Social media marketing is a good way to stand out from the competition, attract traffic, and make more sales.
That’s why new Shopify stores often invest in this marketing method instead of paying big bucks for paid advertising campaigns or SEO.
If you’re also considering using social media to market your Shopify store, Instagram should be your first choice. It’s hugely popular and has a history of generating thousands of sales for stores of all industries and niches.
In this article, we’re going to take a look at Instagram marketing. Also, we’ll give you specific marketing techniques to achieve conversions fast.
But first things first...
What is Instagram Marketing?
Instagram marketing is the process of promoting an ecommerce store on Instagram to connect with target audiences, share awareness of product offers, and drive traffic to the website.
Given the huge social reach of the platform — over a billion users — Instagram is a great platform to reach a wider audience. For many both new and growing Shopify businesses, Instagram marketing has become a way to get sales quickly.
Is Instagram Marketing Worth Your Time?
“Okay, so Instagram is popular. But has it helped folks like me to get sales?”
That’s a very good question to ask. Many Shopify business owners have the same question when planning their marketing strategies. Some choose to go with paid advertising to drive traffic to Shopify stores, but that strategy works until there’s a budget for it.
Instagram marketing can be done both organically and with ads. Besides, there are extra ways to sell with Instagram that we’re going to talk about later. But right now, let’s quickly go through the stats that answer the question we asked at the beginning of this section.
Instagram marketing stats:
- 90% of Instagram users follow a business to get updates on products and services [Instagram Business]
- 50% of users become more interested in a brand after seeing an ad for it on Instagram [Instagram Business]
- 83% of users discover new products or services on Instagram [Facebook Business]
- 81% of users often rely on Instagram to research products or services [Facebook Business]
- 80% of users say that Instagram helps them decide whether to buy a product [Facebook Business]
So, these stats suggest that Instagram is well-established as a social media platform for digital marketing and sales.
With that out of the way, let’s dive into Instagram marketing techniques.
Instagram Marketing Strategies for Shopify Businesses
If you’d like to set up your Shopify store for success with Instagram, feel free to use any of these marketing strategies. All of them have proven their effectiveness and are being used by thousands of online stores.
1. Add a Shoppable Instagram Feed to Your Homepage
This means adding your business profile’s Instagram feed to your Shopify store’s homepage, in any place you choose. Since many Instagram users discover products by checking out other people’s posts, you can make your homepage an extra place for product discovery.
It makes sense: say, a visitor finds your website and scrolls down the homepage. Seeing Instagram posts would be a good find for them because they are used to doing product research on that platform. Besides, Instagram content showcases products in action, which is another thing they might be looking for.
Adding an Instagram feed to a Shopify feed is easy breezy. As with many other things, there are plenty of apps for that.
Here’s an example of a store using such an app. As you can see, it’s a carousel of posts featuring happy customers and products in action.
2. Showcase Customer Reviews from Instagram on Product Pages
This one is a no-brainer. Customer reviews on product pages are a major trust signal, so having them there can help increase sales and improve your reputation.
Adding the reviews to Shopify is pretty easy thanks to apps like Fera. This plugin does most of the work for you: it collects reviews with automatic requests sent to customers, so you can choose where to add them to your store.
For example, you can use Fera to add reviews to product pages in many ways: star-based reviews, text-based reviews, photo reviews, and video reviews. Tip: one popular way to showcase the reviews is with a widget.
Here’s how a review widget looks like. It shows the rating and reviews featuring a customer’s name, star rating, videos, photos, and other helpful content.
3. Use Instagram Influencer Marketing
Influencers are huge in Shopify marketing, especially on social media. People are more likely to trust their recommendations than brands’, so it’s a good idea to try this Shopify marketing method to generate quick sales.
You can use influencer marketing to educate potential customers about your products and its benefits, and build a group of loyal followers in the process. To achieve this goal, though, you need to find a good influencer with an excellent reputation and a nice following (at least a few thousand real people).
Fortunately for us, Instagram apps make influencer search and communication easy. You can search the Shopify App Store for some of them (The Cross‑Store Sales Channel, for example, has 7+ million influencers to choose from) and try to find yours.
And there’s always an option to find an influencer by yourself. Perhaps there’s someone you’ve been following for some time, someone who does a good job at marketing products in a non-promotional, non-pushy way? If this rings a bell, feel free to reach out to that person.
Wrapping up: Instagram Marketing for Shopify Businesses
So, is Instagram worth your time? Should you try Instagram marketing to promote your Shopify store?
Yes to both.
Instagram is an established marketing channel with lots of success stories of businesses in many industries. Consider getting an Instagram marketing app for your store and see what it can do for you.
The three strategies we mentioned would be a decent start—so feel free to choose some and start building your business.
