If you’re reading this you might be wondering, how to start selling online, specifically Instagram. Where do you begin? What’re the steps?
Global social commerce is anticipated to explode in popularity, with a projected growth of more than 2 times its current value to $1.2 trillion by 2025. Social commerce is an e-commerce marketing technique that exploits social media in the context of sales.
At the moment, who is the most important influence in social commerce? Instagram.
According to a recent survey, 83% of customers use Instagram to discover new items or services. Considering that Instagram has about 1 billion active monthly users, it is an ideal platform for brands looking to grow their social commerce strategy.
The facts are quite clear: selling on Instagram is the future of companies looking to increase brand recognition and optimize their online marketing efforts.
How to start selling online, specifically Instagram
Getting started with selling on Instagram involves creating a digital shop for your business, getting approved, and fine-tuning your marketing approach to get the most out of it.
All of this is simple to do in a few steps.
1. Set up Instagram Shopping
You must first establish an Instagram Business profile or “Creator” account to begin.
To set up a Facebook-based Instagram shop, you’ll need to link your company’s Facebook page to the Instagram Business account of your business.
The process continues with uploading a company’s product catalog using Facebook’s “Business Catalog Manager” or by linking an e-commerce database like Shopify, BigCommerce, and other e-commerce platforms.
After completing this stage, the company’s Instagram account is evaluated. They may then enable the Instagram Shopping feature and begin selling on Instagram once they have been authorized.
2. Stay on brand when selling on Instagram
You’ll want to learn about all of Instagram’s Shopping Tools and develop a brand-focused approach after you’ve been authorized to sell on Instagram.
- Shopping Posts
- Shopping Stories
- Shopping Ads
- Live Shopping Stream
- Shopping Guides
Some of Instagram Shopping’s features may be more useful than others, depending on your brand’s strategy and industry.
Regardless of which Instagram Shopping feature a brand decides to focus on, make sure your images are high-quality and attention-grabbing.
Instagram is a visual social network, which means companies must use attractive images and product photos to make their items seem professional while remaining appealing.
When it comes to generating visuals, keep in mind to follow your company’s branding standards. However, the images must stand out from the crowd on Instagram in order to catch customers’ attention.
3. Strategic planning
The last stage is to set up Instagram Shopping features thoroughly. Posts should be about generating money and converting consumers, generally. However, they must also provide value for the buyer.
A great approach to do this is to produce video content that demonstrates your product or service in action and how it solves your target audience’s problems.
User-generated content (UGC) is another smart tactic for Instagram Shopping because users put more trust in companies they perceive as credible, and there’s nothing more real or genuine than actual people providing their genuine visual feedback.
4. Connect to your inventory and fulfillment management software
The Commerce Manager is used to manage retail delivery of Instagram Shopping purchases. Here, brands fulfill orders, ship them, tag items as delivered, and handle consumer issues.
You can connect your inventory and fulfillment management partners and software in the ‘Commerce Manager’ to have them handle fulfillment instead of the Commerce Manager.
By collaborating with Launch Fulfillment for omnichannel fulfillment, brands may simplify fulfillment across multiple sales channels.
Brands can also use Launch Fulfillment to keep track of inventory on a single dashboard, saving time and money by outsourcing fulfillment operations.
5. Test Instagram shopping campaigns
Instagram is visually oriented, therefore companies must test a variety of photos and product shots to see which ones best represent their target audience. A/B testing is an excellent approach to do this.
Brands may create identical campaigns to experiment with different picture and caption combinations to determine which visual and content is most engaging and productive.