Social media has now become a powerful tool for marketing your business. It is the best possible option if you want to reach out a large number of audiences, improve the customer engagement and boost your sales. It should be one of your marketing strategies to use social media to grab your potential clients. And among these media, Instagram is one suitable platform to market your business and increase eCommerce sales. Despite a few preconceptions that Instagram lets the users just post their pictures and there is no direct link available for the purchase of a product, Instagram announced that it has around 700 million users and is not less famous than Facebook or Twitter. Then what makes Instagram such an effective platform and how can it be used to improve the eCommerce sales?
Let’s start with knowing what Instagram is and what does it allow its users to do. Instagram is a fun-filled platform that allows its users to stay connected with their near and dear ones by posting pictures and videos to preserve their memories. Started in the year 2010, Instagram has now grown to a well-connected social network with around 700 million monthly users till April 2017. These figures reveal how steadily and constructively Instagram has increased its engagement with the users. And the fact is that Instagrammers are shoppers supported by the statement that 62% of Instagram users follow a brand on Instagram just because they like it. Here are some tips that you might want to take before creating an account for your eCommerce in Instagram:
1. HIGH PICTURE QUALITY:
As Instagram is majorly involved with pictures, it is very important that you post them with utmost attention. Posting relevant and good quality pictures, without faking them will definitely drive the attention of the audience towards your products. The image size and image caption are also to be taken care of while posting them. Recommended size of the images is 1080 x 1080 pixels; thumbnail of the picture should be 161 x 161 pixels and ensure that you associate the image with a crisp caption that drives straight through the point. Another option is to watermark your pictures with the brand name or domain name so that it would assist the audience in searching your products.
2. RESPOND TO THE USER COMMENTS:
Interaction with the users is also a recommended. By doing so, you make the customers believe that you are a brand that doesn’t look only for profits but you actually care about individual customer satisfaction. It might be a compliment for which you would thank the user, or it might be a small query about the availability of product which you will be answering; though you don’t have to respond to each and every comment. Liking the comments would also suffice in some cases. This would help in improving the brand loyalty of the customer.
3. USE HASHTAGS TO INCREASE YOUR DISCOVERABILITY:
As there may be so many Instagram accounts that a user might be following, there are chances that the user might not be able to view all of your posts, he/she might miss on some. Then how can you ensure that the user doesn’t miss even a single post of yours? Hashtag is the solution. Hashtags help users discover your products easily. These are just the keywords that the users might use while searching for a product on Instagram. Ensure that you associate your Instagram posts with relevant hashtags, not more than four. Studies show that the user engagement went down for posts that included more than five hashtags.
Also, the usage of more number of hashtags might give a cluttered look to your posts that might not appeal your followers. The hashtag concept also helps you in reaching out your target audience. When you share your Instagram posts to Facebook, the hashtags also get copied thus making it suitable for the audience to find your product through Facebook’s graph search. Thus, appropriate hashtag usage is necessary to get better results.
4. POST USER-GENERATED CONTENT:
What is better than a review given by a customer to make believe other users about your product? Referral marketing is yet another productive way of improving eCommerce sales. Encourage your product buyers to review the product and post the same on their accounts. Seek their permission to share their post on your account, by doing so you are inspiring other users to have a look at your products and make a decision to buy. Including user-generated content brings out more interest among the users as they get to know about the product not from a seller point of view, but from a customer (who already bought the product) point of view.
5. CONTESTS AND GIVE-AWAY ALERTS:
Contests and giveaways also can help increase the conversions. Offering discounts on your products and giving away free products by running campaigns would help increase the customer engagement. See that you run such contests after you make relevant posts about them and make the customers aware of them. For example, let us suppose you are introducing a new product and are planning to give away few to some customers. Start the contest by posting a picture describing the contest in a crisp manner, not filling it up with text entirely.
It is better to associate the contest with a hashtag, as it even appears in the ‘trending posts’ making aware other users about the contest, and thus your brand. After the contest is over, see that you even declare the winners of the contest by posting their pictures with your giveaway products, or by just listing their names (Instagram handles) or in any other manner. This would do even more good because you are giving the proofs to the users that you actually meant when you said you are running a contest with giveaways.
6. INFLUENCER MARKETING:
Celebrities have their accounts being followed by millions of users. Then why not choose them to market your product and increase your outreach? Pick up an influencer related to your product specifications and make him/her endorse your product. Suppose your product is related to fitness, pick up a celebrity widely known for staying fit and request them to endorse your product. They may do it for free or may even charge for it. You can find the influential people proper to your brand or product by using a tool called Webstagram. Do not forget to make a post on your own Instagram account that so and so celebrity is also a user of your product. In this case, do not forget to include a link in your bio, as this will help the users easily find your product.
7. POST AT THE PERFECT TIME:
There might not be an exact time when you have to post on Instagram, but various studies say that Friday, Saturday and Sunday are the days which experience more user engagement. While this may or may not work for your business, but try practising this for few days and check out the results. If this works, you may thank me later!
Instagram eCommerce strategy can give better results if the above practices are followed. Keep watching this space to find answers to the question- how to increase eCommerce sales? If you have any doubts or concerns, feel free to drop a line or two in the comments section. I shall reply in a day or two. My best wishes are with you and your venture. Cheers!