Instagram dominates in terms of user interaction. People frequent the site to keep tabs on friends, read about the lives of their favourite celebrities, and do some window shopping before making a purchase. Instagram may be a powerful marketing tool, but it can be difficult for businesses to motivate users to make purchases or engage with content outside Instagram.
Users will not be motivated by intrusive ads. Nonetheless, Instagram can be used to track consumers’ intent to buy and boost sales with the right strategy.
Ignite Interest, Then Use the Numbers to Act
While Instagram has been around for a while, many online merchants are still uncertain of its potential as an e-commerce channel. Particularly true for those who were born before 1980 and hence have less experience with the medium.
Now that they’ve released a new API in July, Instagram business accounts may monitor the effectiveness of their organic content using other services. Businesses now have more say over user engagement with their feed thanks to a new comment moderation tool. Companies are learning more about how their fans interact with them through the app. To better understand consumers’ motivations for making a purchase, though, you need to have them visit a mobile-friendly website.
Instagram users who click on a link to a product (such a watch or a piece of jewellery) typically have strong purchase intent. You may learn more about a person’s preferences if they click through from Instagram and visit your website.
Instagram as a Sales Promotion Tool
You’ll want to track how many Instagram users click through to your website (and perhaps make a purchase) if you want to use the platform as a conversion driver. In recent months, Instagram has added two tools that aid in promoting and measuring conversions.
Instagram Stories now supports the “swipe up” feature for business accounts with more than 10,000 followers. A link to a particular product page on your site may be added in this way.
Companies may now tag items in their normal Instagram posts using Shoppable Instagrams(Open Link in new window). Bigcommerce, an e-commerce platform that services more than 50,000 businesses in the United States, has expanded its connection with Shopify, making it available to all of Shopify’s thousands of merchants(Open Link in new window).
To learn which goods bring in the most revenue and interest, you may tag them. By following their movements with a pixel, you may shift visitors from a window-shopping attitude to a buying one. Send them adverts for the items they were interested in on social media or search engines. Then, use split testing to determine the most effective combination of images and calls to action.
Maintain Customer Interest on Instagram
Users’ actions on Instagram may be monitored and used to direct traffic to a certain landing page on your website. However, if you want to expand your brand’s reach on Instagram, you’ll need to keep your followers engaged with your posts. The greatest way to achieve this is to keep making useful stuff available to people. This two-stage procedure can facilitate that outcome.
Create an All-Inclusive Content Plan
Your Instagram followers want to feel a connection to your company. Don’t spam your followers’ feeds with links to your shop; instead, give them what they really want: an interesting story(Open Link in new window). Create a content plan that helps you connect with your target market and informs them about your company and its offerings.
Use a content calendar and visual planner to determine when and what you will post on Instagram to maintain consistency and keep your material relevant to your audience. Find out when people are most likely to see your posts by doing some investigating. We polled social media managers(Open Link in new window) and discovered that lunchtime and between 7 and 9 p.m. are the most effective times to post on Instagram, although your results may vary.
Accept and encourage user-created content
To be successful on Instagram, your brand has to have a social presence. One of the most genuine things you can do to increase interest on your product pages is to interact with user-generated material.
Linking to customers’ actual Instagram photographs on product pages increased Vanity Planet’s A/B test conversion rate by 24 percent(Open Link in new window). Companies can no longer afford to maintain an absolute barrier between brand and user-generated material, since 76 percent of consumers(Open Link in new window) now view user-shared content as more honest proof of authenticity and trustworthiness than brand promotion.