Instagram Shopping finally hits the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Australia, Spain and Canada!
In March of last year, Instagram announced the rollout of their new Shopping feature to select US eCommerce businesses, specifically designed to help sellers sell more products directly through the app. When you look at the growing Instagram stats, it shouldn’t be a surprise just how successful Instagram Shopping has been since launching in the US.
Instagram currently has over 800 million monthly visitors and in the US alone its usage is growing 5X faster than other social networks. Add that to the fact that as many as 60% of people say that they first discovered a product on Instagram and 33% of the most viewed stories on Instagram are from business accounts, Instagram has become a leading selling tool for online sellers.
So how does it work?
Instagram Shopping places shoppable tags, in the form of a shopping bag icon, on your Instagram images. After prices are revealed, Instagram users are able to tap for more details where they are taken to a product details page pop that will include the product name, the price, and a ‘Shop’ button that will then take them to the relevant URL to add the product to their cart and check out.
During the beta testing last year, one large case study which included as 50 merchants found that Instagram Shopping increased traffic to their product pages and site by 1,416%, with some eCommerce sellers increasing their Instagram revenue by a whopping 100%.
There is no doubt that Instagram Shopping has had big success in the US and now, with the rollout of seven more additional countries, we’re only seeing the beginning of what Instagram Shopping will be doing for eCommerce sellers.
Convinced? Sure you are! Here’s everything you need to know about setting up Instagram Shopping.
To use Instagram Shopping, you need to make sure that your products have been imported into Facebook Shop. You can do this in bulk using eCommerce platform apps and tools or adding each product manually by following these Facebook instructions:
Once you have ensured that your product catalogs are synced up with Facebook Shop, you’re ready to set up Instagram Shopping by following these simple steps, with the help of Instagram’s setup wizard:
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You really don’t have anything to lose and everything to gain with Instagram Shopping. For now, adding shoppable Instagram tags doesn’t cost you anything, unless of course, you create ads from those shopping posts. With increased traffic and sales almost guaranteed, sellers who are not doing what they can to get in on this action earlier, are missing out on huge earning potential.
And what’s next? There are some indications that Instagram is looking to extend shopping to video and carousel posts, as well as expanding to more countries. If it’s not in your country yet, it will be soon. So get ahead of the game by sorting out your Facebook shop feeds now, and of course, improving your Instagram engagement and following so that you’re ready when it does.
With that, I will leave you with 5 Instagram Follower Growth tips to get you started.
It’s not just about the quality of the picture and which or how many tags you use; like any social platform, your posts and account should tell your brand’s story or show off your brand personality. Here’s an example.
You have up to 30 hashtags to use on each post, but if all of them are bringing the number of uses to the millions, you’re going to lose out of being seen. Like with any marketing - go niche. Be creative with your hashtags.
For example, say you want to tag #love; you will be competing with over a billion posts, but if you include #younglove or #springlove - whichever matches your products or brand - you could enjoy more reach.
Remember that #Shareacoke campaign? This is a great example of using branded hashtags promoted on various channels and on the product to push Instagram engagement and followers.
You can increase your Instagram account awareness by engaging with and liking photos that fall in the niche you’re selling in. Want proof? Just look at Freshly Picked, which now has over 800k followers, who started her growth spurt by searching niche hashtags and spent time on her target audiences’ Instagram accounts, engaging and liking photos.
Running a contest on Instagram can be a big follower grower and traffic driver. Sprout Social has the following tips on creating and hosting a successful Instagram contest:
You can read their full guide to Instagram competitions here.
