How to Use Instagram as an eCommerce Owner?

Instagram is one of the most thriving, widely-used social media platforms these days. It started as a photo-sharing platform but soon boomed into a community of avid photographers and marketers. Instagramming today is not just about sharing special moments with family and friends and garnering Instagram likes. It’s become a major platform for selling for ecommerce brands and making a memorable impact on their Instagram followers.

Let’s check out some statistics that throw light on the popularity of the platform:

• About a billion people are monthly Instagram users.
• Instagram Stories, the feature that allows you to share tit-bits of life for 24 hours, is used by more than 500 million users every day.
• In the United States, the number of Instagram is likely to reach 125.6 million by 2023.
• Over 200 million Instagram users check out at least one business account daily.
• In 2020, about 75.3 percent of businesses in the United States will use Instagram.

From the numbers above, it becomes clear that the trend to use Instagram is not slowing down anytime soon. This is particularly true for ecommerce owners, who need now focus on increasing their Instagram followers and garner more Instagram likes for their posts. Here are some ways in which ecommerce owners can achieve growth on Instagram and take their venture a notch higher:

Build a consistent brand image

An ecommerce brand that remains consistent from the start to end is what people favor. Instagram is an image-based social network, meaning you get Instagram followers and Instagram likes by sharing relevant, high-quality images. A brand with a confusing image will be abandoned by people in no time. So, it’s important that you focus on building a consistent image of your ecommerce brand by sharing the right set of images.

A consistent brand image is essential for building trust—something that determines whether people will buy from you or not. As such, your image branding should be visually consistent. From design to color schemes, anything you choose should be uniform throughout all your image posts on Instagram.

Perfect your Instagram bio

Believe it or not, the Instagram bio has a huge role to play, despite its brevity in scope. This section tells your audience who you are, what you sell and how you sell. Your Instagram followers will read this section first to know about your brand. If this is something boring, then you will lose out on potential followers, and ultimately, on valuable sales. So, you need to make this section as compelling and interesting as possible.

Real Instagram followers may land up in your profile by searching hashtags. The hashtags you use will determine how visible your brand is to your followers. So make sure you use the right ones. You can also up your bio by using emojis. This will add some color to it. You can even wisely boast your discounts and free shipping offers in your bio to grab the attention of your profile visitors. Also, don’t forget to link your shop’s URL in your bio so that Instagram followers can buy from you easily.

Push Instagram followers to take an action

A compelling Instagram bio will make first-time profile visitors to start following you. But your aim is not just to gain Instagram followers. You also want to see growth in your sales figure, right? For that to happen, you need to be slightly more aggressive while promoting your business on the platform. This is where “Call to action” posts do well.

These posts can seriously drive traffic and sales. They consist of an image of the product you are selling and a proper description that urges your Instagram followers to check it out. But not all your Instagram posts should be focused on sales. You also need to engage your Instagram followers with other types of content. Make sure you add your call to action even in these posts.

Inspire your Instagram followers

It’s easy to click a picture on a smartphone and sharing it with friends and family and seeing copious Instagram likes rolling in. People love to see photos, but do you think anything you share is able to evoke the right emotions in them? As an ecommerce owner on Instagram, your focus should be on eliciting positive emotions in your followers than just getting more and more Instagram likes.

You should know that sharing a good picture post is nothing less than an art. Through this art, you need to inspire your Instagram followers and build brand awareness. You need to leverage some online tools that help in coming up with inspiration, visually-appealing picture posts for your Instagram profile. From texts to color schemes to resolution, everything needs to make the right impression on your Instagram followers for them to stay associated with your ecommerce brand.

Consider tagging products

Most ecommerce marketers may not know, but tagging products from a catalog makes it a lot easier for customers to buy them. There are some countries where Instagram allows business users to tag their products, just like they can tag real Instagram followers. Such a practice can make the platform a powerful sales channel.

Instagram shoppable posts are pretty simple to set up. Here’s how to do it:

• Go to your Facebook Business account that’s connected to your Instagram and set up a shop section. Add all your products to the account. Try to provide an option that allows your buyers to check out at your ecommerce website. It becomes easier for you to keep track of your inventory.
• In a few days, you will be notified on your Instagram profile that you can start tagging your products from the catalog in your posts.
• While sharing an image post, you should select the option to “tag a product.” Clicking on this option will show you the list of all your products.

Share contests and ask followers to generate content

You certainly want to achieve high growth rates through Instagram, but that rarely happens until and unless you engage your Instagram followers. You need to make them feel special in some way for them to stick around with your ecommerce brand. That is possible when you create interesting contests for your Instagram followers to take part in. Such type of content brings your followers closer to your brand and gives you chance to treat them with something interesting and conversion-driven.

Building an engaged community on Instagram also depends greatly on bringing users to create content. Instagram is pretty powerful in creating new prospects for your brand at the starting stage of the conversion funnel by building an inspiring, highly artistic feed of your Instagram followers. You can share behind-the-scene snaps, or experiential posts created by users of your product themselves. This is truly a great way to see substantial growth in your Instagram likes and product sales.

Get in touch with influencers

The truth is influencer marketing truly works. It’s a good way to promote a brand through a famous personality and celebrity because it builds trust and generates awareness. You can do the same on Instagram to promote your ecommerce store. In fact, influencer marketing is a thriving business on Instagram. Such a collaboration on the platform can get you real Instagram followers in very less time.

Collaborating with a person whose posts reach thousands of Instagram followers can be a major sales booster for your ecommerce store. The best part: the whole exercise won’t require a massive monetary investment on your part. You need to pay a small fee to an influencer (something way lesser than traditional TV ads) to create a piece of content around your brand and promote it among his or her Instagram followers. This can boost the credibility of your ecommerce store by many folds and up your traffic and sales on the platform.

Keep a tab on engagement

This is the age of real-time data. It’s data that’s driving major marketing decisions and actions of brands across the globe. Be it a small tech startup or a multinational brand, every business relies on data to know about what they don’t know—about consumers, market trends, and so on and so forth. The same goes for ecommerce stores on Instagram. Unless you know the results of your efforts in quantitative terms, it’s difficult to truly make a difference.

Hence, you need to measure the level of engagement on your Instagram profile by leveraging the right analytics tools. If you have an Instagram for business account, you can find the analytics information under the audience tab. You can check the number of Instagram followers, Instagram likes, and overall engagement of your profile to plan your future posts better. Keep an eye on the image posts that have got the maximum likes. This will help you focus on the positive aspects that boost your profile’s engagement.

Closing lines

Instagram is a great platform to connect with target audiences and close sales. But for ecommerce stores to get the best out of the platform, they need to focus thoroughly on engagement. You can surely do wonders on it if you are committed. It’s just not about growing your Instagram followers or Instagram likes. It’s about achieving business growth by delivering something of value to audiences. You can use a tool like Mr. Insta to boost engagement of your profile and also increase the number of Instagram followers.