How to leverage Instagram for E-commerce

What if I tell you, there are businesses that have been making millions in revenue from Instagram? Today, I will discuss how you should leverage the Instagram platform to grow your online business.

Instagram statistics show that there are more than 200 million business accounts on Instagram. Leveraging Instagram for E-commerce is quite fruitful these days and something that you cannot ignore.

Instagram is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms owned by Facebook. Having more than 1 billion active users allows businesses to sell their products and service using Instagram.

The report from BroadbandSearch states that the average daily time spent on Instagram is 53 minutes.

Where there are people, there is a market. Business owners should consider Instagram as a market, not just a social media platform.

Create your Business Account on Instagram:

Instagram offers advanced features for business accounts to grow the business faster. That is why it is the best practice to have a business account.

When you create a new account on Instagram, make sure it should be a business account. If you already have an account, simply switch your profile to a business profile.

Once you finish creating a business account, add all the details about your business such as business name, Instagram business username, business location, website, a profile picture, and a short description as well.

Important Functions of Instagram:

• Direct Messages: This feature allows Instagram users to communicate. For instance, if a customer has a query regarding product and service, he/she can directly contact the company.
• Followers: The number of followers shows that these are the people who are interested to view your content regularly.
• Following:   This feature allows people to follow their friends, family members, colleagues, celebrities, and businesses as well. After following, users can see posts and stories regularly on the timeline.
• Filters: The filters are used to add filters on the image.
• Hashtag(#): The content which has a specific niche can be identified using the hashtag. Instagram also allows users to follow hashtags.
• Stories: Using Stories, users can post images and videos in the vertical form that disappear after 24 hours.

Let’s understand how you can skyrocket your business by leveraging Instagram.

9 Best Ways to Leverage Instagram for E-commerce Business

1. Instagram Shop
2. Influencer Marketing
3. Content Marketing
4. Instagram Ads
5. Engagement and Feedback
6. Experiential Marketing
7. Instagram Audience Analytics
8. Giveaway
9. Business Location

Top 9 Effective Ways to Leverage Instagram for E-commerce Business:

1. Instagram Shop

   

   Instagram shop allows you to integrate your product catalog with your Instagram profile. Using this feature, when you share an image as a post or story, customers can instantly view the product, product description, and buy the product as well.

2. Influencer Marketing

   
   Influencer marketing is when businesses do paid partnerships with influencers to increase brand awareness or sales for a specific target audience.

   It is the most emerging and the fastest growing marketing strategy used by the majority of the marketers. According to BigCommerce, 69% of marketers plan to spend the most money on Instagram for influencer marketing in 2020.

   You should definitely leverage this strategy for your business; what you need to do is find out the best Instagram influencer in your niche.

3. Content Marketing

   

   Content marketing can generate 3x leads as compared to traditional marketing!

   Businesses should leverage content marketing importance for their product and service. For instance, if you are selling apparel, post content like what are the benefits of that cloth, why you should buy it, the five best clothing for summer, and something like that.

   Also, it is highly important to post regular content and maintain consistency. It’s tedious to manage the content manually and therefore, you can use various Instagram tools available in the market to ease the process.

   By doing this, you are sharing your knowledge with customers. This activity builds trust and loyalty and eventually, people prefer our product.

4. Instagram Ads

   
   If your business has a target audience (20-30 years), Instagram is the best platform where you should invest your money in advertisement.

   You can target customers for ads on the basis of interest, behavior, age, demographics, and so on. Compared to Facebook and Twitter, Instagram has a quite higher conversion rate.

5. Engagement and Feedback

   
   Social media platforms allow people to express their feelings using emojis and comments.

   As a business, you should reply to each and every comment you get and ask about the feedback as well. If customers are not satisfied with the product, they will comment and it would be the best opportunity for you to consider that feedback and improve the product.

6. Experiential Marketing

   
   Video content offers an amazing experience to your customers. Instead of photos, if you leverage video content, customers can feel the product and know the product effectively.

   According to video marketing statistics, 87% of marketers believe that videos increases traffic to their website!

7. Instagram Audience Analytics

   
   Instagram offers an audience analytics tool that helps businesses to know about the age group of people who consume and engage with the content, from which location you are getting engagement, how many links clicks you are getting and so on.

8. Giveaway

   
   Giveaways on Instagram are the smartest way to get more attention on Instagram.

   Businesses should create a post about the giveaway and ask people to follow the Instagram page and tag more people. Interested people would definitely follow your Instagram page and they will mention their friends in the comment area!

   This way, you can get thousands of quality prospected customers. And you can also use this data for REMARKETING ADS and reach prospected customers.

   If you have scrolled this far, then you may also love reading our another blog post on Facebook Shop for eCommerce.

9. Business Location

   
   Location is a useful feature to leverage for your business as well. You should add a city or state in your Instagram. By doing this, when someone searches location, your post will be displayed in that section. And if anyone wants to buy a product, he/she can easily buy it.

Also, check out our 11 Instagram Shop tips.

Building a Brand Identity on Instagram:

  “Brands are the solution, not the problem. Brands are how you sort out cesspool”. – Eric Schmidt

In order to gain trust and getting customers from any social media platform, it is necessary to post more and more content as this helps to gain trust and build a brand. Ecommerce Experts to Follow on Threads and start the discussion on the topics you are interested in.

Also, consistent content with high quality is bound to help you in making the most out of Instagram for E-commerce!

By leveraging these features of Instagram, you can start building your brand.

• Stories
• Instagram Threads
• Post
• Instagram Live
• Instagram Shop
• Shoppable Tags in Stories
• IGTV Videos
• Hashtags

These are the best ways you should start leveraging. It will help you to build a brand and generate thousands and even millions of dollars in sales.

Now if you are a Magento 2 store owner, you are about to get your hands on a powerful tool that integrates Magento 2 with Instagram to fetch Instagram images, edit and show them in the front-end to give a look and feel of an amazing Instagram shop in Magento 2 stores!

Check Meetanshi’s Magento 2 Instagram extension that offers:

• Display Instagram images on any CMS page.
• Fetch images based on your own username or multiple hashtags.
• Set hotspots on fetched Instagram images and show them in the popup.

and much more.

Even if you are running the store on Magento 1, get a similar extension, Magento Instagram to create a beautiful Insta shop today!

Excited about selling on Instagram? Let me know your thoughts in the Comments section below.

Also, share the post with online store owners via social media.

Thank you.

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