10 Best Tips To Sell On Instagram With Your Online Shop
Let’s get to know the best tips to sell on Instagram, nowadays this social network has become a channel to make brands known, but above all to interact with our audience, create a community and make sales.
Instagram currently has more than one billion active users worldwide, which makes it an excellent channel for selling, promoting and publicising different brands. The platform has a Shopping function, which allows you to use your account as a virtual showcase where you can display all your products and redirect your followers directly to your online shop, making Instagram an excellent marketing ally for any business.
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It is necessary to have visitors in e-commerce to be able to generate sales and the most powerful networks for that are Facebook and Instagram, therefore it becomes essential to be present in them, to be able to take advantage of their full potential.
What do you need to be able to sell on Instagram?
A company profile.
This way you will be able to show yourself as a professional brand and also take advantage of the additional functions that the platform offers exclusively for businesses. Some of these additional functions are:
Statistics, where they can check the interactions of their publications to make better decisions.
Promotion of publications, to achieve greater reach and more followers.
By observing a private Instagram viewing app, it is clear that Instagram shopping activation is one of the best ways to make your shop sell on Instagram by linking it to your online shop.
Post relevant content.
Make posts showing what you offer with great attention to detail in a way that appeals to the user. Connect with your audience, create educational, entertaining and interactive content.
Build a quality following.
Locate your competitors’ followers who are already interested in what you offer and follow them.
Spread your company profile to existing customers and tell them about what’s new, so they are likely to share it with their friends and acquaintances.
Promote and offer your products via Instagram Shopping.
Instagram Shopping allows you to brand your products with prices and links that will redirect customers directly to your online shop. In this way, all your Instagram followers can access your shop directly, with just one click.
Tips For Selling On Instagram With Your Online Shop
To know how to sell through Instagram with an online shop, it is necessary to take into account some aspects of the social network to generate more traffic to our online shop. Let’s take a look at some of the tips for selling on Instagram.
Improve your profile
The aspects to take into account are:
The logo: it is better to use a simplified version of your logo so that it is easier to recognise, despite the size of the display.
The name of the account: when choosing the name on your profile it is important to describe what you do. This will help users to identify you quickly, either by the official title or by the need to search for what you sell. Example: Lily Moon, accessories.
Optimise the biography: What do we sell, for whom, why? You can start by answering these questions, add your location, website or catalogues and a call to action.
Leverage Featured Stories
These stories do not disappear but are placed before the feed. For this reason, you should take advantage of this function and use them to provide information, such as:
- Photos of products or latest collection
- Suggestions on how to use the products
- How to buy
- Payment methods, shipping and delivery
- Contact options
- Customer testimonials
- Frequently asked questions from customers
Ideally, these types of Stories should engage potential customers and generate interaction. Therefore, featured stories are one of the best ways to get your shop to sell on Instagram as they will allow you to inform users about how your shop works.
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Create content with Reels and Guides formats
Reels are a format for making short videos, maximum 30 seconds. What is recommended when editing reels?
- Use trending audio
- Include transitions, filters and effects
- Create entertaining and fun content
- Inform in a quick way
- Try to keep them short (less than 30 seconds).
Currently, Instagram has available the shopping function in the reels, this means that by tagging the products in this format and IGTV, the videos will be displayed in the shopping section, increasing the reach of the shop, allowing to connect with potential customers.
The Guides are a way to create and consume content where several publications are grouped with a theme. The available themes are:
- Places: allows you to recommend the places that best align with the sales strategy.
- Products: focuses on recommending your favourite products from the online shop.
- Publications: there you can recommend your old publications or any other publications of interest that you have saved.
- To make the most of the guides in boosting sales strategies, we share these tips for selling on Instagram:
- Choose the best photos to create an attractive catalogue.
- Group your publications by categories so that both followers and potential customers can quickly access the content.
- Create a guide where you can include product photos combined with inspiring content that has been created by users aligned with the brand.
Story features
Stories have different options, such as Polls, Question Boxes, Links, Gifs, Music, Add Images, Filters, among others, in order to facilitate interaction with followers.
You can ask for their opinion on a topic or a new product, ask them what they prefer, inform them about news, among other activities. Currently, in the tips for selling through Instagram, professionals always talk about humanising the brand and stories with these tools make the process much easier.
Another advantage is that each story has its own individual statistics, so we can analyse which ones have the most interaction, which ones were most viewed, how many stories were skipped, among others.
Instagram Ads
The function of Instagram Ads consists of showing relevant ads to your users, taking into account:
- The accounts they follow
- Their preferences (Likes)
- The information and interests on Facebook
- The websites and mobile applications they visit
Instagram takes 100% advantage of this tool to offer specific publications to the target audience, thus increasing the effectiveness of the ads and the possibility of sales.
If they decide to invest in these advertising campaigns they can obtain important benefits, such as:
Better positioning of the brand thanks to the quality of the ads and the users that arrive.
Generate an increase in followers, which will help with business momentum, and can be reflected in an increase in sales.
Targeted, you can use these ads for campaigns with a specific purpose. Launching a new product, raising awareness of your brand, launching a shop, among others.
Greater proximity with the public, with this tool you can make contests to attract customers and get immediate responses through the Stories.
Convert your followers into customers
One out of every three sales that are made in online shops come from sessions that were initiated on a social network such as Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest, in that order.
Instagram is a sales channel with a lot of potentials, hence the importance of getting new followers and converting them into customers. Some keys to achieving this are:
- Get to know the audience that follows your brand, where they are from, their ages, the time they spend on the networks, at what times, gender, among others.
- Include clear and attractive calls to action, so that customers know what to do when they see a product they like.
- Organise sweepstakes, this is a way to keep your audience interested in what’s new with your brand.
- Make your customers fall in love with your brand, spread your brand love to your customers through content that is engaging, tells an exciting story and generates empathy from your followers.
Storytelling
Storytelling means “telling stories”, this is a marketing strategy that is based on telling key moments of the brand and sharing them with the public, in order to achieve a connection and generate empathy.
For marketing, stories are magic, as they are different from other messages, they go straight to the heart of the audience and bring them closer to the brand, creating a deeper bond. This is why the use of Storytelling is always recommended as a key tip for selling on Instagram.
Instagram TV
The Instagram TV (IGTV) mobile app is used to create and broadcast long-form videos. It has specific features such as:
- They are between 1 and 15 min long if uploaded from a mobile device and 1 to 60 min long if uploaded from the web.
- Only MP4 format is supported
- The maximum size for videos up to 10 min is 650 MB and for videos, up to 60 min is 3.6 GB.
- Vertical (9:16) and horizontal (16:9) videos can be uploaded.
- IGTV is easy to use, it can be used both inside and outside Instagram and as soon as a user logs in, the content they follow starts playing.
Make alliances and collaborations with other brands
This consists of looking for other brands that offer complementary products, with the aim of organising joint actions on Instagram. For example, if you have a shop that sells swimwear, you could organise sweepstakes, a collaboration or an exclusive collection with another shop that sells beach or travel accessories.
It is very important to know your target audience to make sure that the strategy you use is the best one.
Exclusive promotions
Promotional actions are a great strategy to sell on Instagram, ideally they should be exclusive, that is, only for the followers of the brand, this will make them feel special. Some of these can be:
- Discounts on products
- Discount coupons for an upcoming purchase
- Limited edition products
- Free shipping
- Benefits on future purchases
In short, any other promotion that you can think of and that may be to the liking of your followers.
All these promotions are usually very effective, for example, if you want to build customer loyalty you can offer them benefits on their future purchases, if you want to liquidate a remaining product you could launch a promotion with discounts.
Exclusive promotions are irresistible for customers, take advantage of them as a tip to sell on Instagram.
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Tools you can use to sell on Instagram
Some of the tools to use as one of the ways to get your shop to sell on Instagram:
- Have an online shop
- You should have everything you offer centralised, so that customers can find the products easily. An online shop looks for:
- Have a professional design that is easy to use
- Offer different payment and shipping methods
- Integrate the online shop with other sales channels such as Instagram Shopping
- Offering customer service via WhatsApp
Instagram Shopping
This application allows you to tag products with prices and links that will redirect users directly to the online shop. Instagram differentiates posts with tags from those without, adding a mini shopping bag icon so users can identify them.
Instagram Shopping in Stories is the same as for posts in the feed, they just need to create shopping tags on the products they promote in their Stories. This way when one of your followers touches the tag they will see:
- An image of the products in the post
- The description of the product
- The value of the product
- The link will direct them directly to the online shop where they can buy your products.
In order to activate Instagram Shopping, they must meet certain requirements set by Facebook. Then, it will be activated by the Instagram team and they will receive a confirmation notification indicating that they have the tool available on their business profile.
Nowadays Instagram has been adjusted to make it easier for businesses to sell and interact with their audience, so we must take advantage of this social network and all the tools it offers. Dedicate a little time to it and you will see the results, take into account the tips we have left you and offer the best experience to your followers with Instagram Shopping offering quality benefits to your customers.