Have you tried using Instagram?
What was once a simple photograph sharing app is now a key sales channel.
In this post you’ll find the way to use Instagram reach new customers and to get brand recognition.
Set a Large Community Base
Thirteen percent have Instagram accounts and over fifty percent of the planet’s top 100 brands are on Instagram. Your customers (and potential customers) are probably there as well.
Below I share a couple of ways you attract or can find those people and add them for your existing fan base.
1. Comprise Audience-Unique Hashtags
Hashtags are a way to notions, group ideas or conversations. They make it simple for people to find others that are posting about subjects they are interested in.
You can effectively reach new people interested by including the hashtags that is proper in your upgrades. The key will be to use hashtags that don’t just describe company and your photographs, but are also actively sought for and used on Instagram.
To discover the most applicable hashtags to your upgrades, you can use a free online service like Websta or Iconosquare. These tools provide an inventory of popular hashtags based on your own keywords.
Use those lists to come up with the top 10-20 hashtags that relate to your company, brand and merchandises and place them in a note in your smartphone. This way you’ll be able to make reference to them no matter where you’re posting from.
2. Use the Appropriate Filters
Most of us post away and do not think about how Instagram filters affect engagement–we simply use what we think looks good. It turns out the filter you use may affect total interaction.
TrackMaven lately published a study that found photos with no filter, the Mayfair filter or the Inkwell filter was left with an increase of enjoys and comments.
Obviously, the audience of everyone is somewhat different. I would recommend using a Instagram direction tool to help you see which one is most popular with your community and experimenting with various filters.
3.
As with all social networks, understanding when your community is most likely to engage helps you select the best time. IconoSquare has an optimization report that identifies the best times for you to update predicated on your previous posting engagement and history.
The report shows black circles symbolizing the times you are currently posting and light-grey circles signifying the level of interaction those posts receive. The biggest light-gray circles represent the best times for you to post based on your own followers’ involvement.
The example above is taken from your Shopify Instagram account. You are able to observe the best posting times in this specific case are Friday at 9pm and Monday at 9am, surprisingly.
4. Engage With Opponents’ Followers
Anyone following your opponent’s Instagram account is someone you wish to talk to. You would like to inform them about your (better) website, merchandise or service, right?
Those users have already shown an interest in your product just by following your adversary’s account. Locating and interacting with them raises both your amount of followers and qualified leads.
There are many instruments that can help you to find your opponents’ followers. For example, use JustUnfollow to hunt for your own opponents’ Instagram accounts by it gives you a listing of everyone also name. With that list in hand, start participating together with your potential customers that are new –follow them and enjoy or comment on among their photos.
5. Work With Popular Instagrammers
One of the best ways to grow your Instagram community will be to ask a heavy-hitter in your niche to feature your merchandise. Unlike the last tactics, this one generally features an advertising price associated with it– either payment or products that are sending but the effects may be dramatic.
Yumbox paid a well-known food blogger and Instagrammer to post a photograph of a food-filled Yumbox and a link back to the Yumbox Instagram account. That single post doubled the business’s Instagram following and spiked traffic to the their web site.
To obtain the biggest accounts in your specialty, use the search function and type in hashtags key words and company names of Instagram. When you find and follow a big account, Instagram will give a listing of users that are similar you’ll be able to follow to you.
Assess their account profile, when you’re prepared to connect with someone. In most cases you’ll be able to tell fairly quickly whether an account accepts sponsored product reviews or posts. A lot of people include a note that says they’re prepared to work with brands (e.g., “For business inquiries, please e-mail…”).
If users don’t explicitly say they work with brands, e-mail them and ask if they do featured reviews or sponsored posts and what their policies are for each option.
The cost of featured reviews or sponsored posts depends on various variables like crowd and market size. Generally, the fee is comparatively low compared to other online advertising options and these ventures usually lead to increased participation.
Convert Followers Into Customers
Instagram’s engagement rate is one of the best of all social networks. Its picture-centric nature lends itself to selling and showcasing products.
When you’ve gained trust and devotion and created a large targeted audience, it is time to convert browsers to buyers. Here are three ways in which you can get started.
1. Emphasize Lack
Marketers and retailers regularly practice this principle by suggesting that products or discounted costs will only last for a restricted time.
Fawn Fox &, a New York retailer uses an innovative method of sales and increasing engagement with the lack tactic.
The store consistently posts several pictures per day showing their present inventory. Since things are vintage, there is usually a stock that is limited. When followers see something they enjoy, they must leave a remark to reserve the thing. Subsequently the user calls in with their credit card information and Instagram name to complete the purchase.
Beverly Hames of Fox & Fawn says that 20-40% of daily sales now come from their Instagram audience.
2. Spotlight New Products
Packer Shoes has created a healthy Instagram audience and often highlights new and exclusive products to drive more sales.
How effective has this tactic been for Packer Shoes?
3. Highlight Social Proof
Social proof is a strong psychological phenomenon where individuals suppose others’ actions reflect the correct behaviour for a given situation. For instance, if your friends or family recommend an item, you are more prone to pick that product over another.
Almost 63% of consumers say they’re much more likely to buy from a site if it has some form of social proof like reviews and merchandise evaluations.
Online retailer BlackMilk does an exceptional job of supplying social proof by motivating customers on Instagram using particular hashtags to post photos. Those photos are pulled by blackMilk in their site so clients can find how popular a product is.
A particular pair of leggings in their store has over 160 pages of user-generated images. Those pictures are strong visual social proof that motivates customers to buy the merchandise, when someone sees the site.
“[Customers are] actually proud of showing off their individuality of the way that they style them, and stuff like this. So it was not the versions that were selling our products–it was the hundreds of pages of selfies from girls around the world, different shapes and sizes.”
Over to You
Be purposeful about how you collect your crowd and present your products on Instagram. The effect will be a targeted marketing station providing you with a wholesome stream of revenue.
What would you think? Would you use Instagram as a sales channel? What tactics have worked best for converting fans to customers? Tell us in the comments below.