The question; How To Sell On Instagram? is a very good questions every business owner or marketers needs to ask themselves before starting your Digital Marketing (Social Media Marketing) journey at all, Instagram is one of the fastest growing social media in the world, with over 1billion active users monthly, this made it one of the sweetest and awesome platform to sell online. If you are an entrepreneur looking to see your business grow to a great height in a short period of time, then! selling on this fast growing social network will be one of your smartest moves.
Instagram can be a very great marketing tool that can help you scale up your sales, and connect you with your customers.
How To Sell on Instagram!
Selling your products and services online has not been so easy. In this article I will be walking you through how easy it can be to sell on Instagram and the right steps to take, to make your work easy for you.
Also Read: 8 Digital Marketing Concepts You Should Know
1. Get Real Followers not Robots
Let me tell you a story of my client, Miss Jumai own a jewel store in Abuja, Nigeria, she sells necklaces, earrings and other fashion accessories, she has over 35,000 followers on Instagram, but the problem Miss Jumai was facing is this: anytime she posted on her Instagram, she hardly get 5 engagement (Comments, mentions and likes) on posts, this was frustrating before she hired my service.
Number one question I asked Miss Jumai was this; How did you get your followers?
Her answer: I bought the Instagram account.
The number one thing you should learn from this is that, always make it sure that you have organic followers on Instagram, people that are interested in your what you offer, Jewellery is a luxury market, you cant expect to make too much sales from student audience, except you have a special promotion that you have targeted to students.
Most of this people selling social media accounts don’t really have organic followership, most the follows are generated using bots, which is bad for business.
2. Understand Your Audience
This point is kind of related to the above mentioned point, you must know and understand your audience very well, take your time to research about who your targeted audience should be, and learn about what interest them. If you already have several customers, find out more about them with a survey, a quick one. The information gathered can help you to improve your brand operation to meet your customers needs.
3. Post Perfect Photos!
Will you like to buy products with blurry images? I guess not, Instagram is a picture driven social network, which means it prioritizes photo and video posts over text based contents. This allows you to share awesome images that inspire brand awareness and brand loyalty.
Your images should be captivating enough and make sure it highlights the values and benefits of the products you have to sell.
You don’t really need to hire a graphic designers to do so much work for you, you can head on to Canva.com right now or Postermywall.com to create eye-catching brochures and images. Great photos and videos have all it takes to convince an ordinary person into a potential client, because they give customers the very first impression, and you know what they say, First Impression Go A Long Way.
4. Be Consistent in Posting
I will recommend posting everyday if possible, if not you can hire a social media manager to handle that work for you. You have to keep an active fan base, and to sell on any social media, consistency is key. Uploading contents regularly will increase your brand awareness and also develop the habit of your customers viewing your products as always as you post.
5. Use Hashtags That Are Relevant To Your Brand
Using hashtags eg #TuesdayFashion, #WeekendFashionTrend etc that are relevant to your product is very critical to Selling on Instagram. Using hashtags properly can increase your chance of visibilities and helps potential clients find your products and brand easily.
Also note that using too many hashtags or unrelated hashtags can make your brand looks like a spamming brand, this will lead your customers to avoid your account.
6. Give Special offers and promotions
When you have a special offer, let your customers on it fast, it can be for a retweet on your posts, customers love to take advantage of special offers and promotions, so make them prominent in your posts, make your customers happy and you know a happy customer is likely to refer more people and return.
7. Optimize Your Instagram Profile
In Digital Marketing, your profile needs to be optimized, it is your brand portfolio on social network, a goo d profile is the type that can communicate with your customers on your behalf and convince them to follow you.
Instagram displays the most relevant results first when a customer enters is searching. Therefore it will be a good thing if spend more time on building on building an impressive profile if you want to be easily found by customers.
How to Optimize Your Profile on Instagram
- Choose a clear and quality DP – Your Display Picture (Profile Picture) will draw people’s attention to you. Your profile photo should convey a message about who you are. Therefore, choose a brand logo that fits within the profile circle of Instagram.
- Write a Great Bio – Tell people about yourself or your brand in a few captivating words. You need to go straight to the point because the Instagram bio character limit is 150.
8. Create Product Tutorials.
Showing people how to use a product the right way gives your product more value and can leads to increase in sales. You would be reluctant to buy a product you don’t even know how to use, or know little about. By creating a usage tutorials of your product, you are building trust among among customers.
Tutorials also helps you reduce customer service costs. When customers are satisfied the product tutorial, they will be compelled into doing it themselves.
9. Engage With Your Customers.
Customers engagement is very critical to your success growth in Digital Marketing, this is one of the most important factors. Uploading contents consistently is important but it is not enough, you have to combine it with customers engagement. When a client tag you on a post, take that as an avenue to connect and engage them by reposting or tagging them on your Instagram story.
Instagram sticker is a great tool you can use in interacting with your customers and they can also drive traffic to your page. stickers are a great tool for building good customers relationships.
10. Share Testimonials.
Share great things people say about your brand to your customers, a social proof is a great way to increase sales in digital marketing. Testimonials gives confidence to your product and increases the chances of potential customers being willing to patronize your business.
11. Use Instagram Shop Feature.
Instagram has a Shop feature that you can take advantage of, it gives your customers easy access to your products, it also simplifies the process your customers have to go through to buy your products.
12. Use Instagram Ad
Another most effective way to sell on Instagram is by using Instagram Ads. You can target your audience, and the most beautiful part of the Ad is that it is very affordable because you set a budget you want to spend, you can an ad and reach potential customer from as low as $1.
Benefits of Selling on Instagram.
- Instagram has large audience
- Your Market is Growing Everyday
- Good Customers Relationship
- Many Marketing Features to Choose From.
Disadvantages of Selling on Instagram.
Reaching Older Groups is a Factor.
Instagram is not Fully Ecommerce Centric.
Only People Accessing Instagram Can be Reached.
Conclusively.
Since we have covered several ways in which you sell and promote your products and brands on Instagram, it is now left for you to choose from them or go with all the features above. However you chose to do your business on Instagram, I wish you success.
