Does your Instagram marketing strategy generate sales? If it is a “No,” then you need to consider digging more into how eCommerce works on Instagram. Based on Instagram, 60% of users depend on Instagram to research and find products. That being the case, wholesalers and eCommerce brands take advantage of the platform to extend their existing shopfronts.

Instagram acts as a hub for online sales, and that doesn’t go down. Instagram’s recent ad types and checkout on Instagram features are proof of that. With the evolving platform and its growth, businesses can design better marketing strategies. Let us dive into 11 ways on how to increase sales from the platform.

1. Stick to a Product-Focused Content Calendar

First and foremost, think about what to post on Instagram?

The most famous type of content on Instagram is one that is related to eCommerce products. Even though businesses don’t like to spam their followers’ feeds, for that reason, they must not stand back on showing off products.

Presentation of the product matters a lot; posting bland and lifeless photos doesn’t get any traction. In lieu, you could consider sharing outstanding and attractive product images for the best output.

Besides photos, videos must be a part of the marketing strategy. Even successful brands produce fun and eye-catching videos to display their products. Impressive and engaging videos like some tiny commercials with boomerang style could be fair play.

One of the great ways to gain engagement is publishing user-generated content. Posting photos of customers does double your following and ensures that people like your product. So, the critical point here is that your Instagram marketing strategy should solely focus on product-related content. Though, it must not be the only content to publish. To develop business, brands have to self-promote their business.

2. Get Creative

The kind of rush to generate high sales on Instagram denote that brands have to face increased competition. To cut through the noise, you need to get creative.

Brands that can shape their trademark or niche tend to acquire a significant number of followers: more followers and more sales.

To impress the audience, make sure to maintain a consistent color palette through your posts or choose different schemes of color occasionally, to showcase the brand’s aesthetic and individuality.

The other admired tactic to make an impression is adding a “Humour” element to your content. Be it a meme or an attractive caption; people fall for funny content compared to traditional sales texts. That means you don’t need to be a comedian for a brand’s Instagram; you should cleverly mix up humor with product-related posts; it does make a significant impact on followers’ minds.

Instead of humor, you could also choose Inspirational and motivational ways to connect with followers. Businesses must make an effort to get a trademark and establish themselves on Instagram.

3. Embed Posts with Right Hashtags

Instagram and hashtags are closely associated. Brands need to understand how to use them wisely instead of spamming the content. Hashtags let your brand be discovered by a new audience and also inspire people to share content relevant to yours.

That said, mentioning branded hashtags is a must for an eCommerce business. Promote hashtags via content and Instagram bio so that followers can share their photos and creations in a channel.

Branded hashtags aren’t the quintessential element for brands, though. There is plenty of community and business-related hashtags that focus on target people. Figuring out these hashtags is an intelligent way for businesses to find the target audience and promote sales.

Instagram limits you to post up to 30 hashtags; using those many hashtags may lead to keyword stuffing, which is not a great idea for brands. Massive brands use fewer hashtags. Try to experiment with hashtags; take at least one hashtag to include apart from a branded hashtag.

4. Share User-Generated Content

That is icing on the cake!!

From the marketing point of view, user-generated content is pure gold. Fueling your calendar with user-generated content is a great move to promote products and brands on Instagram. User-generated content created by users or customers about a brand and that’s free content, and its authenticity makes the customer the brand advertiser.

Digging these pictures is highly possible, but it’s time-consuming. Discover through mentions and requesting permissions to repost every UGC. According to a survey, 76% of individuals stated that they trust content posted by people rather than by brands. And 100% of customers trust recommendations.

5. Promote Brand via Instagram Story

Instagram story content is domineering at present times. Stories are an exciting way to build engagement, spread brand awareness, and drive enormous sales. It lets brands promote products or services creatively, in a fun and engaging manner. Whether you want to post a casual selfie? Or a refined image with call-to-action? Stories lets you have both while putting the brand as the center of focus on followers’ feeds.

Also, pay attention to different features and stickers that are available on Instagram stories. So, it’s good to stay updated on new features that allow you to showcase fresh and creative content for followers.

Besides, you could use quiz stickers to ask questions like, “Which look was your favorite?” to know how they love your brand; this not just drives engagement but shows your interest in the community, interactions, and understanding followers’ needs. For a successful Instagram strategy, be aware of new features to create appealing stories.

6. Create Instagram Specific Landing Page

The only place where you can provide links on Instagram is your profile bio. The bio link helps drive traffic directly from the Instagram platform to your website. Consider sharing a link that lands them on the product catalog or new arrivals, getting automatic Instagram likes for social proof, making your brand highly visible, gaining engagement, driving enormous sales, and increasing brand awareness.

That way, you could analyze your efforts or traffic or the ROI of your marketing strategy. And make sure landing pages are optimized to be mobile-friendly. Hence, we can say you create a shopping experience for the audience and figure out how your followers convert to customers.

7. Promote your Famous Product through Instagram Ads

Once you have got a grip over Instagram’s marketing strategy, you could explore paid ads for your business to focus on the target audience and scale promotions. Consider running Instagram story ads to showcase your popular product, business, and brand to an engaged audience.

Stories engagement rates are high. Try to keep your message short and to the point on stories, and in the story’s ad, a “Sponsored” label appears beneath your brand name that tells it’s an ad, not a post from you. Chances are, people may skip the ad and go to the next story. Hence it’s important to have short and punchy text that captures followers’ attention.

8. Foster Relationship with Influencers

Partnering with influencers is an authentic way of paid promotion. Working with influencers is easier to bring your content in front of an audience online by joining hands with influencers on the platform. Influencers are people that produce engaging and rich content that grabs a loyal following.

While working with influencers, your brand displays a human face behind the brand while being introduced to a new set of followers. It is excellent as they have a loyal following and can spread the word faster, cheaper, and better than you think you can. Even massive brands take advantage of influencers to promote their brand.

9. Rethink your Posting Frequency

Increasing your sales on Instagram requires sharing content regularly. Rather than considering Instagram as an alternate platform, post content daily. Also, the best way to outsmart the Instagram algorithm is posting content when followers are highly engaged.

Engagement rates do make an impact depending on business location and brand. Posting content every day may seem alarming. Rather than clamber for fresh content, it’s good to stick to specific themes to organize the content calendar. For example, On Monday, you post a meme, Tuesday repost a customer picture, Wednesday promote a new story, and so on.

10. Promote your Instagram Anywhere & Everywhere

Consider cross-promoting your Instagram content to other social media platforms to make your presence strong and clear. Suppose you have a significant following on Facebook and Twitter, so promoting your brand by tailoring it for respective networks is absolutely a fair game.

You could also promote the brand’s website via buttons, hashtags, or customer look-books. Or send an Instagram-related newsletter to engaged email accounts to help build a following or suppose you run a brick-and-mortar business; try promoting the brand to customers in person.

11. Listen to your Customers

When you grow a business on Instagram, you tend to come across more and more interactions with customers; it could be questions or suggestions, which is healthy. Instagram could be used as a channel to answer their questions and help them with purchases.

Subsequently, it could be another platform for your brand to gain feedback and understand better the needs of target people. These insights let you improve product performance and fine-tune marketing strategy.

I hope these points help you achieve your target goal!!!

Author Bio

Sarah James is a Content Writer at VoxCorp with more than 8 years of experience in Social Media Marketing. In her free time she loves to talk with her friends on food, travel and ancient culture.