Shop ‘til you drop
Selling on Instagram has quickly become a staple feature of the platform, with many businesses seeing significant returns.
Shopping on Instagram has been around for some time; however, it wasn’t until the platform launched Shops on Instagram in 2020 that Instagram truly became a legitimate e-commerce platform.
Shopping and connecting with brands is wildly popular on the platform, with roughly 90% of all Instagram users following at least one business account.
Let’s dive a little deeper into selling on Instagram, how to do it, and whether or not it’s a good idea for your business.
TLDR; everything to know now
Set up your account
Before you can even think about selling on Instagram, there are a few steps you need to take to ensure your account is set up correctly:
- Review our Commerce Eligibility Requirements to ensure you sell eligible products and comply with our policies, like our commerce policies, terms of use, community guidelines and more.
- Make sure your business has its own website domain. Your shop must contain product listings that are available for direct purchase from your business’s website, and you must represent the shop or website associated with the domain provided.
- Check to see if you are in a supported market.
- Confirm that your Instagram profile is a business or creator account. Then, connect it to your Facebook Page.
- If you don’t have one already, set up a Business Manager account. You’ll need a Business Manager account to set up your shop in Commerce Manager. Business Manager lets you manage your ad accounts, your Pages and the people who might be working on them.
Set up Instagram Shopping
To set up your Instagram shop from within the Instagram app, head to Settings > Business > Set up Instagram Shopping.
Now that you’ve ticked all of Instagram’s boxes, here are our 5 tips for selling on Instagram.
Ads with Product Tags
One of the most important things to keep in mind when selling products online—social media or elsewhere—are barriers to purchase. What is getting in the way of potential customers making a purchase? From initially seeing your ad, how many clicks does it take for someone to complete a purchase?
Running ads with product tags on Instagram is a potent tool, as they allow users to click directly to the details page of a product. This tool means customers can shop your ad and move from discovery to purchase as smoothly as possible.
According to Instagram, running ads with product tags can increase the reach of your shopping posts and reduce cost per acquisition by 20%.
Make Story Highlights for your products
While it’s true that Instagram Stories disappear after just 24 hours, did you know that you can create highlights for Stories that will remain at the top of your profile for as long as you want them to?
Story Highlights are a great way to help people find your products quickly and an excellent way to shine a new light on product launches, sales, and more.
Feature multiple products in one photo
Did you know how Instagram allows you to tag multiple people in one photo? Well, the same feature is available for shopping. Shopping tags allow you to tag multiple products in the same photo.
Promote your products with user-generated content
Influencer marketing is great, but it also has the potential to be very expensive. But do you know what’s free and will help people trust your products? User-generated content.
When it comes to online shopping, people love positive reviews. And what could be a more positive review than someone taking to social media to tell people how much they love your products?
Advertising, regardless of platform, always has the potential to feel inauthentic. If there’s one thing that user-generated content isn’t, it’s inauthentic. Additionally, user-generated content is great for community building and telling stories about your products.
Use product stickers in Stories
Ads are commonplace within Instagram Stories, with the average user being served an ad roughly every three to four Stories. But did you know that you don’t need to run paid ads on Instagram Stories to promote your products in your own Story?
Thanks to Instagram stickers, you can now add a sticker that links directly to your shop or even promote a specific product within your Story.
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