With 400 million users documented in 2015, Instagram is a force to be reckoned with on the e-commerce front. No longer just a platform for sharing personal photos and videos, the site welcomes your brand and customers. With a special emphasis put on brands promoting products through user-generated content. Second, only to Facebook for several online sellers, Instagram offers a highly visual platform for selling your goods.
Like all e-commerce, selling products on Instagram has a learning curve. Once you’ve completed the steps to selling on the site, you’ll want to fine-tune your process and add-in solutions that can help you sell more. There are two main ways to jump-start your selling mojo.
1. Harness the Selling Power of Your Instagram Photos
It’s true: We often don’t see our products the way others do.
On the Instagram selling front, the detail is everything. The site itself lends to beautiful photography, and whatever you’re selling needs to stand out on every feed. It’s easy to overlook your product photo quality as you become accustomed to seeing your own images time and again. When in doubt that your product photos measure up, ask an unbiased third party for an opinion. Also, measure your images against those of an Instagram seller you admire, or one who is successful in their niche. How does their image quality compare to yours, and could you be doing better?
Curate a collection of your best images for each product. By curating, instead of just choosing, you’ve carefully studied each product image and created a mental picture of the collection you want to show off. Colors, themes, shapes, and image clarity should flow and work off each other to tell the story of your product.
If you’re not using customer images of your product in the wild, you’re throwing money away. While your product photography needs to speak for your brand, the images your customers send in of them using your product are sheer, proverbial gold. 77% of online buyers say customer photographs of a product influence their buying decision.
2. Use a Selling Tool
You don’t have to do the work of selling on Instagram yourself. There are multiple online selling tools geared explicitly to Instagram. For best results, you should use these tools alongside services like Buzzoid, who will deliver Instagram likes to your photos automatically.
3. Liketoknow.it
This tool allows you to add the Liketoknow.it link to a product. Instagram users can then “like” your product photo and receive an email with the product information and how to buy.
4. Soldsie.com
The greatness of this app is that it allows buyers to click on items for sale in your feed, and purchase without ever leaving the site. This app can help buyers follow-through with the sale by avoiding routing them to another location actually to make the purchase.
5. Candid.io
Candid.io capitalizes on the hashtags you place on your product descriptions to help generate sales. It curates photos of your products based on the hashtags you’ve assigned. Customers can get permission to share your product images for a broader reach. And, you can enable one-click ordering to make it easier for customers to make a purchase.
6. Instaorders
Instaorders: After you set up an Instaorders account, you can import your Instagram product photos to their site. The images will sync to your Instaorders account and update as you add more. Add in your price and descriptions, and you’re ready to accept orders.
Up and coming solution tools for selling on Instagram are always popping up. Ultimately, you’ll still be learning about new ways to sell more. Keep an eye out and test a few until you find one that facilitates sales the best for your business.
Helpful Resources:
1. Top Free Instagram Analytics Tools To Use To Measure Site Performance
2. Advertising Products And Services On Instagram Increases Social Media Traffic
3. Want To Increase More Instagram Followers? Here’re Surefire And Successful Organic Strategies
4. Myths of Buying Instagram Likes Affecting You to Grow
5. How To Utilize Instagram To Grow Small Businesses
