Instagram is a very powerful social network for business. It allows you to speak directly to the consumer. Sharing values, interests, and creating a strong community.
In this article, I will explain step by step how to activate the purchase of products on Instagram.
In addition, I will teach you a series of strategies to sell more, product, or service ideas and tools that you need to convert those followers into customers.
Table of Contents
How to sell on Instagram step by step
If you want to sell on Instagram, you cannot seem like a flea market or show yourself as a desperate brand to sell.
The first thing you need before starting to sell on Instagram is a social media plan, that is, analyze, plot the strategy, and have a goal.
It is very important that you do not skip this step.
Therefore, you have to be clear about the following points:
Market: How is your niche and what needs is the competition not satisfying?
Audience: What people do you want to reach.
Brand: What you do, what you offer, and what benefits your products or services bring.
Contents: What do you want to tell and in what format
Metrics: How are you going to measure the effectiveness of your strategy
Strategies for selling products and services on Instagram
The time has come to discover the full potential of Instagram to convert followers into clients.
Below, I explain different strategies to create a powerful company profile, personalize it, publish appropriate content, and attract quality followers to your account.
Optimized company profile
The first thing you have to do is have a company profile on Instagram.
Basically because with a company profile you have access to all the metrics of your account.
Information is power.
You will be able to know the scope, impressions of your publications, the best time to publish, and know the details of your audience.
In other words, you will have access to essential Instagram statistics.
In addition to this, there are other advantages such as having the contact button in the bio, the email button, and the business address.
What do you need to optimize to have a powerful account and sell on Instagram?
- A) User name.
It is important that you put the brand.
You can also take advantage of the name of the BIO to add a term that helps you get followers interested in your business through searches.
- B) Description :
It is important that you detail what you do and what they will find in your account.
You can add your company slogan, services you offer, upcoming launch date, and a call to action (CTA) to get clicks on the link.
- C) Hashtags :
I do not recommend using hashtags in the Instagram biography because I consider it a vanishing point.
- D) Custom link:
On Instagram we can only add a link, therefore, we have to get the most out of it.
I recommend you use a landing page and redirect to the sections of your website that interest you the most or use applications like LinkTree.
- E) Create featured stories:
Take advantage of this great functionality to design the showcase of your business.
Also Read: How to Block & Unblock Someone On Instagram From Android
Strategy on Instagram Stories
Instagram stories are here to stay. It is a very good format to combine strategy with spontaneity.
- Tell a story:
It’s about creating a real connection with your audience. You can show how you create your products or services, teach the company team, etc.
- Take advantage of interactive elements such as stickers.
Surveys and questions are a great way to get to know your audience.
- Use calls to action.
With them, you tell your audience why they should swipe up or why they should go to the BIO link.
Furthermore, your CTA can also direct your audience to take some other type of action such as sending you a message.
Through the featured stories, you can show the plots of your business.
In this way, at a glance, they will be able to know a lot of information about your products or services.
I leave you some ideas:
- How your brand was created
- Images of your local
- How to use your products
- How to buy in your online store
- Add more contact options as a link to WhatsApp
- Show your store collections
- Frequent questions
- The showcase of your business by-products
For example, by looking at the outstanding stories of the copywriting school you can know who they are, and all the courses they have for sale.
Instagram content strategy
One of the biggest mistakes is posting for posting, without a goal or a strategy.
There are a lot of different types of content and we must know which ones can work best.
I recommend you make an editorial calendar for Instagram since it is very important to create quality content aimed 100% at your target audience to differentiate yourself from the competition.
Other topics that you have to take into account when creating content on Instagram are the following:
- A) Take care of the image quality
Since the arrival of Instagram, photographs have become even more important in business.
It is necessary that you have an orderly feed with a visual coherence.
This will depend on the way we edit the photos, the backgrounds we use, the colors, and the light. Use photoroom.com to add a white background to an image or removing background images.
Therefore, it is very important that you have a clear idea of your color palette, how you are going to compose the photos, and how you are going to edit them.
Here I show you several feed so that you better understand the visual coherence that I am talking about.
- B) Write a good text, that connects and adds value to your followers
The first sentence of our text is very important. If we manage to catch the user’s attention, it will display the rest of the text.
I recommend you:
- Use storytelling
- Add calls to action so that your followers interact in some way with your account
- Separate the paragraphs
- Add emojis
Look at the following Maider post, it has all the ingredients that I just explained to you.
- C) Alliances and collaborations with other brands
This strategy is called co-branding. What does it consist of?
Collaborate with a brand by performing actions such as creating joint products, promoting a product from one brand with a service from another, selling two products together, etc.
With examples everything is better understood, so be careful.
In this post, gift-giving brand UO collaborates with cosmetic brand ETNIA. If you placed orders over 25 euros they gave you two cosmetic products.
Also Read: What is influencer marketing?
Influencer Marketing Strategy
Influencer marketing is a very powerful strategy that consists of collaborating between brands and those with a leading role on the internet.
What do we have to take into account when hiring an influencer?
If your followers are our target audience. There is no use of hiring an influencer who is not aligned with our brand values.
The number of followers is not a determining factor.
We have to analyze your account, how many comments you have, average likes, average comments on brand posts, how many brands you collaborate with, the quality of your content, etc.
What information is essential to create the campaign?
- Campaign objective
- Start date and duration of the campaign
- Information and characteristics of the product to be promoted
- Campaign budget
- Target audience of the campaign
- If exclusivity is required by the influencer in the product category
- Type of content and number of publications
A brand that heavily uses Influencer Marketing is Freshly Cosmetics.
You have to be careful and not over-exploit this strategy because they can seem very advertising and unrealistic actions.
Instagram contests
STEP 1: The first thing we have to do when conducting contests or giveaways on Instagram is to define the objectives. I mean, what do we want to achieve?
Normally the objectives are usually the following:
- Increase followers
- Increase engagement
- Accompany a launch
- Get user-generated content
- Loyalty to current followers
STEP 2: You must define the award, and it must always be aligned with your philosophy and interests.
You have to be very careful because depending on the prize you can get followers that are not of quality and many follow – unfollow. Consequently, your engagement will drop.
STEP 3: Plan your contest. How long will it last? What topic will it be about? Which are the rules? How are we going to decide the winner?
STEP 4: Plan the promotion. Are you going to accompany the contest with Ads? Will you promote it on other social networks?
STEP 5: You need to monitor the entire contest to know if you are achieving the set objectives.
Humanize the brand
Brands are increasingly automating their posts and messages today.
Therefore, it is very important to humanize your brand on social networks to connect with your audience.
Show your brand personality through your identity and values.
Share the experiences that your brand creates. For example, the reactions of people who buy your products or services.
Show your team: Count through your publications the people behind the brand, the work they do, and something that characterizes them.
humanize the brand in social networks
Strategy on Instagram Ads
The advertising Instagram is one of the most widely used types of advertising now because you can segment detail to reach a specific group of users interested in your products or services.
But be careful, if there is no strategy behind it, your campaigns will not be profitable.
3 tools to sell on Instagram
1) Shoppable post or how to create a store on Instagram
Instagram shoppable post allows you to tag products in organic posts.
In this way, the user when viewing the image and touching on it will find information about each of the products (name and price), and if you click on it, it will take you to a page with more product information and a link that will take you to the e-commerce.
- Business Manager to create your product catalog
As I explained in the previous point, having the Business Manager well configured is essential to label your products.
To create the product catalog, follow these steps:
- Go to the catalog manager
- Select to create a catalog
- Select the type of catalog. You can choose between e-commerce, travel, real estate or cars.
- Decide how you want to add your inventory to the catalog. This is extremely important and you have two options.
Add them manually, select upload product information. You can also upload them with a data source.
Connect the e-commerce platform you use. WooCommerce, Magento, OpenCart, etc.
- Choose the business to which the catalog you just created belongs.
- Enter the name of the catalog
- Select create, and voila!
- Analysis tool: Metricool
Metrical is my favorite analysis tool. It allows you to analyze, manage, program and measure all your content.
If you are going to use your Instagram account for a purpose, you need to analyze and check if your strategy is working.
Tips for selling on Instagram
- Instagram is the social network that generates the most engagement, therefore, it is perfect to expose and sell your products or services.
- Avoid “upload for upload”, you have to set a goal when posting.
- If you talk about your products or services, focus not on what you offer, but on the benefits, it brings to your client.
Also Read: 10 Trends in Social Networks That We Have To Follow In 2020
