Instagram keeps updating its audience with various tools and features to engage and increase the popularity of the platform. One of the powerful features that Instagram has come up with is the Instagram shopping feature. The average number of clicks on Instagram shopping posts has increased to 130 million clicks, this just goes to show the inclination of people towards social shopping. After 2020, eCommerce sales have surged manifolds and are still growing every year.
With this growing appetite, more customers become a part of the Instagram shopping community to become mega-famous in this tech-savvy world.
This feature opens up doors for social media influencers, business owners, and affiliate marketers to promote products from your brand or the brand that you partnered with.
What Is Instagram Shopping and Why Should You Try It?
Instagram Shopping implies a collection of features to allow people to easily shop your brand’s posts directly through the app. It allows easy navigation for the users.
The first step is to set up a shop. The shop is a zone where you can share your products, brand collaborative posts, and share your story through which people can interact, explore and browse collections.
Collections help to further segregate posts in terms of various themes such as the category of products, in terms of new arrivals, ongoing sales, festive discounts, and more.
The shopping posts are beneficial to ease the shopping experience for the people.
The influencers, businesses, and other creators can tag the products directly in the posts and shop directly.
How to Enable Instagram Shopping?
To enable Instagram shopping, the business must have a shop established.
To set up a shop on Instagram, follow the following steps:
1. Check Eligibility Criteria
It is important to ensure that your products are eligible and agree to the Instagram policies.
2. Established a Website Domain
It is important to ensure that the business website has all the listings of the products that are shown on the Instagram shopping posts. This allows the customers to directly buy from the website.
3. Business or Creator Account Confirmation
It is important that your account is a business or creator account and is connected to your Facebook page.
4. Upload Your Product List
Create a product catalog for your products. This offers a list of inventory, descriptions, and additional information about the products.
Create your shop using a commerce manager or directly on Instagram. You can also use other supported platforms for your shop.
5. Submit Your Shop for Review
To submit for review, go to settings > sign up for shopping > Follow the necessary steps to create your shop > Submit.
You can visit the ‘Shopping’ section anytime to check the stature of your shop.
It may take a few days for the approval and the business may be asked for additional information for complete domain verification.
Advantages of Instagram Shopping Posts?
1. Products Are Easy to Discover
Instagram shopping makes it easy to discover the shops through the shopping tags. It offers details and pricing of products for easy accessibility. It offers a complete layout to the customer to find what they were looking for with ease.
2. More Sales Through Visual Marketing
The use of interactive videos, photos, posts helps to engage the customer and hence, is more likely to increase your sales. Visual marketing has a longer impact and stays on the minds of the customer creating a lasting memory.
3. Integrate With Influencer Marketing
With the feature of Instagram shops, it is easier to undertake influencer marketing and brand collaborations. This provides an open space to drive greater sales with the Instagram shop and attract more leads and customers to your business.
5 Tips to Create a Successful Instagram Shopping Post
1. Effective Call-To-Action
CTAs play a very important role to convey a direct message to your audience. Call to action captions are known to increase engagement by customers and encourage them to complete the action in all types of tasks such as commenting to win a giveaway, signing up for a newsletter, clicking on the tab to buy, clicking the link in bio, and more.
Keep your CTAs short and clear to directly forward the message.
2. Add Relevant Tags
Always make sure that you put the hashtags that are relevant and appropriate for your posts. The Instagram algorithm supports the hashtags that are shareable and convey direct significance to the posts. It is important to include descriptive hashtags to optimize your account.
3. Show Posts With People (UGC)
User-Generated Content or UGC is highly appreciative and a brilliant way to flaunt and showcase your products being used by people. The posts including people make it interactive, give a personal touch, and help to create a lasting effect on the people.
4. Using Videos and Photos for Promotion
Video marketing is proven to attract more customers and ultimately more sales for your products. Videos like how to use certain products, benefits of your products, tutorials, to-dos, and more are an important way to engage with your audience and show the utility of your products.
5. Always Put Product Tags
Product tags allow the followers to access the product catalog easily. It helps to distinguish and highlight certain products from the rest in the Instagram stories, reels, and stories.
You can add multiple product tags on a single video or photo post, just keep in mind to keep the Instagram product tags properly separated from each other. Do not overlap the tags and keep them adequately spaced.
Conclusion
Instagram shopping feature is a boon for business owners, content creators, and influencers. This opens up the territory for brand collaborations, more engagement through influencer marketing, and more.
It is ideal for any business to highlight their products using the shopping tab and effectively share video lucrative content to boost and encourage more sales. This will ultimately lead to more edge from your competitors and help you optimize your account concerning the Instagram algorithm.
