How to Use Your Instagram Account to Increase Sales? Useful Tips

In today’s digital world, social media platforms can provide an amazing marketing space one shouldn’t neglect. There are so many advertising opportunities to benefit from when you have a Facebook group or an Instagram account. You may inform your subscribers about new products and holiday specials or to attract new visitors with a good-looking visual content. Of course, you should choose an appropriate social network to make the most of it for your particular business. We mean that Instagram can be great only if you have a large amount of visual content to share with your subscribers. For example, this network will bring benefit to online shop owners, artists, hand-made crafters, etc. At the same time, when you have a writing company and provide your customers with non-visual products, then you should focus on another medium, like Twitter or Facebook.

However, in this post, we are going to talk about Instagram as a marketing channel. As you know, this is the most popular platform for image and photo sharing. Eye-catching content can help brand-owners and small businesses build effective communication with clients. Here are some basic (still, effective) recommendations to make your sales grow.

Post original and engaging photos

It is obvious that your images must be informative and high-quality. The products should be recognizable and well-presented. At the same time, you should do your best to make the photos original and creative. It is also important to have an overall branding style that corresponds to your products, target audience, and general business strategies. If your brand is colorful and bright, your photos should organically support it. If you are a fan of the minimalistic and discreet design, make sure to build an authentic feeling with your photos.

To put it simply, it is important to have an aesthetic vision of your product and keep up with it. Experiments are welcomed, but be consistence and try not to skip between tones. Just remember that your visual representation is important because this is the first thing your customers pay attention to.

Present your services and products in action

Original and good-looking images are great but they are not strong enough to drive sales. Marketing is something more complex, therefore you need to think about showcasing your products in the real-life experience.

For example, if you own a shop of ingredients for Asian kitchen, you may post some photos of the dishes made of these products along with recipes. Obviously, if you are selling shoes, you may post photos of people wearing these shoes. Make sure to focus on the photo-context that reveal how rational and firm the footwear is. Don’t forget about the videos, too. Putting your products in motion and demonstrating how enjoyable they are, you will encourage your potential clients to take joy in them as well.

Get paid Instagram advertisement

Investing in ads is a good way to boost your brand and get new clients. Due to the paid advertisement, you can reach the target audience that is more likely to be interested in your offers. In fact, this might be a catalyzing move for you brand since there is no other way to make distant potential aware of your existence. Today, Instagram has an advanced advertising system that allows including links to your site in the posts you make. What is more, you can add tagging and let your potential customers find you in one click.

Keep in touch with influencers

Making friends with influencers with a large audience is a great idea; especially for those who own a relatively new brand. In most cases, good influencer strategy can bring you significantly more engagement and therefore – traffic, which obviously brings better sales.

The best way to make influencers interested in promoting your product is providing them with discounts, gifts, and money prizes. As such, you may also give them promo-links to locate in their posts. Customers will follow the links and receive discounts from your shop. For example, if you have a makeup shop, you can engage beauty-influencers to take part in your marketing campaign.

What is more, influencer marketing can increase your search engine ranking. As you may know, the more people discuss your brand, the higher your ranking is. Word-of-mouth works.

At the same time, try not to overdo with this strategy. Clients don’t really like when something is sold to them too intensively. This evokes a negative feeling of insincerity. It means that even when influencers promote your product, the advertisement should be less selling and more attractive/interesting. Make sure to:

• Inform your audience about your products
• Express a particular message
• Follow your overall marketing strategy
• Engage with the audience in a natural and sincere way

Also, choose influencers that fit your brand. It means that influencers’ lifestyle and content should coincide with your products and services.

User-generated content is awesome

As we have already mentioned, word-of-mouth is one of the best marketing moves. As such, user-generated content is another version of word-of-mouth ads. To improve your product promotion, customers may create content to demonstrate how they enjoy the goods they have bought from you. This way, their friends and relatives will see the content and chances are that you will get new subscribers and clients.

At the same time, it is not that easy as it seems. Most of your customers won’t do that without your encouragement. To do so, you may give them a reward in a form of a discount, freebie, or anything like that. You can even arrange a prize drawing. Don’t forget to ask them to include a hashtag of your brand in a promotional post and this way you will easily track the progress.

Humor and fun

One of the most engaging things in the world is humor. Be witty and don’t be shy to implement relevant jokes to your Instagram posts. This will engage your audience and improve the way they perceive your service. Positive brand perception is crucial for efficient marketing.

Just make sure that your jokes are relevant to your brand and your audience will understand them.

Provide your audience with gifts and discounts

People like freebies. As for you, you should never ignore this extremely efficient way to increase your sales and promote your products. Also, remember that your happy customers will share their impression about your service with their friends and they might become interested in your offers. This way, your engagement rate will grow.

Discounts and freebies work as some kind of natural attractor and motivate your clients to get more of your products. If your products and services are really great and you are lavish for pleasant gifts, your clients will love your service for sure and tell their friends about you. Loyal customers should receive special discounts, membership or anything else that will show your personal relation and gratitude to them.

As you see, influencers, discounts, and user-generated content are the best strategies to engage fans with your visual content. Of course, you should also take care to make this content really impressive. Instagram has a large audience and therefore your brand can find a place under the sun in this extremely popular digital space. People are more likely to purchase goods if something makes a strong impression on them and photo-content is a perfect instrument to evoke interest. Use the tips listed above to increase your sales and good luck!

About the author:
Jennifer Pauli graduated from Corvinus School of Management and finished the faculty of Journalism at Corvinus University of Budapest. Currently, He is an editor, business writer, and copywriter, working with well-known companies, blogs, and personalities. Follow her on Twitter, G+ and read the personal blog