6 Best Instagram Ecommerce Marketing Tactics You Should Be Using

If you want to generate more sales from your ecommerce store, Instagram is one of the social networks you need to build a presence on. As it has over a billion users and 72% of them make a purchasing decision after they come across something on the network. 

Did you know that the average unpaid order value on Instagram is $65 and the average paid order value is $103. This is higher than the order value on networks like Facebook and Snapchat. 

So, if you want to build a presence on Instagram and drive sales, check out these 6 best Instagram ecommerce marketing tactics below…

1. Create A Strategy To Nurture Followers:

Instagram has the ability to help you generate a lot of sales, but you won’t automatically generate sales by publishing photographs of your products. In order to get those sales, you will need to publish a lot of free and/or entertaining content that will help you nurture your audience and build a relationship with them. When you have this relationship in place you’ll be able to use Instagram to generate sales. 

So, plan out a strategy to nurture your followers. Find out what type of content they want by using Instagram story polls and then provide it to them. The content you create can range from infographics to how-to videos to live videos. 

An example of an Instagram ecommerce store that gets this right is Food52. They’re an ecommerce store that sells products related to cooking. So, they nurture their followers with videos like the one below. 

 

 

 

 

 

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Account Manager @molzed who’s kicking off our newest #f52community theme “Pantry Pasta” with this popular First Night in Florence spaghetti recipe. The recipe comes to us from @thesolitarycook and has a great story behind it (though the name of the dish pretty much sums it up 😉). Topped with all the goodies like parm and toasted breadcrumbs, it will make you say “this is the best thing I’ve ever eaten.” Get the recipe via our stories and tag all your pantry pasta with #f52community for a chance to be featured!

A post shared by Food52 (@food52) on Mar 30, 2020 at 11:01am PDT

Recipe videos like this one will help them attract and nurture relevant followers who will buy from them in the future. 

2. Take Professional Photographs Of Your Products:

Once you follow the above step and share a lot of quality content, you will build up engagement and establish a relationship with your followers. After that, you can begin promoting your products with more promotional posts. 

For this, we recommend that you either hire a professional photographer to take photos of your products or teach yourself how to take quality photographs. 

Most Instagram users publish free photos they find on stock photo sites. These photos will help a bit, but they won’t stand out among the hundreds of photos in their followers’ feeds. 

But if you publish top-quality photos your brand will appear more professional. You can also record professional videos and optimize them for Instagram by using a tool like InVideo. 

This tool comes with templates. You just pick one for Instagram and optimize it with your photos and/or videos to create professional-looking videos. An example of a company that understands the importance of using professional photos in their posts is The Body Shop. 

 

 

 

 

 

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Have you met our Drops of Youth™ heroes? As individuals, they’re pretty awesome but as a collection, they’ll breathe new life into your skincare routine. Check them out online and in-store! #DropsOfYouth #AgeStrong #TheBodyShop

A post shared by The Body Shop Official (@thebodyshop) on Mar 10, 2020 at 2:00am PDT

They regularly publish posts like the above one. As you can see the photo not only looks attractive, but presents the products properly. For example, they went through the trouble of opening up the bottles and presenting several products in the photo instead of just taking a simple photo of the product. They also added other elements like flowers and left plenty of negative space. 

You should also do something like this. Dedicate an entire day to taking photos of your products from different angles and settings. This will give you content to post for months. Refer to your Instagram posting calendar while doing this to ensure that the photos fit into your strategy. 

3. Make Your Posts Shoppable:

The problem with using Instagram for marketing an ecommerce store is that you cannot share links in your feed posts. You can share links in stories, but that will only work if you have more than 10,000 followers. 

When most Instagram ecommerce stores publish posts they change the link in the bio to the product’s page and ask people to click on the link in the bio to make the purchase. 

This can be a tedious task for some of your followers as they need to leave the post, go to your profile page and click on the link. This can also present them with a lot of distractions that get them to look elsewhere, which in turn can affect your conversion rate. 

So, you need to provide a way for your followers to find your products directly from your posts. The only way to do this is with the help of shoppable posts. Instagram shoppable posts feature lets you tag products in your photos like in this post from Package Free Shop. 

As you can see a shopping bag icon appears on the post indicating that there are products tagged in the post. And when you tap anywhere on the photo, just once, all the products tagged in it will appear like below. 

And you can click on them and visit the product landing pages directly. As you can see, this makes finding the products straightforward and easy. Therefore, implementing it will help you drive more traffic and sales. 

So, give it a try if you run an ecommerce store. Package Free Shop were able to implement this as their store runs on Shopify. 

They offer an integration that lets you tag products in your ecommerce store on Instagram.

4. Use A Shoppable Bio Link:

If you implement shoppable posts, it will free up your bio link. So, take advantage of this real estate and create a special bio link for your Instagram bio like Nordstrom does. 

The bio link displays Nordstrom’s product posts on Instagram. And when you click on them you are taken to their online store where you can buy their products. This is a great way to generate sales. 

Also, make sure you include a call to action in your bio to get people to click on the bio like Nordstrom does. 

And if you use hashtags in your bio, make sure to add a branded hashtag too. Like the #’nordstrom’ hashtag that Nordstrom used in the above screenshot. They used it because when people click on it they can discover products from their store, and make purchases. 

If they used an unbranded hashtag like ‘#clothing’ wouldn’t have the same effect, which could distract people and lead to fewer sales from their store. 

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5. Analyze Your Data And Your Competitors’:

No matter how perfect your Instagram strategy is, you will make mistakes the first time. This is why you should constantly analyze your posts and your competitors’ posts using an Instagram analytics tool like Sproutsocial to see if your efforts are generating results or not. 

You should pay attention to metrics that matter most to your business. If your aim is to boost your brand image, you should look at metrics like impressions and engagement. If your goal is to generate more sales, you should look at metrics like traffic and sales. 

Don’t just look at the number of sales, but the amount of profit you are making too, especially if you’re using paid methods like ads and influencer marketing. Integrate all of this data to get a complete understanding of your social performance.

Also, keep an eye out for the latest reports that detail what’s working on Instagram at that moment. They will provide a wealth of information that you can’t find alone. 

6. Display User-Generated Content On The Store:

Another tactic you can use to generate sales is to embed Instagram posts from your customers’ user-generated content that contains your products on your product landing pages. This will add some social proof and get you sales. An example is this page from Drunk Elephant. 

When people see these posts, they can see that your products are popular and well liked by consumers.  User-generated content helps your brand seem more authentic and appealing, which in turn creates higher engagement.  Remember, people like to buy experience, not products.

You can ask customers and influencers who share your products to add a hashtag to their captions. And then use Yotpo to display all the posts with that hashtag on your ecommerce landing page. 

Wrapping Up

These are the 6 Instagram ecommerce marketing tactics you should be using today to stand out from your competition, generate more traffic and sales, and boost your strategy.

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