Instagram & E-commerce: The New Power Couple of 2018
Advertising and Instagram have shared a very nurturing and strong bond for years now. Lately, Instagram developers have been paying a lot of attention to developing the platform for marketing and promotional activities. Nonetheless, not a lot of sellers and merchants have been benefiting from these changes. Unlike Facebook or even Twitter, mastering the organic selling and marketing strategy of the pioneering photo blogging site can be a bit challenging. In reality, Instagram strategies for sales don’t have to be patented secrets or inscrutable.
Get to know those who follow you
The first thing you need to do is get to know your audience. Your posts have to be relatable to your followers. You may have to practice some deep diving into your visitor stats for this one. Find out who they are, how old they are, where they are and what they like. Using a few Instagram user statistics tracking tools can make this much easier for you. Instagram is quite an “emotional” place, and you need to leverage the emotional traits of the future shopper to motivate them truly. You can always buy Instagram likes from bots, but you will not be able to engage these users at a truly emotional level. https://gramblast.com/ can help you understand the distinction between bots and real. You can even see how to see someone’s activity on Instagram for a more in depth look!
Enrich your content, try something original
Create a content-driven experience for your followers. Select eye-catching and impressive photos that will encourage them to act. This is a time-tested way to drive your click-through rate (CTR) and your conversion rate. The best way to connect with your potential customers is to find their peak activity hours. Post your fresh content or repost the best performing content during the time they are most likely to be online. If you want to stay visible, you need to find out what time they are watching.
Most importantly, if you want your shoppers to hit like and follow, you need to deliver the content that deserves those likes. Give them tailor-made photos and descriptions that will grab eyeballs. Your content should elicit positive emotions. Use subtle motivators and CTAs that will encourage the extra click. Research shows that over 29% brands on Instagram that perform superbly have one social media influencer vouching for them. Just posting photos of your products without a personal touch or a clear message (CTA) will not help you reach the deeps of user communities.
Photos are not your only weapon
In certain cases, you might find it difficult to post photos of products. This happens when your company offers services as well. In those cases, you can promote interesting behind the scene photoshoots, interviews, and short videos. Even posting review videos from the social media celebrities have positive impacts. When there is nothing new in the quiver, go with motivational posts and social causes your brand advocates for. Your motive should be to engage as many people as possible with each post.
The best way to set up your brand on Instagram for e-commerce is to set up a visual identity. You need consistency of photo themes, styles, filters and captions. Most importantly, use consistent and relevant hashtags to help your followers find you at all times. Another crucial part of consistency is posting frequency. Mix up your product posts, non-product posts and customer generated content from time to time to create some diversity.
Take help of editorial calendars to schedule posts
Most newcomers face a problem keeping track of their post frequency, theme and response. Ideally, you should maintain an editorial calendar to keep track of all the factors. Tracking the post-performance will also help you stay in touch with your real-time metrics. As of Instagram stats 2018, the most popular brands post about 1.5 times per day. Research further shows that posting more does not lead to a drop-in engagement rate, but only if you can maintain the same high quality of posts.
Thankfully, the inclusion of Instagram stories, videos, multiple photo sliders and other features are efficient enough to introduce considerable variation in your post types. You can use a combination of these features in addition to the variation of the post topics you already have in store to enthrall your old followers and capture new followers.
To do this successfully, you should take help of Instagram post frequency and timing studies. Each day of the week has a different peak hour of Insta activity for different demographic groups. For example, the best time for a brand targeting millennial users is between 8, and 9 am on Mondays and between 3 to 4 pm again on the same days. This is true for all brand photos. The best time to post videos is around 9 pm. User history from noted brands shows that videos posted at 9 pm garnered around 34% more interactions with the target users.
You should monitor your metrics
When you go fishing, you need to check your catch from time to time. This gives you an idea about the bounties of the waters and an idea about how much bait you are wasting. The same is true for Instagram e-commerce. You cannot leave the lure out and not check who’s grabbing it. If you are doing just that right now, you are wasting a lot of your money and other resources. You need to weigh the returns of each investment you are making from time to time. If you are posting a new video, you need to monitor how many people see it, like it, share it and follow you after watching it. Modern tools will also let you see how much crowd the photos or videos are diverting to your website.
Here are the metrics you need to worry about –
- Likes and follows
- Comments and shares
- Link following and website purchases
As you track these sequentially, you will be moving from the top of the sales funnel to the bottom. This is one of the most efficient ways to track marketing and sales metrics on Instagram. Thankfully, you don’t have to spend a ton right now to see how your posts are doing!
Start by trying to get to know your audience and offer them exactly what they like. Once you have that under control, Instagram e-commerce ceases to be the dark woods and becomes your homely backyard.
Author bio: Amy Conner is a marketing media advisor. Her recent work focuses on avoiding useless bots while increasing Instagram traffic. Visit https://gramblast.com/ to know all about real users and bot traffic on social media.