How to Make Sales on Instagram in 2018

In today’s competitive world, active social media presence is crucial for businesses to survive. Instagram is one of the most preferred platform, which is outshining over other social media platforms. Instagram is one of the most preferred platform, which is outshining over other social media platforms. I’m pretty sure if you’re having Instagram then it’s your favorite platform for promoting your brand. It’s become a top platform for advertisers and brands nowadays.

If you’re still not using Instagram to promote your brand, let me tell you that you’re missing out on some serious opportunities. Here are the reasons why I’m saying this.

Why Should You Focus on Instagram Marketing?

• Instagram has 800 million monthly active users.
• 500 million Instagram profiles are active on a daily basis.
• 70% of Instagram hashtags are branded.
• 60% of users on Instagram visit the platform daily.
• 80% of all users on Instagram follow at least one business account.
• Instagram now gets over 2 million advertisers every month.
• 59% of micro-influencers believe that they get the best engagement on Instagram.

These statistics will give us the reason why most of the biggest brands prefer Instagram over other social platforms to promote their products and services.

Now let’s talk about the ways to increase sales on Instagram.

How to Drive Sales with Your Instagram Marketing Strategy?

On Instagram, you achieve the success just posting on Instagram. To achieve the success, you must have a winning Instagram marketing strategy. In this post, you’ll learn some of the most effective tips for using Instagram to drive sales and revenue.

A. Increase Your Instagram Followers

One of the first steps to having a successful Instagram marketing strategy is growing your follower on your Instagram profile. Without followers, you can’t achieve your social media marketing goals and generate sales without followers.

But, increasing followers on Instagram is not easy. For those who just created your Instagram page, it is a difficult job to increase followers. But unless you’re a brand new company, you already have customers.

Why Do People Follow Businesses on Social Media?

• For promotions and discounts
• For contests and giveaways
• For the latest product information
• For customer service
• For lifestyle content
• For the ability to offer feedback

How to Increase Followers on Instagram?

Here are some ways which can help you to increase the followers of your brand.

• Follow other people. Don’t follow random people. Look for the followers that fit within your target audience. Search for Instagram profiles that post content related to your industry. It will take time to find the niche followers.
• Send out emails to your existing customers only a few times per month and let them know if they want to see more frequent discounts and promotions, they will find them on Instagram.
• Send messages to your existing customers and ask them to follow your page, offer them an incentive to follow you.
• Promote your Instagram profile to other social media channels

B. Create First Impressions and Grab Attention of Users

First impressions always matter, right? Whether in business or personal situations, we are always being judged by the way we portray ourselves. First impressions for Instagram can be tricky.

When an Instagram user clicks on your profile, they see your profile picture, biography, and your most recent posts. These things grab the attention of users. Keep in mind that marketing is all about the audience and not about you. If your brand’s Instagram page doesn’t grab the attention of users you can’t increase the followers and ultimately the sale.

To create first impression and attention of users on your Instagram profile, make sure you are not using the random picture of a person or one of your products as your profile picture. Use logo as your profile picture makes the most sense. Explain who you are and what you offer in your biography.

C. Regularly Post Content on Instagram Profile

If you don’t maintain an active presence on your Instagram profile, customers are likely to choose another business when searching for local products and services. If you post too infrequently, your audience will forget that you exist and you will quickly fade into the deep dark recesses of their minds. But, posting too often will leave your followers feeling overwhelmed and give you a negative reputation. You need to find a middle ground here.

Posting much more than once per day is not a good way. If you have lots of content you want to share each day, it’s better to add it to your Instagram story.

How Often Should You Post on Instagram?

While posting on Instagram consider few things, the number of posts, post timing, and quality of post/content.

• Number of Post
• Research shows that the top brands on Instagram post 1.5 times each day on average. That comes out to about 10 or 11 posts per week.
• Post Timing
• Top brands typically post content during office hours of a standard workweek.
• Quality of Content
• It’s important to ensure that your content is high-quality, because it is the currency for getting engagement with your target audience on Instagram. While posting images and videos, make sure you are only post compelling images and videos. As the Instagram is a visual platform, you should only post high-quality images and videos. Your images and videos should be creative and eye-catching, and appropriately highlight the products you wish to promote.

D. Take Advantage of Instagram Tools

Instagram Live Broadcast

Instagram has a live broadcast feature. Instagram’s live broadcast feature gives you an opportunity

• To demonstrate new products
• To give a tour of your facility
• To introduce some of your employees
• To make your account stand out
• To give your audience a little bit of ‘FOMO’, (the fear of missing out) feeling and want to know what’s going on.

Instagram Stories

One of the incredible essences of social media is the intimate connection brands can form with their followers. If your brand isn’t capitalizing on the attention it gets from Stories, then the connection is wasted.

Instagram stories offer a way for users to share photos and videos in a slideshow which disappears after 24 hours. Instagram stories have an ability to tag and link.

Why Should You Use Instagram Stories For My Business?

• Stay front of mind
• Protect your quality feed
• Become more discoverable
• Include a link without changing your profile
• Have some fun with your audience

Try to limit the number of pictures and videos to your story every day. People won’t look at each one. Again timing plays an important role while posting Instagram stories. Make sure the timing of the post on your story is relevant because it will disappear 24 hours after it gets uploaded. Use Instagram stories to offer discounts, run contests, or tell people what you’re up to that day in the office.

Carousel Media to Post multiple Pieces of Content

Instagram carousel feature allows you to combine several images to form one post about your product. You can add different colors and arrange the photos in preferred sequence improving their quality and also use them to tell a story about the products.

Instagram Hashtags

Unlike Twitter and Facebook, where using more than two hashtags decreases engagement, Instagram users can’t get enough of them. In fact, the more hashtags you use, the more engagement you get! Try to use a unique hashtag for each contest than you run on Instagram.

E. Encourage and Share User-Generated Content

Before buying something online, consumers tend to read several reviews, comments to make sure the brand and product are trustworthy. If your followers are commenting, you should be taking full advantage! Comments show that people like your posts and want to engage with your brand. This type of content generated by the customers is called as an UGC “User-Generated Content” This type of content acts as a recommendation. Read how to include user-generated content in your marketing strategy? Promotions of this type of content gets exposed to all of the followers who are friends with that particular user and encourage other users to post photos and videos related to your brand to their personal profiles.

F. Paid Instagram Marketing / Sponsored Instagram Posts

Paid marketing i.e. sponsored Instagram posts is the most profitable method to advertise on Instagram.

Benefits of Instagram Ads for Your Business

• Increased engagement
• High conversion rates
• Reach target market
• Lower CPC
• Increased visibility

To further improve the effectiveness of your Instagram ads, use retargeting to engage people who’ve already visited your website – in other words, consumers who’ve already expressed a level of interest in what your brand provides.

G. Social Influencers

Influencers are Instagram personalities who already have an established audience. Influencer marketing is such a popular marketing tool because it works. If you want to make more sales through Instagram, you need to utilize the power of Instagram influencers. Influencers are one of the core ways to grow a massive following and achieve a sales increase on Instagram.

As the social influencers have high engagement rates and great relationships with their followers, you should work with social influencers to share your content and encourage sales as well.

If you’re ready to start your reach for influencers, there are plenty of free and affordable tools you can use like Influence.co, BuzzSumo, or Klout.

These are some of the most effective ways your brand can increase sales by using social media. With the above key Instagram marketing strategies, businesses can be able to achieve great success.

Source: How to Make Sales on Instagram in 2018