5 Ways To Use Instagram To Drive Sales
Instagram is more powerful than ever before, boasting over 800 million users monthly. With such a large influence, the platform has the potential to effectively increase your sales if done correctly. Here are five ways in which you can make the most out of it.
A BEAUTIFUL INSTAGRAM FEED
While it may seem obvious, having an aesthetically pleasing Instagram feed can have a strong impact on your engagement and following which again can help you drive sales. Your Instagram feed should be consistent and reflect your brand's signature style (your brand colours etc) so that you're easily recognisable.
Image credit: @jodepankhurst
KEEP YOUR CUSTOMER'S LIFESTYLE IN MIND
Following on from your feed being visually pleasing, think about what other content you can post alongside your own imagery. By keeping a healthy balance of your own imagery and sourced imagery (this can be images found on Pinterest or reposting from other Instagram accounts), you'll be able to promote a lifestyle likely to appeal to your target customers. By doing this, you are showing your audience how your brand fits in with their lifestyle (where they eat, where they shop, what they get up to over the weekend etc), which ends up being a less forceful and 'salesy' strategy than constant product photos.
BE ACTIVE ON INSTAGRAM STORIES
Instagram Stories can be very impactful as you're able to reach a wide audience, show personality, humanise your brand and form a more personal connection with your customers. Whether you use polls, answer questions from your customers or take your audience behind the scenes, Stories can be as interactive as you'd like them to be. With the ever-changing algorithm, Stories also gives you the opportunity to direct your audience to content you’ve already posted and that your audience might have missed.
Image credit: Pinterest
REACH OUT TO INFLUENCERS (WHEN YOU'RE READY)
Influencer marketing can be an incredibly valuable asset for your brand. Nowadays we want to hear what people have to say and we turn to influencers to discover new brands and products. If an influencer posts about your product, you'll be able to reach a wider audience and potentially attract new customers. Even if they end up just following you on Instagram or signing up to your newsletter you'll be able to engage with them and target them with compelling and consistent marketing and content which can eventually persuade them to make that all-important purchase. When deciding which influencers you would like to approach it is important to have a close look at their audience and content and make sure it aligns with your audience and your brand values.
USER-GENERATED CONTENT
Your customers posting about your brand on Instagram can also be a great way to raise awareness and eventually sales. While your customers' following may not be as big as your targeted influencers, their followers will often be similar to them which again means that they are likely to be interested in your brand too. One way to prompt this is by creating a specific hashtag for your brand and encourage your audience to share photos featuring your product. Having a hashtag makes it easier for you to keep track of followers posting relevant product photos using the same hashtag. KITRI Studio for example use the hashtag #KITRIgirls and includes this in their Instagram bio. They also occasionally round up some of the tagged photos on their Instagram stories which makes their customers feel special while simultaneously boosting their brand credibility.
Image credit: @kitristudio
