This is a guest post from Parichehr Parsi. Parichehr is a born writer and a freelance copywriter specializing in Instagram marketing, travel, and fashion. She currently writes for SocialPros and online magazines in Italy.
eCommerce, especially D2C eCommerce, relies heavily on social media platforms like Instagram for customer acquisition. Learning Instagram best practices and standard marketing strategies is necessary for all eCommerce sellers, and this article will cover some of the key pieces.
Tip: If you’re starting from the beginning, learn how to launch your eCommerce website.
How can Instagram boost eCommerce sales?
There are billions of monthly active users on Instagram thanks to attractive features and an easy-to-use UI. Its photo-based platform makes it an excellent choice for featuring eCommerce products and engaging buyers.
For a quick overview, here’s a guide on turning your Instagram followers into active customers and boosting your eCommerce sales with Instagram.
1. Switch to Instagram Business Account
Instagram for eCommerce businesses starts with switching your personal account (either private or public) to a business account. All you have to do is to Go to your account settings, and click on the option to “Switch to Business Profile.”
What are the advantages of an Instagram business account?
- It shows that you are a professional business
- It’ll add your contact information (phone, email, website) and make it easy for others to contact you
- You can access weekly and daily Instagram analytics for your account, which provides insights for your marketing and advertising
2. Add a link in your bio
Optimize your profile by choosing a username, setting a proper profile picture, and adding a professional bio. Your profile shows how professional you are and defines the type of your business. You can choose your logo as your profile picture. Add your business name as your username. If it was already taken, add some elements like an underline to be able to use it.
Finally, you can add your eCommerce business website link to your bio. You can use an all-in-one social media link and add that to your Instagram bio. Refer your followers to this link in your captions or stories.
3. Stay active and post regularly
The first rule of thumb for Instagram business success is to always be present in your followers’ feed. Produce consistent creative content to increase your impressions and reach. High engagement leads to more sales and can boost your eCommerce sales.
If you think that you cannot devote enough time to create and post daily, you can outsource or pre-schedule content. Many social media tools have a have a scheduling feature, in addition to analytics and easy cross-posting.
Tip: Prepare all your posts by the beginning of the week and schedule them to be posted during the week. As a result, you’ll have enough time to work on your Instagram strategies or research the rest of the week to stay up to date.
4. Build a relationship with your followers
In addition to posting often, replying and speaking with your followers also increases engagement and helps build relationships.
Tip: Post a photo or video, or as your followers questions on your stories. This is an easy way to get to know your audience and build relationships.
5. Inspire your followers
You should post regularly, but not just about your own products and services. Instead, find ways to connect with your followers’ personal lives. Give them work and health tips, teach them lessons, share great quotes, inspire them with different concepts, and more.
6. Be authentic
Your voice on social media should be authentic, rather than sales-focused and devoid of thought or emotions. Build ties with your followers by cultivating your brand voice and how you express yourself on social media. Write about the history of a product, the favorite uses you have for it, or something similar.
7. Be Creative
If you post content that is not creative or interesting to your followers, you’ll end up becoming an unwelcome presence on everyones’ feeds. Social media users are easily bored these days, and keeping them entertained requires a high level of creativity.
So, invest in a creative team that produces innovative content. Informative and interesting captions together with visually appealing photos can significantly boost your engagement.
8. Organize contests/giveaways
Holding contests and giveaways on Instagram is a great way to affiliate your business with your ideal users. Take note of who participates in your contests and giveaways to get insights into who is most interested in your brand, and who could make use of your products or services.
You can also ask your followers to like your posts and mention their friends in a comment under your post as a requirement to take part in the contest to get more visbility for your contests or giveaways. Or, you can ask followers to upload a photo and tag your brand, which is a perfect way to get user-generated content (UGC).
9. Offer limited promotions
Is there anything more tempting than a sale? Black Friday is one of the more obvious displays of just how much consumers love a good sale.
Because customers are more willing to buy a product that’s discounted from its retail price. Make offers or announce promo codes for a limited time and enjoy the flow of your followers to your website.
10. Make purchasing easy
One tactic that eCommerce marketplaces use to raise conversions is to make the purchasing process as easy as possible. Instagram is a user-friendly app that you can activate purchases on or direct to your web store.
11. Use Shoppable Posts
In line with the point above, a Shoppable Post is an Instagram feature that enables clickable product posts. Your followers can tap on the photo of your shoppable post to see the name and price of your product and go to a page on Instagram to see the other photos of the same product or the related products. From there, they can go directly to your website and buy a product.
This feature is accessible to accounts with more than 10,000 followers.
12. Collaborate with Influencers
Using influencers in your eCommerce marketing strategies is another tool that can showcase your products to your followers. Ask influencers to review your products and services (honestly), and trust them to do it in an authentic way their followers love.
13. Highlight excellent customer service
Selling a product or service is not the last step of a business. You should assure your buyers around warranties, free exchanges, cashback, or a 24/7 online help/support center.
Creating the assumption that you still support your customers even after they buy your product or service helps increase trust and encourage repeat purchases.
14. Find the right narrative and tone
It’s usually a good idea to stay friendly and approachable on social media. When sharing posts about your company, team members, history, behind-the-scenes and such, remember to keep things true to your chosen narrative and tone.
These basic tips can help you find success on Instagram as an eCommerce seller, especially if your remember to put them into play daily.
