How to Use Instagram To Increase Your Sales

Instagram is one of the fastest growing social networks for mobile business sales. This is precisely why Facebook made the wise investment of purchasing the platform in 2012 from founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, for $1 billion just 18 months after it had launched. Since that time there have been quite a few changes and updates in order to make this more appealing to users and lucrative for business owners and brands.

While people come to Facebook to connect with friends and discover things from people they know, people turn to Instagram for visual inspiration and to explore the world through imagery, giving businesses the opportunity to connect with people in an environment where they’re open to learning about new things.

By taking advantage of both Facebook and Instagram you can double your exposure and improve conversions with the potential to be seen by a growing number of mobile users who search and makes purchases from their devices.
According to Adweek, “Instagram provides access to a very large, very engaged audience. “The fact that you can use the same rich Facebook targeting criteria on Instagram will make it massively effective for advertisers looking to get their products or services in front of exactly the right people at the right time.”
If your business is new to mobile sales, then you can should take a look at these statistics from OuterBox:

• 62% of people made a purchase using their mobile device in the last 6 months
• 10% of eCommerce retail value comes from mobile
• 80% of people will use their mobile device to find information on a product or service rather than visiting a store

These are impressive numbers and places Instagram with over 800 million active users in the middle of this mobile growth trend. In 2016 their free business accounts were launched, which allows prospects to find your website more easily, contact you, and sell your products.
Here are a few steps you can take in order to be successful:

Create a sponsored post

In the mix of your existing posts you can promote your business directly from Facebook Ads Manager or inside your Instagram account. These looks like other posts, however; they are labeled as a sponsored post instead, which is similar to what you can also do on Pinterest. This is always evolving as the mobile platform adds more features such as the use of targeted hashtags, enhanced photo filters, audience targeting, ect. Pew Research reports that half of users visit the platform each day, which makes your content highly visible with strong engagement opportunities with your community.

Promote other products with affiliate links

It used to be that blogs would be able to generate a good income by mentioning other brand products or services. While these still have their place there is even more potential to increase sales right from your profile. In order to be successful you should have a niche that is relevant to what you are posting about, include the right hashtags, and include geo-location of where someone can find what you are mentioning. Here’s a great example of this from travel writer, Ann Tran:

Sell your own product or service

This can be a consulting business, counseling, a physical or digital product, eBook – just about anything you sell from your website can be sold right from Instagram. If you have created a sales page specifically for these be sure to include this in your profile as well as in the comments section. For business accounts users can make a purchase with their shoppable posts feature where users can see a price just by hovering over something on an image (available in limited release) or by offering a clear call to action in an image.

Work with influencers

Once you have established a credible brand this provides an opportunity to tag and promote other leaders in your industry. For a nominal fee you can create content that drives visitors to their profiles and helps generate more publicity for what they are offering. Typically you can charge anywhere from $200 up to $400 depending on your number of followers, engagement, the type of influencer, ect.
As Instagram continues to expand its platform brands and businesses can benefit from additional selling features, which will not only increase exposure beyond Facebook, but allow campaigns to become more profitable. Your content is available to thousands of desktop and mobile users, which also provides an increase in traffic to your website or sales page.