How to Boost eCommerce Sales with Instagram Marketing Strategies

Businessowners worry a lot about how their Social media activities are affecting the bottom line of their eCommerce business? What they get for putting so much time and effort to show up consistently on social media?

Not to worry, Chin up! Social Media has a great impact when it comes to driving sales eCommerce for your business.

To better understand how social media is impacting the eCommerce industry, here are some interesting data points we uncovered:

A research was carried out by GeoPoll on what influences the purchasing decisions of Nigerian.

QUESTION: “Select all that apply. What influences your preferences in products and services?”
RESULTS:

As we can see from the result above, Social media ranks at the top of the chart. It is safe to say that the high response rate for social media’s influence is an indication that social media advertising is a promising market penetration strategy.

• Facebook leads as a source of social traffic and sales.
• Visit Shopify stores from Facebook is two-thirds of all social media visits. With an average of 85% of all orders from social media come from Facebook.
• Facebook has the highest conversion rate for all social media eCommerce traffic at 1.85%, according to Shopify

• 65% of Top-Performing Instagram Posts Feature Products.  It’s necessary to keep social media, social and not promote every single minute of the day but Instagram users actually enjoy seeing videos and photos of your products.
• Instagram has over 1 billion active users per month and 68% of users engage regularly with brands.

Improving eCommerce Sales with Instagram

Instagram makes it so easy for businesses to share images and videos with the click of a button. With features like products tagging in posts and shopping stories, it has become a must-use social media platform for eCommerce businesses. People love to see a visual representation of their imagination than just reading plain text.

Instagram won’t make much of a difference to your business if all you do is just post pictures and videos of your products. You need strategic planning and tools to increase your business visibility to get more customers to your eCommerce website to increase your sales.

We have 9 tips you can use to boost your eCommerce business and drive sales with the right use of Instagram below.

Optimize Your Business Account Profile on Instagram

• Go to your profile and tap Account.
• Click on Switch to Business Profile and choice the Facebook Page you’d like to associate with your Business Profile
• Make sure your profile is set to Public. Note: Private accounts can’t switch to Business Accounts.
• Review your business’s contact information, make required changes and tap Done.
• Write your bio that states who you are, what you do and who you serve so viewers can get an overview of your business. Add your website link here. Note: This is the only place you can include a clickable link that will direct leads to your website.
• Now fill your feed with related images and videos to communicate with your audience in your brand voice.

Add Geo-Tagging with Your Post

Having a physical store gives you the advantage of add geo-tagging with your post. This helps your potential buyers find you when they search on Instagram by location. It’s a great way to get your neighbors to drop by the store.

Instagram users also search for products by location because they want to get it immediately. It will be easy to convert these types of people into regular customers.

You can build a community that made up of your targeted audience that you can easily introduce any offers regarding your business very swiftly.

Partnering with those who offer complementary products or services to yours can be a potent way to gain more trust in increasing buyers satisfaction and get them to stick with you.

Build Social Proof With User-Generated Content

Social proof is literally a great strategy that you can apply to make potential consumers purchase your products when they see other customers are happy with their purchase. Encourage your users to create content for you.

Ask your customers to share pictures showing off the products they have bought from your store, and with their permission, post the pictures on your own account. This way, your potential customers will get inspired to purchase from you. This is a kind of referral marketing technique that can have a positive effect on your sales.

Maximize The Use of Shoppable Posts

Selling on Instagram has gotten a lot easier since Instagram shoppable posts feature was launched. In the past, the only way for your followers to connect with your products was through the link in your bio, or links in Instagram Stories, this feature provides a stress-free experience for people to shop products directly from your posts.

It’s not every Instagram account that has the shoppable posts feature. Certain requirements need to be met for you to be eligible.

First and foremost, you must be located in one of the following countries:

• United States
• Canada
• Germany
• Spain
• France
• Italy
• Brazil
• United Kingdom

An Instagram business account is also a requirement.

You’re not allowed to sell anything that violates the Facebook community standards since Facebook owns Instagram.

This goes without saying, you can’t sell anything illegal either. But that’s not the only restriction. Below is a list of products Instagram strictly prohibits from being sold through the platform:

• drugs (recreational or prescription)
• alcohol
• tobacco products or paraphernalia that’s related to tobacco use
• weapons, explosives, or ammunition
• animals
• subscriptions, digital products, or digital content
• supplements deemed to be unsafe
• anything that infringes on a trademark or copyright
• currency (real, virtual, or fake)
• fuel
• automobiles
• dangerous machines
• sexual or “adult” products
• anything that promotes gambling
• medical and healthcare products
• anything that is offensive, misleading, or fraudulent

Once you don’t sell any of these products, you’re eligible for Instagram shoppable posts. This feature will help eCommerce businesses send traffic directly from Instagram posts to purchase products.

Start a Giveaways and Contests

One of the best ways you can build trust and connect with your audience on Instagram is to hold giveaways and contests occasionally. Everyone loves freebies, and giveaways are one of the best tactics to improve your sales.

Contests help draw lots of attention to your eCommerce business. You can ask your followers to tag three friends and use particular hashtags, which will increase the number of people your business reach on Instagram.

First, make a post clearly stating the rules of participation, and then ask your followers to like, follow, and repost to their account with your @username using specific #hashtag for that contest. But make sure that you follow the promotional guidelines of Instagram

Use Effective Stories

There are various ways you can use the powerful story feature for the benefit of your eCommerce store.

• Repost the user-generated stories to your Instagram stories. This will make your existing customers happy that you care about them at the same time it provides social proof for your potential customers.
• Promoting your events and special deal through the stories is an excellent way to boost your business awareness.
• Do a Live stream of a new product launch event on your Instagram’s stories. Your followers will be more excited and likely to engage with your products when you go LIVE with them.
• Show them a behind-the-scenes of packaging products ready to be delivered.
• Run more frequent Q&A sessions on your stories. The chances of people engaging with you are high when you choose to answer the most common questions your followers are having.

Use Relevant Hashtags

One of the most effective ways to reach an organic audience on Instagram is through the use of hashtags. If you are using relevant hashtags, your products will be seen by a larger group of people, and more specifically, your target audience. 

• Using hashtags on Instagram is the same way you use keywords to rank on search engines. Use relevant hashtags related to the niche of your eCommerce business.
• If your eCommerce business is a brand in itself, then use the branded hashtags in your post’s description and stories. Hashtags will maximize the reach of your posts.
• When running a contest, personalized that contest with a relevant hashtag. This will help you differentiate your giveaway entries from others.

Limited-Time Promotional and Seasonal offers

Running limited-time promotion still works because people get a sense of missing out from these appealing deals, which drives them to buy the product within a certain amount of time.

Studies show that more than 80% of the purchases prompted by promotional sale offers around the holidays and festival seasons are the result of impulse buying. Businesses and brands very well know this fact and use this psyche behavior of humans to prompt them in buying just for special holidays.

Ask Influencers to Review Your Products

Influencer marketing works the same way as word-of-mouth. It is a popular way of marketing online to attract sales. This gives you access to people from all niches, globally, like Tech influencers sharing their garget with tech lovers, fashion influencers flaunting their style, and so on.

Followers take product reviews from Influencers or bloggers more seriously and rely on their opinions, which will help brands improve conversions and attract more revenue.

Go Live

Never underestimate the power of live streams. Users love watching their favorite brands. In fact, 82 percent of people prefer live video over static posts, and when your audience sees this kind of content from you instead of just strictly photos, they’ll enjoy it too.

When businesses run live streams, they put a face to a brand name and make the experience more personal. Humanizing your brand has positive effects that make your audience feel like they know you on a deeper level and connect with you. Offering inside looks into your warehouse or running a contest through a live stream is a great way to invite your customers to know your brand better while keeping it fun.

Use Instagram Advertising

Instagram advertising serves as a great tool that can improve the conversion rates of your website, taking your brand to the next level. Here are a few stats to know about Instagram advertising:

• Instagram ensures your ads get noticed and brings you the most engaged audience. According to research conducted by Forrester, users are 58 times more likely to engage with Instagram’s branded content than with branded content on Facebook, and 120 times more likely when compared to Twitter.
• Ad recall from Instagram is 2.8 times higher than other social sites’. This means ads from Instagram are remembered more than the ads on any other platform.
• The average duration of visits to Instagram is 192 seconds, which is longer than on any other channel, including Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

It’s a Wrap!

Now that you have learned how Instagram marketing strategy can contribute to the growth of your business, it is time that you implement these nine strategies. If you are just starting off, then you should be more consistent in posting quality content.  They will help you gain followers, broaden your reach, and generate more sales for your business.

To continuously improve on your ideas and perform better, keep track of how your posts are performing, which ones are working best, which ones resonate most with your target audience, and how the users are behaving. What time or season is best for potential audience reach? How relevant was the audience of the influencer you paid to? What is the quality of traffic referred by Instagram?

If you can able to track the analytical result properly and execute your next strategies according to the insight you will definitely grow eventually and drive more buyers for your business. Check out the 21 critical metrics you need to be tracking for your eCommerce business in this other Blog Post.