How E-Commerce Brands Can Use Instagram Shop to Increase Sales?

Imagine you have a local store in your small town and are making good profits. Over time, you want to increase sales and attract new customers. You might have multiple ideas popping up in your head. 

Although there are multiple ways to increase your sales like setting up billboards or running ads on local television, the feasible option would be to set up a stall in a market and attract new customers. 

Why do you think it works?

Because you’re meeting people halfway—where they’re already hanging out!

And the same rule applies to running and attracting customers to your e-commerce brand as well. 

You can meet them halfway, where they already are. 

But before we jump into the “Hows” and “Whys” of this, let me tell you—YES!

The 2022 social commerce insights reports by Sprout Social confirm that the audience on social platforms does become the customers of an e-commerce brand. 

Let’s see how you can make them your paying customer as well. 

Leveraging the true potential of social commerce begins with figuring out:

• Your target audience 
• Channels that your target audience hangs out

You can do extensive market research or analyze the data from customer insights as well. 

Here are the top five social commerce platforms as Shopify lists out:

• Instagram
• Facebook
• Pinterest
• Snapchat
• TikTok

As the list points out, let’s dive deep into how you can leverage Instagram as the top social commerce platform for your business.

The first and most important thing to nail Instagram as a social commerce channel is to tell Instagram that you’re a business and you’re here to run your business.

This step is crucial because Instagram also pushes business accounts to its relevant audience’s feeds.

You can either convert your current creator’s account into a business account or create a new one. 

In the following steps, you can add necessary information like business category, email address, contact number and the mode of communication to be displayed on the bio. 

Then, make sure to tick off the Display Contact Info checkbox to have the contact buttons displayed on your profile—when the audience logs in using the mobile app.

Getting approved for owning the Instagram Shops is a tedious process and there are multiple checkboxes you need to tick off. 

Instagram answers a few of them here:

• Comply with Meta’s policies for owning the commerce manager
• Your product listings need to be verified as well
• Your Instagram Shop account should belong to the supported market (As of 2023, Instagram Shops are available only in the United States)
• The Instagram account should have a sufficient follower base, without any additions of engagement/follower bots

There is more to it. Even if you’re from countries outside Instagram-supported markets, you can still become the “Managed Clients” if you pass the above-mentioned criteria. 

Instagram—like any other social media platform, has a mixed set of audiences. There are doom-scrollers, meme junkies, stalking experts, motivational experts and so many more. And like a diamond in the rough, your ideal target audience is also one among them. 

You need to find the ICP (Ideal Target Persona) for your business and:

• Figure out when they hangout on Instagram
• Types of influencers they follow
• Your competitors' accounts they follow

Good To Know: One of the easy ways to understand your target audience is by digging into the comments section of your competitor or related influencers in your field. 

This mimics the Review Mining concept of Joanna Wiebe because it works. 

To catch the attention of your target audience, you need to know the steps involved from the target audience seeing your post to making a purchase decision.

Once you set up the Instagram Shop, your posts with the Shoppable Tags will look something like this on your audience’s feed:

It can be a single static post or a carousel. The View Shop CTA—which actually looks like a Sponsored Post will take the user to the catalogue that you’ve integrated from your commerce manager to the Instagram Shop. The catalogue will look something like this:

The catalogue on Instagram Shops resembles mobile shopping on any e-commerce store. Once the user clicks the View Product CTA, the product page opens and looks something like this:

Based on the user’s location, the pricing shown in the shop differs. Also, the user can either pay on the Instagram Shop itself or on the DMs. 

Let’s jump to the next section of the blog, where we discuss some kickass tools that you should consider using if you want to up your Instagram or Social commerce game.

Jasper is one of the leading Product Information Management (PIM) tools in the market currently. Such PIM tools act as the storefront and offer the necessary information that your customers need.

By using such PIM tools, you can keep the unified data of the inventory, track the live updates of the products on the website, and so on. 

It not only has data on incoming and outgoing inventory but also helps with strategic pricing of the products based on the target market location and preferences. 

Who is it for?

Irrespective of the size of the business, any e-commerce business owner can use a PIM tool.

Social commerce is all about attracting the audience and converting them into buyers within the social media platform itself. So, investing in a holistic social media management tool would save money and time for you, your business, and your team.

As an e-commerce business owner or a social media manager for e-commerce brands, you’d know how important it is to create thumb-stopping graphics for the Instagram feed. However, batch-creating the graphics and keeping a track of the post schedule is a bit tedious—gets out of hand.

That’s why we released Picmaker Social from the House of Animaker which combines both sections! 

It’s a DIY design tool

You can design Instagram posts that accentuate the products and attract the audience’s attention.

It’s a Social Media Management tool

We did not just stop with designs. Instead, on PicmakerSocial, you can:

• Generate content ideas
• Schedule posts and campaigns
• Get access to 1000+ assets in the content library
• Multi-brand kit for people who handle more than one brand
• Social listening to keep an eye and two on what’s happening in your industry

And so much more.

Who is it for?

One-person social media teams, solo e-commerce business owner.

You need not complicate the social commerce business to make money. A simple toolkit and versatility for the rapidly growing market is the most important step.