Instagram is a great platform for ecommerce business with 15% of the world’s population ready to purchase your products and services. The platform offers a captive audience for your business to show its goodies and make everyone rich beyond belief - and yet, in an ironic turn of events, most everyone struggles to make a sale. Take the story of the very successful Instagram influencer, Arii. She presumes of 2.5 million followers, a very impressive number of users. When Arii began creating her ecommerce clothing line, she struggled to sell more than 32 t-shirts. A shocking and sad number considering her massive following. For these reasons, we at helloconvo have a compiled a list of road-blocks and overlooked facts that could be holding back your sales like Arii’s.
1. Optimize your Bio
Instagram users hate being dislodged from their cat videos. If they are to be removed from their joyous scrolling it better be for a good reason. Once they reach your Instagram page you have already gained their attention and need to keep it. Your business’s landing page should clearly state its purpose and immediately compel them to buy your offerings.
Your profile should also have a call to action, that is, a button with a short sentence guiding them to the destination. The purchase. This is not to be done immediately. You should have already begun explaining the benefits of your wares before you ask them to make a purchase. Trust is to be established first; more on this below. Your profile will also contain a biography and user testimonials for validation.
2. Selling Something People Actually Want
You may think your followers are less than smart for not understanding the obvious benefits your cooktop (or whatever) offers. But customer purchases don’t lie. Do your research ahead of time. See what your followers are interacting with on Instagram. If they are not buying your product your first job is to figure out why. Looking at your competition can give you many insights. See your top comment and use this information to refine your product or understand customer needs. Do the same for the comments of the competition. Their top comments will also help you validate if the audience is interested or not. Checking on the competition can give you an illuminating idea from the follower’s pain points.
Once you have gathered enough data to understand your customer, you will need to gain their attention.
3. Optimize Captions
Your product is as good as its story. If your product doesn’t scream usefulness, you will need a captivating story to attract customers. This starts with your post’s headline. The benefits of your product are numerous and the customer should know. If you sell t-shirts, the story should make the Instagram user aware that that these t-shirts are not like the rest. These they have not seen before. While the competition cuts corner in their fabric you do not; and you show it.
Surround your customer with powerful images that lets your viewers feel the softness of your t-shirt’s fabric. This complements the story and adds a visual element to your sales pitch. On this note, it is important to create an appropriate amount of useful content while also selling.
4. Posting Viral Videos Everyday
At the end of the day, the Instagram algorithm decides who makes a sale and who doesn’t. To prevent your business from being on the naughty list, be sure your content is valuable to Instagram. Viral content is also a free traffic magnet. People are already interested in whatever new meme. Use this to your advantage. You can leverage the attention viral content gathers by inserting your sales pitch around the context of the viral meme or post.
The Instagram algorithm rewards content that triggers engagement (comments, likes and user actions). Ads by themselves will perform poorly if your brand has created no engagements. Just listing the benefits of your product compared to others can be useful to many. Expand this as informational content to your viewers. If your previous post has performed very well. Post it again. You will need to milk the honeycomb until it’s dry. This also puts your content on a list of customer interest and interaction. Your business will be ranked in Instagram as a probable source of interest in that particular niche.
5. Over-promoting Your Product
Remember the previous section? The Instagram algorithm doesn’t take kindly to spammers. Your promotions should be wrapped around helpful content. The ratio of your promotion to useful posts should be about 25 to 30%. That is, every 4 posts of valuable information to your audience, there should be one promotion. You should average 3 to 4 posts per day; optimized to your audience’s time-zone. Any more than this and you will lose the attention of your customers and gain the distrust of the algorithm; leaving your profile page at the bottom of search results. There are many easy ways to rank higher in Instagram search.
6. Have A Custom Experience Landing Page On Instagram
Instagram users will not leave the application. Once they encounter your successful advertisement, it should only redirect the user into your Instagram profile. It is a burden for the user to have to leave the application for an external website and come back. Instead, your profile should be the next thing they see after taking action on your advertisement or post. Your profile will be the next natural stop to showcase your product and services.
This is where you use the previous techniques to tell a convincing story and successfully make the sale. This is one of the purposes of your profile. It doesn’t really matter what your profile will attempt to do (collect user email, offer coupon on first purchase) as long as it provides a self-contained experience. This makes the navigation for the user easier in a way that allows them to make a purchase without hassle.
7. Use Influencers
Influencers can turn the tides of your business success. Once an influencer makes mention on the awesomeness of your product, you will gain the attention of their every follower and the social stamp of approval. Once the trust factor is established, you will begin making a lot more sales.
There is also the additional benefit of gaining a large amount of followers to your page. Even if they don’t make a purchase right away you’re now aware that they are interested in what you have to offer. It’s then the time to entice them with something else. Once the influencer’s followers are aware of your brand’s existence; they are more likely to keep following you. This is a gold mine. You have now gathered a large amount of followers to make sales pitches to, you can understand their habits to inform your decisions and you have gained the approval of the Instagram algorithm as a trustworthy brand to be followed. The benefits are infinite; but not forever. Be sure to keep the attention of the new followers every day. Surprise them and reward them for their loyalty to you.
8. Using Product Tags
Your products will never appear on the shop tab if they’re not tagged. Instagram has a built-in store for its users. As a seller, it’s very convenient to use this feature. The only caveat is your every product needs tags. This is how the system sorts and offers your products to its users. This is also how users can find their ‘saved for later’ items. Though it seems trivial, tags can exclude your products from being found and the right tags can put you ahead of the competition. Never overlook them and choose them correctly by checking the tags of the competition.
9. Recycling Customer Data
Your customer and user engagement data from Instagram is a gold mine. You can use this data to create custom target audiences in Facebook. This narrows down the exact people purchasing your products and targets them on Facebook as well. Double value for your ad money. In you custom Instagram profile, you can collect the users email in exchange for a freebie. This can come in the form of a coupon. No other form of online advertising is more efficient than your own user’s emails. Through the Facebook ad manager, ad campaigns can be tailored with a collection of emails.
The bottom line, Instagram data is extremely useful both inside and outside the platform.
To Sum Up
Combining the 9 steps above will give you an edge over your competition and the Instagram algorithm. To summarize, aim to utilize the following tactics:
1. Please the Instagram algorithm with tags, 3 or 4 posts a day with only 1 as an advertisement.
2. Understand your customers by doing research ahead of time.
3. Attract your customers by using influencer services.
4. Create a landing page where your products utility is easily understandable.
5. Collect user information and prompt them to the action of buying your products or requesting your services.
6. Keep your followers by offering them valuable and interesting content.
Finally, perform the 9 steps as accurately as you can and thank you for visiting helloconvo. We hope to make you successful in your business.