Instagram Retail
Anne Sackey
Communications I Development & Sustainability I Partnership engagement |Gender Inclusion I Program management | Marketing I Culture vulture.
Most companies / people use social media to increase the awareness of the product or service they offer by using images and content engaging and maintain their existing customer base as well as acquiring new ones.
They post user generated photos, their own photo of the product or service and how it can be used. Information about the industry as well as Community engagement projects.
I am however fascinated by the smaller and informal companies that use Instagram as their sales platform where individuals can see the product, request the price and size available and arrange for it to be delivered by courier to them at a fee.
It makes such business sense for a company with a small budget to piggyback on this. The overheads are limited to stock and some creative input. All it takes are clear and well shot photographs, great brand stories, preferably photos that profile and showcase the use of the product and that are updated regularly, timely responses, great customer care skills, good organizational skills in order to package and dispatch products and a small budget to promote the page within the chosen demographics of the target audience. It is also a plus to get customers send in photos of themselves using the product they bought from you. Do not forget the hash tags and the location tags and try and figure out the best times to post.
But I must say that one thing they do not have right is that most of them do not put the price of the item on the post and you have to either whatsapp or DM them for the price. It is so important to remove that extra step of people having to ask for the price as its a waste of time and it also does not look transparent and personally if I have to fish around for a price, i will not bother.
And there is nothing as annoying as posts of items with SOLD OUT as captions or products with limited sizing. With marketing made so effortless all energies can focus on getting the product or service right.
These are interesting marketing times!