Did you know that more than 200 million people visit an Instagram business profile on a daily basis?
This fact increases the likelihood of boosting your eCommerce sales on Instagram. People use Instagram to explore and browse for new businesses that have everything they need and due to the brand’s social proof, they tend to trust it better.
Apart from this, brands have easy access to their users and users can easily interact with the brand.
Be it direct contact through DMs or responding to their interactive stories, liking their photos, sharing their content, etc. Users find it easy and quick to interact with brands making it easy for them to boost their sales and grow their business.
Instagram's many features and tools, it makes is, even more, easier for brands to make profitable and ROI-driven marketing campaigns with less investment.
Brands use Instagram for their online sales. But how can brands boost their sales further than Instagram?
Social media aggregator platforms like Taggbox offer tools like widgets, social walls, etc. That help in aggregating Instagram feeds and displaying them in a unified presentation.
You can convert your feed into Instagram shoppable galleries and display them on your website. With copy-pasting a simple HTML code in your website backend, you can showcase and flaunt diverse Instagram content on the website.
Displaying an Instagram feed on the website offers users social proof, helps build trust, develops a loyal customer base, and improves user engagement.
These widgets and social walls are highly engaging and motivate users to make favorable purchase decisions.
This article will help you plan your marketing strategies on Instagram and boost your sales not only on Instagram but on your website as well.
Why use Instagram?
Let’s first understand why Instagram comes into question. There are multiple reasons why Instagram is useful in boosting your sales, some of them are discussed below. Let’s catch up!
Instagram features are all free of cost and do not require a lot of effort to set up. People on Instagram are die-hard fans of online shopping and keep looking for more brands to shop online.
With a diverse audience, you reach out to a lot of people and develop a large and loyal customer base.
Instagram is an interactive platform with visual content around diverse topics, making it even more engaging. All these points eventually lead up to better sales and conversion rates.
How can brands boost online sales through Instagram?
Instagram is a hub of business profiles that are focused on selling their products and building social proof. Users trust Instagram and brands that have a stronghold on Instagram. Let’s see some strategies that might come in handy for your growth.
1. Leverage Instagram UGC feed on the website
UGC is the most trustable form of content, and people love posting UGC on Instagram.
Brands can embed instagram on website to build trust, showcase authenticity and boost sales.
2. Make your sales funnel short
Instagram helps users get aware, browse, research, consider, check reviews, and finally purchase on Instagram.
This helps shorten the sales funnel of your audience and offer them a better and quicker purchase journey, another motivation to use Instagram and get better conversion rates.
3. Get your hands on Instagram shopping
Transform your profile and add Instagram shopping to it. Tag your products and monetize on your user’s inspirations.
Allow your audience to buy directly from Instagram and help them jump up in your sales funnel.
4. Organize interactive activities
People crave interaction with brands.
Organizing giveaways and contests can help your users engage with you. You also understand what your users like the most. With a fair monetary reward, you can better lead and improve your sales.
5. Take full advantage of influencer marketing
Advertising on social media is entirely different from traditional marketing. And Influencer marketing is one such trend that helps boost sales to a great extent.
People follow influencers and take their recommendations into consideration before making a purchase.
People are also motivated to buy products they are not aware of. Influencer marketing can surely help you market yourself most naturally and casually possible.
6. Use hashtags and locations
Locations and hashtags work best and are highly effective when used perfectly. Choose a hashtag around your niche and find posts with your mentions.
You can also collect content from hashtags and locations, and make use of social media aggregators to leverage them on the website.
7. Instagram ads to the rescue!
Most of the strategies are organic however, one such monetary strategy is ads.
You get a higher amount of leads through ads, you can choose your target audience, cost of the ads, display time and place, etc.
Leverage Instagram user-generated content for e-Commerce marketing
Brands always come up with new and innovative ways to leverage every content they receive on various marketing touchpoints. Well, just like that marketers have started leveraging user-generated content in their marketing strategies.
Instagram is a popular platform that includes a vast variety of content for a massive audience.
With millions of monthly active users on Instagram, who are browsing with the expectation of finding fresh and unique content with every refresh, Instagram is the perfect platform to showcase diverse content.
Not only this, it is the best place to find unique content ideas, discover innovative approaches to promote your brand, and discover UGC to leverage on the website.
Leveraging UGC on the website has many benefits, some of which will be discussed in the blog.
User-generated content is content created by the users. It is real people sharing their honest and real-life experiences with the brand. UGC is realistic and transparent. It portrays the brand’s real image and identity.
Instagram being a visual platform, images are the way to go. UGC that includes images or videos provides more evidence about how the product actually looks. People get a clear picture of a product and can make better purchasing decisions.
UGC is powerful and is capable of impacting purchase decisions to a great extent. This is why brands are recommended to involve themselves in influencer marketing. There is a reason influencers are called influencers, they influence people.
Indulging in influencer marketing can help you boost traffic, enhance brand awareness, and hike conversion rates to a great extent.
Influencers can post stories or posts on their account providing honest feedback on your brand, making it an effective marketing strategy.
Let’s focus more on leveraging and its strategies now.
Best Instagram UGC strategies
Above was the introduction to what position Instagram has in the market. Let’s talk about a few strategies for leveraging Instagram UGC in your marketing.
1. Form a content plan
Make sure your objectives and goals are clear from the start. This will help you in forming a content plan.
Strategies without any objectives and pre-defined plans are likely to be less effective. Decide what you need to achieve and start planning content.
Objectives can be to entertain users or engage them enough to increase your followers. Most of the objectives can be achieved using UGC however, a plan can be beneficial. Keep your plan relevant and deliver valuable content.
2. UGC on website
Social media aggregator platforms like Taggbox allow you to collect, and share UGC on your website easily.
Sharing UGC on the website helps you develop a large user base, enhance your website’s vibrancy, improve website dwell time, and boost conversion rates.
When people see reviews on your website, it automatically makes them trust you. UGC also influences their purchase decisions.
Embedding Instagram UGC on the website helps users get everything they need in one place and are likely to make favorable decisions.
3. Select UGC and share on IG
Getting valuable content is not enough you need to filter the UGC and share it on your profile.
You need to showcase how your brand works and how satisfied your audience is.
Be selective when it comes to flaunting UGC produced on Instagram, share only relevant UGC that coincides with your objective.
Once you initiate sharing UGC on your profile, it opens many doors for improvements, trust, and conversions.
You are required to get rights from users before repurposing their content. Tag the accounts that have posted UGC for you and use their content legally.
4. Hashtag campaigns to the rescue
Hashtag campaigns can be your way to go for social marketing. They work as identification tags for your brand name.
Develop a hashtag that is short, easy to use, around your niche, involves your brand, and is unique. Change your link in the bio to make it clear to your audience.
It creates an opportunity for your audience to participate in various campaigns and submit their content.
Hashtags also make it easier for brands to find relevant UGC and use it further. Allow yourself to become discoverable and collect UGC in one place without investing much time and effort.
5. Encourage users to contribute
When you create a hashtag campaign, participation is an essential part of making it successful.
Hashtags make your content visible. When people see the number of people using the same hashtag and posting diverse content, they get motivated to do the same.
You can run contests, polls, Q&As, etc. to promote your hashtag and get people to use it. Brands can make a mandatory criterion of participation to follow and use the hashtag. This will enhance user engagement whilst producing a lot of UGC.
6. Analyze your audience
Keep a track of how your audience is behaving with your content. Analyze their behavior and transform your strategies accordingly. Understand what kind of content they like the most, what are their interest areas, etc.
Mold their choices around your niche and deliver content that is engaging. Evaluate their patterns, trends, etc., and improve your strategies as per that.
This way you will not only have a perfect marketing strategy but can also garner more UGC from your audience.
Final thoughts
Selling and lead generation are easier than ever through Instagram. Regardless of your niche, Instagram opens a lot of doors of opportunities to find the perfect customer, offer brilliant products, and boost your social media presence.
With the above guidelines, you can develop result-driven and customer-centric strategies and boost your eCommerce sales on Instagram.