The Battle Continues: After Amazon Spark, Facebook launches Instagram Shopping

After the much-hyped Amazon Spark, Facebook is not in a mood to step back or forfeit the battlefield. In a recent update, Facebook is planning to roll-out its ‘Shopping on Instagram’ feature. This is a game-changing news for all the marketers of B2B brands.

While the feature is currently not available for all the businesses (only a few U.S brands are currently using it), “Shopping on Instagram” helps users tag products in a post. From the tagged item, the customer can learn more about the product.

Boasting 500 M daily active users, 500,000 advertisers, 150M daily active stories, and 5 times the growth rate of other platforms, for years, Instagram has been the de-facto platform for visual storytelling, adored by brands and customers alike for its sole focus on mesmerizing videography and photography, which serve collectively as the vignettes into the lifestyles and lives of their capturers.

With the launch of shoppable posts, customers would be able to connect with their favorite brands with the ability to view all the pertinent information, such as the pricing and product descriptions, all with the click of a button, without ever having to leave the app. Once you are interested in an item, these shoppable posts can even provide links to corresponding product web pages, allowing you to peruse through the catalog, or simply add to cart and check out.

So, are you all excited about buying your favorite stuff from Instagram? The bad news is, the feature hasn’t been launched yet. If you want your eggs the sunny side up, here are four ways in which you can use Shopping on Instagram to sell more products and quickly grow your business using Instagram.

Related: 21 Awesome Ideas for Brands What to Post on Instagram

If you’re serious about selling on Instagram, you need to start with discovery.

For brands seeking to drive revenue and traffic through this feature, it is prudent to use your Instagram Stories, Instagram posts, email marketing, and Facebook channel to make sure your customers are aware of this feature, before you proceed further. Since the feature is pretty novel, brands would be better off cross-promoting and providing a clear set of instruction to help the customers along.

Secondly, regardless of how novel or mesmerizing your products are, If your potential customers are not able to find them online, what is the purpose of putting them out there and getting them lost in the digital labyrinth?

The discovery phase starts by finding the right hashtags for your business. You can start by researching the most popular hashtags of your competitors and ones which your audience are actively following up on. Figure out which ones are getting more attention by exploring them on Websites. You might even come up with whole new hashtags for your audience, but it’s always prudent to use ones which are trending in your industry.

Browse hashtags which tout a high success rate and a greater reach. If you find a recurring trend in the hashtags, try to leverage it in your posts for maximum reach and visibility.

Use Location Stickers

Launched all the way back in 2016, Instagram location stickers are a great way to breathe life to your Instagram stories.Whether you’re based in Malaysia, Dubai, India, or even China, you can expand your business and show-up in search results by using location stickers on Instagram. You can either share your story, your company culture from regional offices, or even the journeys of your local customers about they found your product and how it shaped their lives.

Stick to the One Color Theme

The goal of every business is to generate sales. To do so, customers need to feel comfortable and at home when buying a product from you. Shopping on Instagram requires users to leave the app to complete the purchase, including changing the interface and landing on a new window. What you can do to maintain integrity is to match your Instagram account with the landing page of the product to instill a sense of familiarity in your customers.

In this way, the user will not feel left out on your page. The familiarly of your landing page and your official account can help your users establish a deeper meaning and foster an affiliation with your brand.

Share Behind-the-Scenes Stories

It is not just about selling the product, it is about how you’re making the customer feel about it. One way to share your products to grab the attention of the users is to share the actual makings or even the hard work that goes behind each product. You can even host Q&A sessions with your customers, letting them clear any confusions or queries they might harbor pertaining to your brand. The more humanly you connect with your users, the greater there is a chance of them purchasing from you. When your users are ready to buy something from you that they can’t even try on or feel, this level of trust can help them rest at ease and take a leap of faith, knowing they are buying from a brand that truly cares.

Put your Efforts on Engaging the Users

Instagram’s 800 million active users are already using the platform to discover new brands and products – it’s high time they start purchasing those products, too.

Instagram algorithms favor posts with the most likes and comments, in a nutshell, the more engagement you’re able to create, the greater your chances of showing up more in the newsfeed of people.

To get your Instagram Shopping content seen by as many as your followers as possible, use compelling captions that inspire readers to interact with your posts. In addition, always strive to use pictures with a genuine feel. Pictures that feel overly photo-shopped lack that feeling of authenticity which plays a major role in fostering connections with your brand. Try posing questions to your followers, ask them to share thoughts or experiences, or request that they tag a friend to increase engagement. Find a style that works best for you and keep up a constant stream of creative content, at least 8-10 posts a day. In addition, you can offer up giveaways for customers and Instagram photo contests to win a gift card or free merchandise!

To Wrap it All Up

Just like Amazon Spark, Shopping on Instagram is also turning the tables for marketers. Those who are doing their business from home can use the power of Instagram Shopping to increase their sales without spending a dime on their marketing.

To predict anything in such early stages of Shopping on Instagram might be too early. So, sit back, relax, and reap as much benefit as you can before more people jump on the bandwagon and steal your limelight.