10 Instagram Marketing Tips to Grow Sales

You’ve signed up to Instagram, you’ve got yourself a business page, now what? If you can relate, you aren’t alone because many aren’t sure exactly how to use Instagram to boost their sales. When it comes to e-commerce marketing and even social media marketing, we’re continually breaking new ground. If you’re feeling lost, don’t panic, we have ten tips below to get you started!

1. Utilize the Free Tools

Firstly, take some time to browse Insights because this will tell you all you need to know about your performance on Instagram. With engagement data, impressions, and demographic information for your followers, a simple look around this page will shape your marketing efforts in the months ahead. The more you understand your audience, the easier your Instagram strategy will be.

2. Be Creative

Instagram is a visual platform, so you need to make your images as compelling as possible. With dull colors and boring pictures, who will stop to look when scrolling past? With an explosion of color, people will pay attention and your post can do the rest; this is true for all e-commerce marketing.

3. Be Consistent

In recent years, we’ve seen plenty of brands have a problem with consistency, and it halts progression. While regular uploads will help, we’re also talking about the tone of voice in captions. If you’re talking in present tense and adding humor to most of your posts, a sudden change will confuse everybody. Likewise, offering a funny post after weeks of having a serious tone can be quite damaging.

Please stick to the tone of voice you use on other platforms, on your website, and in a blog, and people will know what to expect when they see your name.

4. Have Conversations

If you’re only posting sales posts and continuously trying to sell, it won’t be long before people get bored and it comes across as spam. When talking to somebody in a store, you wouldn’t continually barrage them with sales talk. No, you would have a conversation.

With Instagram, you have a brilliant opportunity to be more personable as a brand. As well as conversing on your posts, share your customers’ images and generate a positive community.  Simple pictures of customers wearing or using your product is a potent tool for those currently researching and comparing the market.

5. Always Use Hashtags

When posting, don’t forget hashtags because they make it easier to find your brand and also organize your content. Here are some hashtag-related tips;

• Three targeted hashtags are better than 21 random hashtags
• Always use relevant hashtags
• Find niche hashtags rather than general ones that get used constantly
• Create a hashtag that customers can use and share

6. Be Clever with Posting Times

‘It doesn’t matter when I post, everybody will see, right?’ – Wrong, and you could be missing out just because you’re posting at the wrong time. According to a recent poll, between 7 pm and 9 pm is the best time to post because people are home from work, they are relaxing, and they are browsing social media while waiting for dinner or bed.  However, doing your research is always better than trusting random ‘polls.’ Therefore, we recommend trying posts at different times of the day and even creating custom polls to ask when people are online. What better way to learn than directly from the audience?

7. Generate Excitement

While on Instagram, feel free to tease the audience with special events and upcoming product releases. Perhaps you have a special offer coming up on your website? As you start to tease them with snippets of information or partial product pictures, excitement will build, and your brand name will get shared around the platform.

8. Pay for Ads

As well as organic traffic, you can also pay for sponsored ads on Instagram whether you want a video, story, photo, carousel ad, or something different entirely. Paying for advertisements can be useful for all e-commerce and social media marketing.

9. Use Stories

If you’ve never used Instagram Stories, it’s mostly just like Snapchat but on this platform instead. If you haven’t used Snapchat (where have you been?), you basically post images or videos for all to see and they are available for 24 hours. With Stories, you can provide little insights into office life and, again, make the brand more personable.

10. Work with Influencers

Finally, your niche probably has an Instagram influencer with tens of thousands of followers. Therefore, partnering with them will allow you to draw attention to your brand. Since their followers listen to what they say (and what products they recommend), this can be a tremendous asset to any social media marketing strategy.