If you already have a business profile for your brand on Instagram, you might be wondering how you can sell more products on Instagram. Having a business profile is not a guarantee that you will sell a lot of products, that’s why these tips are so valuable.
How to Sell More Products on Instagram
The first problem that many brands on Instagram run into is that their posts aren’t showing up for their target audience. There are a few changes you can make to ensure that your posts are more easily found by the followers you’re looking for.
Make Your Content Discoverable
You won’t be able to sell more products on Instagram if no one can find you. No one can buy your products if they don’t know you exist. That is why shopping on Instagram starts with discovery.
Here are a few great ways to get your brand and your products discovered by potential customers.
Use Hashtags
Hashtags are quickly becoming one of the most common ways that people search for content on Instagram. Studies have shown that if you use at least one hashtag, you’ll see more engagement than the same post without a hashtag.
Using the right hashtag can be a great way to expose your brand to the most relevant audience. The question then becomes, which hashtags should you use?
The best way to find out what hashtags work best for your brand is to check out what hashtags your competitors are using. Look at what they’ve used in their most popular post, and you might discover new hashtags to use for your collection. It’s also possible that you’ll decide not to use the same hashtags as your competitors. It can be hard to compete for the same audience. In this case, your research will have shown you what hashtags you don’t want to use.
It can also be fun to use hashtags that influential people in your industry have been using. You can learn from these people, and by using their hashtags, you can begin to connect with their already well-established target audience.
Another thing to consider when debating hashtags is the success of related hashtags. Looking through your posts that contain a hashtag that you’re already having success with can show you potential trends that you can use in future posts.
Add Location Stickers
Location stickers for Instagram Stories can help you to show up in more searches. This will make it easier for potential followers to search you. Being easier to find will help you to sell more products on Instagram.
Additionally, using location stickers could get you onto Instagram’s larger story for that location. This is a curated selection of stories that Instagram has collected that have all been tagged with the same location sticker. These more significant stories are indicated by the Instagram-colored ring around the location’s icon.
Be Consistent
When you shop on Instagram, you have to leave the app to complete your purchase. The leap from one interface to another has the possibility of confusing the user. However, if the experience is smooth and intuitive, you’ll be likely to sell more products on Instagram.
To make the transition smoother, you can match your Instagram account to the look and feel of your webpage. Any lack of consistency here can make your customer think they’ve clicked on the wrong page or been trapped into some spam.
Add Instagram Shopping Posts to Your Stories
Your Instagram Story can be a great place to give your followers a behind-the-scenes look at your product and thus build excitement around it. Film the creative process behind your product or show a demonstration of how it works.
Your Instagram Story can also be a place where you can host a Q&A. To do something like this, you’ll need to ask your viewers to send in their questions before you post your Q&A story.
When adding an Instagram shopping post to your Story, be sure to add a call-to-action at the end of the post so that you can sell more products on Instagram with Instagram Shopping.
Develop Quality Engagement
We already know that the Instagram algorithm favors posts that have more likes and comments, with comments tipping the balance more than likes. This favoritism is because comments take more effort to add to posts than likes by the user.
Your Instagram Shopping content will be seen by as many of your followers as possible if you use compelling captions that make your readers want to interact with your post. To get started, you can try asking questions of your followers and ask them to share their thoughts or experiences. You can also ask them to tag a friend.
5 Ways to Sell More Effectively on Instagram
When you’ve made yourself more noticeable on Instagram, your next question might be, what next? Now that people can see you, how do you make them want to buy from you? What are the best ways to sell more products on Instagram?
1. Create Shoppable Content
Your best option for selling items on Instagram is Instagram Shopping. This feature allows you to link products to your images for people to buy. Now you can publish high-quality content that people can click on and buy if they feel so motivated. Otherwise, they can still enjoy the aesthetic value of your content like they always have.
The best part of using Instagram Shopping is that Instagram does not charge any service fees for these transactions. You’re only missing out if you don’t use it because you have nothing to lose if you do decide to add it to your posts!
2. Include Instagram Ads
Using the Facebook Ads channel, you can promote your posts on Instagram to drive more engagement and encourage people to click through to your website. This can be a great way of increasing product awareness.
To determine how useful your ads are, you can use a tool like Owlmetrics. This site will track how much traffic is coming to your website by adding a trackable link to your Instagram bio.
Some of the most prominent problems when trying to sell more products on Instagram can be the size of your audience and the rate of converting them to your site. Instagram Ads can have the power to fix both of these problems. Plus, your high-quality ads will still function as high-quality content.
Remember, once your user’s interest is captured, you’ll want to include a strong call to action to convince them to follow you and to click through to your website.
3. Share User Generated Content
The most common problem with ads is that companies post ads whose primary goal is to sell products, but they don’t take the time to tell their customers that they’ll enjoy the product they’re selling. This means that anyone scrolling through Instagram can see an ad but still have some hesitation about the quality of the product.
User-generated content can help to solve this problem by giving your followers a sense of trust in their purchase. This content feels more authentic and lessens the buyer’s perceived risk of buying products online.
They [Gen Z] are more interested in narratives and content that have realistic endings (67%) and want to be engaged by real people, especially in advertising where they are nearly twice as likely to want to see “real people” than celebrities (63% vs. 37%)
Making sure that your followers know someone else had a pleasant experience with their purchase will encourage them to think they will also enjoy their purchase. This is especially true if they believe the review is unbiased.
4. Work With Relevant Influencers
Instagram has a lot of influencers who have large audiences. Working with these influencers can help you to gain access to the target audience you’ve been looking for and help you to sell more products on Instagram.
Influencer collaborations can mean positioning your advertisements in non-spammy ways. The easiest way to work with an influencer is to pay for the post and ask them to include a call to action that will lead to your website. This type of collaboration does work but will work better if there is a strong alignment between the influencer’s audience and your brand.
SEE ALSO: How to Run a Successful Instagram Story Takeover
5. Take Advantage of all of Instagram’s Features
Instagram is continuously evolving and offering new features. These new features can provide your business unique sales opportunities. A great example of this is Instagram Stories. Even though this is a relatively new feature, it already has 200 million active daily users. This means that if you don’t take advantage of this feature, you could be missing out on a chance to interact with a vast audience.
Another reason to take advantage of Instagrams features to sell more products on Instagram is that with every feature launch the pricing tends to be lower. Take Instagram Shopping, for example, right now it doesn’t charge any service fees, but the odds are pretty good that as time goes by, they will start to take a commission. This can be seen just by Facebook Ads which have seen a slow rise in pricing as the platform has grown in popularity.
Final Thoughts
Establishing your business on Instagram can be complicated, especially with all the algorithm changes that have been happening as the app gains popularity. However, if you stay informed of the changes and ensure that you have a loyal audience, you’ll be able to sell more products on Instagram.
What do you like to buy on Instagram?
