There are more than 700 million active users on Instagram every month, and almost 80 percent of them follow a business on Instagram. The concept of mobile marketing is new to many companies, but Instagram has made it easier for many retailers to catch and convert the customer through innovative mobile marketing strategies. The E-commerce industry is embracing Instagram in a big way.
Why Use Instagram for an Online Business?
Businesses in the e-commerce space use Instagram as it gives them the ability to create an online shop on social media. It provides call-to-action tools for advertisers, which increases engagement and ease of purchase. More than 200,000 businesses use Instagram to promote their products. Nearly 8 percent of a total of 31 percent of online shoppers prefer Instagram for shopping online. Customers buy from brands based on trust as they hear from their peers and follow influencers and look up the products on Instagram.
Using Instagram Shopping Feature
The Instagram Shop feature allows you to create an online store for customers to explore your products. Here’s what you need to do:
- Ensure that your Instagram account and business fulfill the requirements like complying with merchant agreement and commerce policies, creation of an Instagram business account, a connected Facebook product page, a store that sells only physical products, and your business account is linked to a Facebook catalog.
- Once the above requirements are fulfilled, you can submit your account for review.
- Go to your profile settings, tap Business, and tap Shopping on Instagram. Follow the steps outlined and submit your account for review.
After following these steps, you can turn on the Instagram Shopping feature in the Instagram app. This feature will be enabled only after your account has been approved for Instagram Shopping.
- Go to your profile and tap on Settings.
- Tap on Business option.
- Tap on Shopping option and tap on Continue.
- Select a Product Catalog to connect to your account.
- Tap on Done.
Once you have been approved, you will start receiving notifications from Instagram, and you can complete the set-up in Shopping in Settings to start tagging products in your posts and stories.
You can now add product tags in your Instagram posts and product stickers to your Instagram Stories.
- Select a photo or video and add a caption.
- Tap the products in the photo you want to tag or a series of photos, up to a maximum of five products for a video.
- Tap Done and Share.
- For Instagram Stories, select a photo to upload to your story and select the product sticker from the sticker tray.
- Select the product from your catalog that you want to feature and move the product sticker to where you want it to appear in the story.
- Share your story.
You can also edit or delete product tags from your posts using the Edit option.
In addition to these steps, there are many features available on Instagram to grow your business online.
Creating Precise Instagram Shoppable Hashtags
Hashtags are important when it comes to Instagram. You should keep your Instagram shoppable tags attractive and framed easily so that they come up on top of search results of customers when they search for a product.
You can use as many hashtags on a single image, and it is good to have only 5 to 10 precise hashtags to define the product based on the target customer preferences clearly. Experiment with different hashtags to check which ones increase customer engagement.
Using Instagram Stories and Instagram Live To Your Advantage
Instagram allows you to create instant messages in the form of stories that appear for a short time and then disappear. These stories create a visual impact that quickly grabs the attention of the visitors.
- The Stories option allows users to place images, videos and quirky text or gifs that will disappear after 24 hours, taking away the fear of going overboard with posts on their profile.
- Create your first story with attractive emojis, drawings, or text using Instagram tools and add filters and overlays to dress up your slideshow.
- Instagram Live helps your customers to watch your videos in real-time. They receive an update when the recording starts and when the video is over, it disappears from your profile. It’s a great way to engage with unboxing videos.
- Make sure you add stickers for the relevant products from your Instagram shop.
Now that you have all the tips handy to start your own Instagram online shop, what do you wait for?
Start showcasing your product catalog with attractive images on Instagram and hit success on the go.
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