Instagram is the best social media platform that can leverage your business marketing efforts and given the highly competitive market scene of today, this has been the most favored and obvious choice for both B2B as well as B2C marketers and with huge success.
Different organizations use Instagram as a part of their social media marketing strategy by using different images, videos, live feeds, and a host of other useful features of this platform. It depends on what is working well for your specific brand and product.
Now, the question that may naturally come to your mind is whether or not Instagram the future of e-commerce. Well, when you see at some of the biggest features released by Instagram over the past 12 months, you will come to know your answer.
You will see that out of all these feature releases none is as significant as the introduction of shoppable media which is undoubtedly a product that will transform the way e-commerce brands utilize this platform while going forward with their digital marketing campaign.
There are a lot of useful reasons for it such as:
- All these useful features will save a lot of time and effort of the marketing department as well as your resources.
- Use of these features will guarantee that you deliver contents to your users that always look fresh and relevant. This is very important for both B2B brands as well as the B2C brands
If you do not just stop at the live feed, using the popularity of Instagram to expand your reach will be much easier. It will allow you to showcase your business culture as well.
Such use will ensure that you depict the human side of your organization which will you’re your message more compelling as a sales pitch and even much more than that. Using Instagram in your email marketing is a great way is a great way to:
- Get new followers
- Engage them
- Communicate your brand value to them in the discovery stage
- Encourage interaction
- Increase email sign-ups by announcing offers, giveaways and contests.
It is not only useful to integrate Instagram and email marketing but is also very interesting as well. You can take help from Instagram and email marketing experts like Gramista for that matter if you are new to it.
Release of new useful features
To provide the marketers with better marketing and user experience Instagram has come up with several useful features recently.
- The IGTV release has even made things more interesting and impressive when it comes to iterations to Stories.
- But nothing is as good and impressive as the Shoppable Post feature released by Instagram back in March. This Shoppable Postsfeature is very useful irrespective of the type of business you are in. This feature will allow your users to reach to your products within the post. It will take the user just three clicks to go from the specific post to the Add to Cart section on the website of your brand.
- Instagram then quickly followed this up with the Shoppable Stories Stickers. This is another useful feature that will allow the users to shop their favorite products directly from the Stories.
- However, the biggest feature released by Instagram to make a big impact in the world of e-commerce and email marketing is IG Shopping that came in September last year. This is the standalone shopping app of its own that Verge reported to be the best feature that e-commerce brands can use.
All these new features have made the marketing efforts of different brands easy and more productive.
Few FAQs to know
However, integrating Instagram and email marketing is still not a welcome approach to many business brands as they are apprehensive of the results. Here are some of the most commonly asked questions and its answers that will clear all your doubts, if any, and will allow you to utilize Instagram as the best available medium to scale your business.
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- How it fares: If you are a small business owner selling products online you will need to know the importance of Instagram as a marketing or sales channel. Well, the fact that it provides seamless user experience, provides ease to purchase directly from the feeds, and will provide an edge over your competitors will tell all about the usefulness of this channel. Your success will be in the long term.
- Benefits of shoppable media: Historically, Instagram allowed a single link for each account and that too in the bio to drive traffic. Shoppable media has changed all of that with the ability to tag any product image that will change the game altogether as well as transform the user journey completely to provide a much more seamless shopping experience.
- Network to use: There are several social networks available that you can use for enhancing your email marketing efforts such as Facebook, Linkedin, Pinterest, Twitter and others but the best one is Instagram.
- The steps: It is important that you keep the steps simple and create a content that is great and will be loved by your ideal audience. Include proper and relevant captions and hashtags that are truly unique will speak specifically to the customers. Make sure you research well to use the best and most optimized hashtags to gain traction. Make sure that you use four to five commonly used hashtags by your ideal customers and engage with the posts with these hashtags on a regular basis.
- Integrating shoppable posts: You must integrate a few shoppable posts once you see the community forming into your feed. Make sure that you do not saturate your feed with lots of product shots. A good percentage of shoppable post is about 20 to 30%. This will ensure that you do not lose sight of the posts that influenced those people most to follow your product in the first place.
You may be apprehensive that Instagram will eventually turn into a big call to action and will probably lose its qualities and features that made it so popular. Well, there is no reason for such fears.
About the Author: Walter Moore
Walter is a notable management consultant and digital marketing expert. He is quite experienced in the field of web marketing as well as website designing. You can visit Gramista and learn how to build more follower presence.