The Power of Instagram Selling: A Comprehensive Business Guide

Instagram selling is a promotion upheld online help that has existed beginning around 2010 and has been important for Facebook beginning around 2012. As per its data, the stage at present has around 1 billion clients around the world. The organization has subsequently found Facebook, Facebook Courier, WhatsApp, and Twitter in online entertainment promoting for organizations.

Users can post texts, photos, and videos and communicate with one another. Originally a pure picture service, the popular social media platform with Instagram Shopping is increasingly developing into a platform for sales that should be taken seriously. Reason enough to take a closer look at why you should sell on Instagram. Turning followers into customers is easier than you think.

Why is it worth Instagram Selling?

Blogger and marketing expert Jan Firsching checked out the latest figures published by Instagram. According to this, the online platform in Germany has around 15 million users. For January 2019, the company has a potential reach of 18 million people. 80 percent of Instagram users follow at least one company.

The length of stay of individual users has also increased: Whereas in 2014 it was 7.3 minutes a day, today users under the age of 25 spend 32 minutes a day on Instagram, and users over 25 looks around there for 24 minutes every day.

There are 25 million company profiles worldwide that are accessed by 200 million people every day. In 2017 it was 15 million. That makes Instagram selling on the platform interesting. And indeed, a separate ecosystem of providers has formed here, with companies now increasingly taking the place of Instagram personalities from the very beginning. Instagram itself is working to create the most beneficial environment possible for these commercial actors.

Instagram Selling ​​through shoppable posts

Since 2016, users have been able to create a business account: They can use various data services, place advertisements, and set up contact channels. In the meantime, a customer can also buy products directly on the image platform. This option has been available to users since mid-March 2018. The so-called shoppable posts have meanwhile turned the online platform into a marketplace that businesses and small and medium-sized businesses, in particular, can use as an additional sales channel.

Since the service has made shoppable posts possible, around 90 million users tap on these posts per month to find out about the prices of the products shown. With another click, the customer goes directly to the Instagram shopping of the respective provider and the desired product. The shoppable posts allow the entire buying process, from the first interest to the sale, to be handled via Instagram.

From a business perspective, marketing and sales become a single tool. A customer experiences a low-threshold offer and could make a quick and spontaneous decision

The shopping function is easy to install and create for companies or individual traders. Nonetheless, it is presently just accessible for portable use in the Instagram account; The capability isn’t yet coordinated into the Instagram application for work area gadgets. Moreover, its utilization is as of now restricted to a couple of nations in the created world.

Set up and use shoppable posts

To involve shoppable posts for Instagram Selling, you first need a business account and the most recent rendition of the Instagram application. Likewise, the record should be overseen by Germany, Australia, Brazil, France, Incredible England, Italy, Spain, or the USA. Sell ​​physical products, not services. New products must meet the requirements of the Facebook and Instagram trading guidelines.

• The business profile must be linked to a Facebook catalog. This can be done on the one hand via the Facebook Business Manager. To do this, select “Data Sources” and then “Catalogs” in the company settings. Here you have the option of selecting a new or an existing catalog. You can also give access rights to persons or partners such as marketing agencies. Then again, you can utilize a web-based business stage like Shopify or BigCommerce. Before you can interface the item list, Instagram needs to check the record after the establishment, which can take anywhere from a couple of hours to a couple of days.
• Building the shoppable posts, on the other hand, is uncomplicated. You select a photo and edit it for publication. In the photo you can now mark products in the same way as you would otherwise do with people – you look for the product name and insert it. You can also subsequently mark products in images that have already been published. The service allows up to five products per image. If you post a carousel of pictures, you can offer up to 20 products. With the hashtags used, you should make sure that they fit the brand and the audience. A retailer who wants to sell nationally or internationally does not need to use location-based hashtags.

However, not everything can necessarily be sold and earned when shopping on Instagram. Products from the areas of fashion, wellness, and nutrition dominate. There are also many artists here who present their portfolios of photos, images, or digital art. Many well-known brands are now also present on the platform.

The type of sale is more typical of the social network itself. The personal charisma of the provider plays a major role here. Anyone who presents their products here must appear authentic to the rather young users and be suitable as a figure of identification. Accordingly, influencers play an essential role in the marketing of products via the network.

Example: influencer Sarah Harrison

One of the most successful German influencers is Sarah Harrison with around 2.7 million followers. She successfully advertises products from the fashion and wellness sector while at the same time presenting herself as a supporter of a more traditional model of life with a child and a husband. Harrison advertises shower gel, protein powder, sweatpants, watches, orange juice, and shampoo. In addition to the Instagram stories, she also produces YouTube videos.

How effectively Harrison is marketing its social media presence is shown in the ranking of the best Instagram advertising posts by the industry magazine horizont.net. Since December 2017, she has always achieved one of the top three places, often even first place, with at least one or more posts. In addition, she has more interactions with her followers, i.e. likes, shares, or comments, than other channels with similar follower numbers.

Case Studies: What Sells Best on Instagram

Companies are also successful with Instagram selling. Companies such as the US fashion brand Fashion Nova, the Swedish watch label Daniel Wellington or the US online fashion retailer Revolve owe their growth mainly to their e-commerce presence on the social network. German companies are now following in their footsteps.

Paul Valentine from Mannheim currently has 414,000 followers and uses the shop as a sales channel for bags and jewelry, but also for watches, which are among the company’s best-selling products. Established brands have significantly more followers, but Paul Valentine’s following is also growing rapidly. At the end of last year, the company reached 19th place in the ranking of the fastest-growing Instagram appearances.

Paul Valentine was founded in 2015 by the siblings Marlene and Paul Franzreb, who also market fashion jewelry through the Faye Jewelry brand. The two attribute their follower growth primarily to influencer marketing. The two are also present on the popular social media app and communicate with their followers there.

Kreutzers is another success story in Instagram Selling.

The online shop for gourmet meat was founded in 2014. The range includes pork and lamb, poultry, but also dry-aged beef and Wagyu beef. The founders Manuel Ostner, Nicolas Stark and the Regensburg restaurateur Matthias Kreutzer use Instagram to publicize their products and to promote trust in the brand. Ostner started cooking twice a week for the community on the channel a year and a half ago.

He also films and photographs his products himself. This creates stylish product photos that contribute to the growth of the community and the success of the brand – the number of followers has grown by 633 percent according to the online marketing magazine OMR.

Conclusion: create a shop, post products, and start Instagram Selling!

Especially small and medium-sized companies that are active in the named product areas should not miss the chance of new customers and selling their products on Instagram. Once an Instagram account has been set up with a shop, there is no extra work to reach potential customers through a post with a shopping function. You can find more tips on the platform here on the blog; for example, how to link your own Instagram profile to a Facebook page.