Is Instagram the right platform for e-commerce marketing and sales?

According to Omnicoreagency, 71% of US businesses use Instagram as a sales and marketing platform. Instagram has become a popular tool for business marketing. More than that, Instagram seems to be moving its way to becoming an e-commerce-friendly platform with some features that let you create price tags on products and calls to action on Instagram stories.

When it started to offer the shopping feature — called “Checkout,” which allows users to shop directly from the app — in 2019, Instagram became more famous among business owners.

According to Investopedia, 72% of users on Instagram are teenagers, and they love to shop and get promotions from Instagram. Therefore, if your e-commerce business’s target customers are teenagers, you will likely get more revenue through Instagram.

How to promote and sell products on Instagram?

Before setting up shopping and checkout features for your business, you will need to make sure you have signed up for an Instagram business account and linked it with your Facebook business account.

To start uploading your products, you will have to confirm that your business can use Instagram Shopping by answering all their questions.

After uploading your product photos, you will have an option to add price tags to an image linked to your product. Your product post with tags will look like this on Instagram:

Customers will have an option to either click on “View Products” to see all products you have tagged on the photo or click on an individual product they want to buy.

For example, if they choose the crop top, the page will prompt them to the crop top product screen.

After choosing the size in stock, they can add the product to the shopping cart and continue shopping.

When the customer finished shopping, they can either click on the shopping cart icon on the top right of the screen or click on the “View item(s) in Cart” button to proceed to checkout.

At checkout, customers will fill out the payment method and shipping information to complete their purchase.

The shopping experience on Instagram will be faster and more convenient than being transferred to another page.

For step-by-step installation, you can follow instructions on the Instagram website.

Written by Thao Nguyen, Social Media Content Manager

After 10 years working in the hospitality industry, mostly as a sales and marketing representative, Thao made a major change this year to become a social media content manager at Madwire®. Moving from Saigon, Vietnam three years ago, she quickly adapted to American culture and lifestyle. She enjoys her new job every day with her teammates in the social media department. Besides work, Thao loves traveling, listening to music, cycling, yoga, and hanging out with her family, friends and her furry friends.