Ecommerce Instagram Strategies to Boost Ecommerce Sales

Social Media platform Instagram has recently announced that it has more than 500 million users every month liking 4.2 billion posts every day! 300 million users check in on the social media platform every daymaking it a top digital marketing platform.

Compared to Facebook where 32% users are found to engage with brands, Instagram has 68% active followers that regularly engage with brands. Research by TrackMaven has put the engagement ratio per 1000 followers on Instagram as 8 times higher than any other social media.

Why Instagram works for e-commerce businesses

48.8 percent of brands were using Instagram as a marketing tool which rose to 70.7 percent by 2017 alone!

Top and lesser known brands are fast adopting Instagram into their digital marketing campaigns to attain marketing targets and business goals for the following reasons.

1.  With high-quality product images, users are more inclined to get attracted towards them and subsequently engage with them.

2. This in itself attracts large segment of target audience and expands reach, improving brand positioning.

3.   Product images give potential customers easy mobile shopping access for their favorite products.

4. The above points help fuel conversion of potential customers to hardcore paying customers by acting as agents triggering buying decisions.

Instagram has emerged as a proven media that enables brands of all sizes and shapes penetrate into the market deeper and attract more customers to its products or services. In fact, the social media has emerged as a platform that has proven to convert passive customers into active ones!

Here are 5 indispensable moves that you must make to achieve high-return e-commerce sales through Instagram marketing.

Convert your personal Instagram account to your business account

With Instagram offering new features such as business profiles, it is only beneficial that you convert your personal account into a business account. This will give your profile a thorough professional look and let you pull your contacts from Facebook while also retaining the shoppable links of Instagram. You will also get the full information about the number of impression and clicks your posts get on a weekly basis.

Converting your personal Instagram account to a business account is easy and you need to carry out only 3 basic steps.

1.  Go to the account settings and click on Switch to Business Profile icon.

2.  Log in to your Facebook account through the app with admin rights of the Facebook Page. Select the Facebook Page with which you want to link your business page.

3. Put in an appropriate contact information like email address or customer service number for your Instagram Business page on getting the prompt.

You’re now ready to use the platform for your digital marketing goals.

Charting the strategy

Digital-friendly sales models enable consumers to make faster and greater buying decisions. In this context, understanding the relationship between Instagram and e-commerce is an essential component if any Digital Marketing strategy.

It is however easier said than done with innumerable options opening up before target customers from different channels all the time.

Charting any strategy has to begin by outlining measurable goals in terms of traffic, fan following and the expected number of likes on the platform. Ultimately, it’s the engagement to sales ratio that will be the benchmark of your sales growth.

One has to begin by reviewing past performances to see which were most effective, emphasizing and injecting them into newer strategies. With social media being all about delivering the right message to target audience, consumer persona and demographic information will have a huge role to play when planning an Instagram ecommerce marketing strategy.

Targeted Advertisements

Instagram Marketing is fast gaining high popularity among digital marketers and it’s not without reasons.

There are 5 different advertising formats that Instagram offers and they are

i) photos ii) videos iii) carousels iv) slideshow ads and v) story ads.

The platform has integrated each of these into the user interface offering a smooth experience to users.

E-commerce sellers definitely gain a significant advantage with targeted Instagram Advertisements with strategic business posts linked to the platform reaching out to a wide range of consumers.

The Shop Now button that appears with every post readily redirects users to the specific product page. It has been estimated that 75% of Instagram users take actions such as visiting websites after having viewed posts on Instagram.

In keeping with marketing strategies like targeting specific buyers’ persona, the platform enables targeted marketing like reaching out to target audience based on demographic details like age, gender, language and connections. Selecting the right audience base on the platform means better reach at lesser costs initiating faster conversions.

The best way to target an audience segment is to work with previous analytics or go on a trial based on information about a product’s aim. Targeting too many people is unlikely to give effective results as not all users will be interested in a product.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketers come from a variety of backgrounds and go much beyond popular celebrity names. Each industry is likely to have several influencers that can have significant impact on your marketing strategy. You need not hanker after influencers with millions of followers. In fact, 1000 plus followers indicate high rate of engagement and launching a campaign with even such micro-influencers is sure to have a positive effect on your brand driving higher returns.

No doubt mega influencers have greater following and are expected to have greater impact on businesses, but, studies have clearly shown that even micro influencers can have formidable influence on any business sales figures. Micro influencers are known to have better engagement with their fan following and are likely to impact your brand faster and better.

There have been cases where a micro influencer hasturned into enthusiastic followers with high and active brand engagement bringing in much needed attention to your products. Such influencers will be more than ready to campaign for you sharing user-generated content, popularly known as re-gramming. This is a growing marketing trend on Instagram and 27% of businesses maintain this as part of their successful marketing strategy.

Most users are twice likely to share brand content for fun and as part of excitement as part of user experience. Connected customers are twice likely to get attached to a brand personally, recommend and also buy it. Re-gramming by micro influencers increase brand advocacy and takes products to smaller and more targeted communities generating successful business conversions. It’s the user-generated content that sparks brand conversations and builds small communities around it across social media platforms.

Publish shoppable posts

The latest addition of features, Shoppable Posts by Instagram is among the most effective sales tools for e-commerce sites on the social media platform. Clicking on the Shoppable Post lets users instantly see product price and other details. Clicking on any of the tags to a product takes users to the page with all details on it, similar products and more shoppable posts from the brand.

The Shop Now button with the product will take users to the business page with all the details. It is possible to connect a Facebook catalogue with the Instagram page. Product tagging can help users explore the product in greater details.

According to Instagram, Shoppable Posts is more of an actionable mode for businesses to build a direct connection with customers and less of a transactional method. The purpose is to act as a virtual store helping users discover more and build brand identity. The feature has given users a platform to interact with them with the call to action possibilities. E-commerce businesses surely stand to gain tons in terms of engagement and ultimately conversion from the feature.

Update your strategies

Once you have the Instagram marketing strategy under way, make sure that you evaluate it periodically keeping up with the latest updates. A successful digital marketing strategy is based on the latest trends and technology as what is relevant today is sure to become obsolete tomorrow!!!

Changing and adapting to the dynamic digital environment is one of the leading factors that will ensure higher sales of your e-commerce business through Instagram marketing.