9 Effective Ways to Promote Your E-commerce Store on Instagram
As one of the most prominent social media platforms these days, Instagram has a whopping 400 million active users today. Without a doubt, it’s one of the most sought out social media sites for younger people, with 90% of its users being under 35.
Since it launched, it’s became a popular social media platform of e-commerce sellers. Highly visual in nature, photos are the essence of Instagram, making it ideal for sharing products and services. Most entrepreneurs use Instagram to market their products, create brand awareness, and increase their overall sales.
But how do you make the most of Instagram if you’re planning to grow your e-commerce business? There are some proven, actionable tips to consider.
9 Effective Ways to Promote Your E-Commerce Store on Instagram
If you’re looking to promote and grow a successful e-commerce business using Instagram, here are some steps to consider.
1. Go Live for Maximum Immediacy
Live videos are a creative way to boost your e-commerce business on Instagram. Think about it: if a company has a product presentation, it piques the viewers’ interest. The same is true when it comes to having live videos of specific products. To fully maximize the video you’re streaming to followers, answer frequently asked questions and highlight its benefits and features.
Take a look at how @littlelemuriagems maximize the live feature of Instagram to hold a live sale every Friday:
Keep in mind that when you go live on Instagram, it won’t be stored permanently in the platform. Instead, it will disappear after streaming. But it accomplishes the goal of piquing one’s interest, inviting a sense of urgency for viewers to watch it immediately.
Moreover, feedback comes in real time, from comments to likes, which also gets seen on the live feed. As a result, potential buyers are more likely to act on the spot and place an order.
The real-time feedback loop gives you a chance to engage with your followers, positively impacting your brand’s image as you cultivate genuine relationships with your potential customers.
2. Create Instagram Stories
Aside from using Instagram Live, maximize your reach and engagement by using Instagram Stories. Usually, you’ll have at least 24-hours to let your audience see whatever you have to showcase.
Although not as great as going live, it still creates a sense of urgency for your audience to view your content.
Some ideas that you can throw in your Instagram Stories are:
* Short-term promotions
* A teaser of upcoming products
* An event about e-commerce photography
* Showcase short clips and various images of your products that are available in your store
* Post different reviews and testimonials from customers satisfied with your products
Give your audience something interesting they want to see. Every story runs for 24 hours, so make the most out of it. Make every story count.
3. Selling Directly From Your Instagram Bio
Your Instagram business page is vital for customers to be able to know more about your brand. It might be a great platform to upload and showcase your products.
But unfortunately, there aren’t many sales opportunities to redirect to your site since the platform only allows one link in your bio and none in your captions.
That’s why third-party platforms became a viable alternative solution, making it easier for customers to be redirected to your site and improving the overall shopping experience.
All customers have to do is click a link from your bio, be redirected to a shoppable version of your feed that looks precisely like Instagram’s interface.
Once stepping in, it allows customers to browse through your products and click your website to purchase items.
4. Sell Smarter with Business Profiles and Analytics
One of the great things about social media is that it’s equipped with the necessary tools to help you better understand your target audience, what they do and how they behave. The use of ecommerce analytics for businesses is a must nowadays.
To be specific, E-commerce analytics on Instagram helps you understand how many people online have used your hashtags and their potential interests.
Knowing who your target audience is, the next thing you need to do is to understand their specific needs and how you can you address them.
If you want to sell smart and stand out from the rest of the competition, you need to be able to know how to tap this effectively.
The bottom line is: Once you’ve identified and now understand your audience, you need to craft an effective marketing strategy that’s personalized to cater to their needs and offer them a solution.
5. Capture your Audience’s Attention with Video Ads
Numerous studies show that video ads tend to grab an audience’s attention as opposed to static ones. So it makes perfect sense to invest your resources in creating a compelling video ad that interests your audience.
Instagram has different video formats. You can get creative while doing product launches, unboxing, and announcing upcoming promos and events in your video ads.
To succeed in your marketing campaign, it’s important to know how indispensable video is to your target audience. Create the perfect balance in your marketing efforts ‒ don’t just settle for plain ads that barely make an impact. Instead, use compelling videos and visuals for your ads.
6. Post consistently
To be able to get the results you want, make consistent, long-term efforts to grow your brand and establish your social media presence. One of the crucial things you have to do today is to determine how frequently you should be posting.
You could either be posting once every two days, or posting five times per day, but the important thing is finding out what works for you and consistently sticking to it.
Of course, there are several tools you can use to post on social media consistently, and to maintain your schedule. Various scheduling apps allow you to schedule when a particular post will appear on your feed.
7. Always engage with your audience
Since Instagram is a social platform, one of the biggest rules here is to constantly engage and interact with your followers. Always reply promptly to DMs, comments, and tags. Stay out of generic comments.
Your followers will appreciate it if you take time to provide them with honest, genuine remarks and conversations.
Because Instagram doesn’t allow you to share other people’s posts or photos on your platform, many do Instagram Shoutouts instead. This practice usually involves sharing screenshots of another user’s profile to be able to help them gain exposure.
There are two types of Instagram Shoutouts: paid and organic. Whether you want to try a free or paid shout-out, make sure you choose the right accounts to generate potential leads on your end.
8. Run exciting contests
Another smart way to ensure your followers interact with your page is to hold contests. Incentivizing the entire process is one of the most simple but effective ways to increase engagement among your target audience.
There are certainly a lot of Instagram users who participate in them.
Here are simple ways to make your contest interesting:
● Offer an incentive or reward that would make your followers grow excited;
● Create a simple entry criteria;
● Cross promote with all your other social media platforms to maximize the reach;
● Don’t make it completely about your brand;
● Induce trending topics or elements to the contest;
9. Share user-generated content
More than ever, people turn to the advice of friends and social media influencers before buying a particular product off the market.
The reason why Instagram became critical to the success of various brands and e-commerce companies is the massive amount of user-generated content there, also known as UGC. So you should encourage users to take a picture of themselves using your product, and promote these images on your profile.
Reach out to various influencers and micro-influencers in your particular niche, asking them to try your product.
This becomes a win-win situation. You please your customers by featuring them using your product on your profile, and a lot of people can see your products in use.
If you’re not entirely sold out to the idea yet, consider that user-generated content is known to generate 4 times more clicks — and a whopping 50 percent reduction in advertising costs.
Conclusion
If you want to get your brand in front of people quickly, don’t rely on SEO alone.
Instead, learn to harness the power of social media. Without a doubt, Instagram is a genuinely useful social platform if you want to grow your e-commerce business. With more than 400 million active users, it’s one of the most used social platforms in the world.
To make it work for you, employ specific strategies that have proven to be effective. Step up your game and implement these strategies vigorously.
You should be able to gain more followers, maximize your reach, boost conversions and increase your sales.
Juliette Anderson
Juliette Anderson is an Outreach Community Specialist for an e-commerce fulfillment company that specializes in partnering with online sellers who have an average parcel weight of 5+ pounds or greater. She works hand-in-hand with e-commerce stores to achieve optimal sales for four years already. Her specialty lies in social media marketing and paid promotions.
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