It’s probably not a surprise that using social media can give your sales figures a big boost. Well timed interesting content can help new followers find what you’re offering, and win them over to your brand. The flaw in the process is that the internet in general is pretty loud. Potential customers are always in danger of getting distracted by something else. So why not keep hold of people about to make an impulse purchase?
Instagram ecommerce
To keep your customers on track and the cash registers ringing, Instagram have introduced shoppable posts. From discovery of your post to checkout, shoppers stay within the Instagram app. There’s less risk of them spotting something else on their way to the till, and also makes the shopping experience much more user friendly. They see the post, like the product, buy the product. No rummaging around the internet to find it.
How to sell things on Instagram
You will need to have an Instagram business profile which you can request from the settings page. The next step to sell on Instagram is connecting your account to Facebook.
Sounds a bit weird, but Facebook allows business pages to create product catalogues. You can do this manually through the Facebook Business Manager portal, or by connecting your existing ecommerce website (like WooCommerce, Magento, or Shopify for example) to auto populate the catalogue.
Once everything is connected, it’s time to start tagging items from the product catalogue in your Instagram posts, just like you would tag a person.
Instagram shoppable posts will pop-up with a ‘Tap to View Products’ prompt, or show the shopping bag icon. The sale will be processed through your web shop like usual, so it should still be easy to manage orders.
Why shoppable Instagram posts matter
The fact is, if you’re driving traffic with your social media strategy, you’re probably hoping to see some financial kickback from it at some point. By putting the option to purchase in the app, Instagram have given online sellers a brilliant way to turn their followers into customers.
It’s a valuable tool because if someone posts a photo using or wearing your product, or if you want to style different shots of products together, you can tag the products to signpost interested people right to the shop.
Things to know about selling on Instagram
There are a few restrictions when it comes to Instagram selling. So far only users located within one of nine countries are allowed to sell: USA, Canada, Brazil, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, or Australia.
At the moment only physical goods are permitted as saleable items, so services and other non-physical products can’t use this as a sales channel.
Take a look through Insta’s guide Shopping on Instagram for more help on getting set up.
Stuck for social media content ideas that will help drive the traffic you need to make the shopping feature a success? Learn more about how we can help!
