Over 1 billion people use Instagram every month, with the platform reaching over 140 million US users and 132 million in Western Europe. Furthermore, the number of users continues to grow year on year in both regions.
Instagram has become more than a social network, with 200 million users visiting at least one business profile every day. One survey shows 81% of respondents use Instagram to help research products and services.
For businesses, this means Instagram is becoming a new channel for their digital storefront. With a highly engaged audience, diverse demographics, and the opportunity to acquire loyal followers, using Instagram as a retail channel is something of a no-brainer.
This article introduces using Instagram for your online business, whether it is the right channel for you and the core benefits of the network.
Is Instagram right for your business?
Before diving into Instagram for retail, the first step is ensuring whether it is the right channel for your business. As a starting point, you should look to define your social media goals and objectives.
- For brand awareness, established platforms such as Facebook are best to achieve a broader reach.
- If you are a B2B business, LinkedIn might work best for generating leads.
- When selling a product, visual channels such as Instagram and Pinterest work well with the ability to link to your e-commerce store.
Next, you should research your target audience. For example, if your customers spend most of their time on Facebook, putting a lot of resources into developing an Instagram retail store could prove fruitless.
If you are a new business, check the demographics of the different social networks to analyze where you are most likely to find your target audience. Instagram audiences tend to be relatively young compared to Facebook or LinkedIn. That doesn’t mean you should write it off entirely if you have an older demographic, but you might need to change your content and gear it towards a younger audience.
Instagram is a mobile visual application. Businesses looking to use the channel for retail need to produce high-quality photo and video content that showcase their products in the best way possible.
If you have the right goals, a captive Instagram audience and the type of content that suits the channel, it’s right for your business.
The benefits of Instagram for retailers
There are several ways that online businesses can benefit from Instagram.
Instagram as a revenue stream
Over the last decade, Instagram has evolved to enable on-platform e-commerce sales. There is a greater emphasis on increasing revenue through product placement and building a shoppable experience for your followers. The Shop tab lets users discover and purchase from brands directly via Instagram, and you can also create shoppable posts.
With shoppable posts, businesses can add tags to products in photos with links including a product description, price and a “shop now” button taking users to your store. 72% of Instagram users report purchasing products through the social platform at least once.
Discover new audiences
Using hashtags on Instagram helps to improve the engagement and visibility of your business. Hashtags can turn into searchable links making it easy for users to find accounts with content that they might be interested in. A hashtag is like a keyword that you would typically use for content when appearing towards the top of Google search engine rankings. Having a hashtag strategy draws in new and diverse audiences while boosting brand awareness.
Hashtags like #ShareaCoke from Coca-Cola have become cornerstones of the platform and made the global brand even more recognizable to new audiences.
Instagram stories
Instagram helps businesses show potential customers that they are more than just a faceless organization. Live posts and stories can resonate with people, building trust and rapport by showcasing a brand’s human side. For example, NASA leverages space imagery and photos of gadgets they are working on to create stories that speak to science enthusiasts. To engage followers, they have an interactive element that summarizes a topic for discussion.
Influencer partnerships
Influencer marketing is a popular Instagram strategy. Influencers tend to be high-profile people that fit within your industry or niche and promote a brand or product to their followers. You can see some of the top influencers here. An influencer will already have a loyal following, and those users will be highly engaged with that person. An influencer partnership can be a faster route to market if you are a small business than trying to self-promote your brand via the platform. Look for influencers that fit your brand values and aesthetics, and reach out to see if they are available to assist.
Create a community
On Instagram, you can create your brand community. As you gain followers and engagement, you can promote contests and offers to encourage users to reshare posts and gain even more traction. Reply to comments and posts from your followers to create interactivity and show them you understand and listen to your customer base.
Instagram is free
Getting started with Instagram does not need any monetary investment. Although you need to put a lot of work into creating the right content, unlike pay-per-click advertising or large-scale promotions, you can test and learn without the risk of using up all of your budgets.
The Wrap-up
Instagram is an excellent platform for online businesses to increase online visibility and engagement with their target audience. However, before you start, it is vital that formulate a content strategy plan. Your plan should consider:
- Who is your target audience, and do they use Instagram? If so, what do they want to see on Instagram?
- What are your goals for Instagram? Are you looking to increase sales or drive brand awareness? This question will help decide the type of content you post on the platform.
- What content is your audience interested in? Are you going to create all the content or construct a user-generated content campaign?
- How often will you post content?
- Have you got the resources to create original and high-quality imagery?
- Optimize hashtags and content and measure their success to see what is working.
- How will you respond to your followers?
An Instagram strategy involves careful planning and content creation, but there is a huge opportunity to discover new audiences and engage existing customers. Platform growth continues to increase, and if you haven’t already moved your business storefront to Instagram, now is the perfect time to start.
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