With over 700 million monthly active users that consists of world-class brands, celebrities and everyday people around the world, one may conclude that Instagram is arguably the most popular social network in the world today. The success of Instagram can be attributed to a focus on visual content; over 95 million pictures and videos are posted on Instagram every single day.
The paradigm change to visual content may be one of the factors that attract top brands to create a presence on Instagram and helps them make sales and acquire an additive and active fan base around the world.
Of course, Instagram does drive sales. It goes beyond a social media for young fellows to share their interests; it transforms into whatever you optimize it to do. For businesses and brands, it can become a showroom, an online store, a catalog or a business lead acquisition platform. Instagram can be used to influence buyer behavior and drive sales actively or passively. However, making purchases through Instagram takes more than merely opening an account and posting random pictures, it required some strategy.
The Visuals
One of the critical factors that can transform an Instagram account to a sales machine is the visual content. It is essential to create an excellent visual content because this is the primary purpose of this social media platform in the first place, it will make people follow you and increase your account engagements. Moreover, if you are a creative freelancer or a brand, the visual content that you publish must indicate that you have a service to offer or a product to sell.
IKEA is a good example, the company displays their furniture products vividly and features posts from existing customers which serves as a live catalog and inspire other people to make a purchase. Moreover, you can see comments and tags on such posts which drives more engagement. The crux is that more people will look at the post and eventually sees your offer. You should use a combined strategy comprising of your original posts, user-generated content, giveaways, and contests.
The Sales Pitch
The primary purpose of your endeavors is to drive sales, so you need more than a visual account, you have to promote your products by writing content that inspires the viewer to make a purchase. It is not enough to have an excellent feed with fantastic content; you need to learn how to pitch sales. Some of the following elements will help you develop a successful sales pitch on Instagram.
Create Engagement: If you are creating fantastic content already, then half of the work is done. Instagram users love aesthetically appealing and peculiar material. Use this strategy for your brand, and you will attract followers like a swarm of bees.
Promote your Brand: Leverage your existing followers to promote the value and authenticity of your brand. Create contests among your followers and reposts the content that features your happy customers. This strategy will increase trust for your brand and consequently foster sales.
Write a Call to Action: The sales strategy on Instagram will focus on attracting the viewer to purchase by posting relevant links in your profile, and adding links to your Instagram Stories. Anchor your captions to a call to action in another post or a sales pitch. Aggressive sales techniques do not work on Instagram; it requires a subtle strategy of building trust and driving engagements and love for your brand.
Paid promotion
The paid promotion is a more aggressive strategy in contrast to building trust and relationship on Instagram. I recommend you only use this method to drive traffic to your website. Besides placing ads on Instagram, Influencer marketing is another strategy you can use to increase sales provided you choose an influencer who has access to the right audience. Moreover, you can own a Instagram page in the niche of your business with decent number of followers thought platforms such as Social tradia from the influencers that would like to sell their pages.
In all, your success in using Instagram depends heavily on your ability to attract, engage and win the love and trust of your followers.