyes on will surely bring more followers, engagement, and conversion for your eCommerce site than any other previous post.
In order to make the contest work effectively, you need to follow two steps:
- Firstly, make an awesome graphic or a photo with a description, clearly stating the giveaway and the rules of participation.
- Secondly, ask your followers like your post, follow your account, and repost on their accounts with a @mention and a #hashtag for the contest
However, before you create any event, ensure that you abide by Instagram’s contest rules.
Use visually attractive photos
There is the fact that 90% of the information our brain processes is visual. Hence, you can make customers fall in love with your items for the first time by visually appealing images, which are the starting point toward the shopping journey. Only if customers like how a product looks, they will move on to reading the rest of the information such as product description or reviews. If not, they will scroll past it without having second thoughts.
Make sure that you only post a variety of high-quality photos, which not only shows how good our products are but also how they can be used
The image size recommended for Instagram is 1080 x 1080 pixels, and the character limit for captions is 2200.
Ask influencers to review your products and share promo codes
Using influencer marketing has been a typical tactic that has proved its effectiveness for many Instagram stores, big and small alike. This strategy certainly works because the influencer’s followers are loyal to the influencer and believe what they say. One the other hand, the influencer’s target market is the same as that brand’s, which means their marketing message caters to their needs and evokes their interest.
To be successful with influencer marketing, seek out influencers whose target audience is as same as yours, so you have better chances of boosting conversions. You can also look at how your competitors are using influencers in their strategies to promote their products and grow their following.
Marriott was one of the first tourism brands to embrace the influencer marketing strategy. In a particular campaign, the hotel chain cooperated with YouTube influencer Jeana Smith (@PrankVsPrank) to celebrate reaching one million check-ins on the Marriott app. The video featuring a surprise dance party for the mobile user that completed the milestone check-in has nearly four million views since it went viral.
Conclusion
Making more sales from Instagram does not require a massive budget. However, you need to invest some time in finding the best strategy that works out for your brand. Above are just a few ways to help you boost your Instagram sales, engage with customers, and build a consistent followers base.
We hope this post is useful to you. Thank you so much for your reading time!
Author Bio:
Daisy is an Avada Commerce content writer, who loves to write about business solutions. She believes in the power of words and how a message can inform and even transform its intended audience.
