Hey, it’s Wes from Printful!
Marketing your e-commerce store can get overwhelming - you want to be everywhere at once, but sometimes
you just don’t have the time to keep up three or more different channels.
So, if you don’t know where to begin, concentrate on one, make it great and then you can add
other channels later.
Right now Instagram is the platform where brands of all sizes can easily connect with
their current and potential customers.
Many of our clients have made their sales because of how successful their Instagram
accounts were.
Because the t-shirt and apparel industry is so visually based, Instagram has been my number
one marketing tactic or sales tool.
I’ve dabbled with Facebook ads, email marketing, but Instagram has given me the most return
on investment.
If you stay until the end of this video, you’ll learn five easy and important steps that will
set you up with a pro-Instagram account for selling products.
Before we begin, make sure you subscribe to our channel and tap on the little bell icon
to get notified about our latest videos and never miss out on new ways to make your store
more successful.
STEP ONE: SET UP INSTAGRAM BUSINESS First, it’s not enough to have an Instagram
account - you also need to get serious about what and how you post.
Setting up Instagram Business will help you manage your work - it will show you the best
upload times and other important statistics, like who your audience is and what are your
top-performing posts.
You will also get a lot of extra options for posting - like tagging your products and scheduling
and auto-publishing posts with apps like Later or Planoly.
You can switch to Instagram Business on your mobile device - under your profile settings,
go to “Account” and choose “Switch to Business Account”
Instagram is going to ask you to connect Your Facebook page.
We recommend creating one even if you don’t plan on posting on it regularly.
You’ll need to have a Facebook page in order to make your posts shoppable - we’ll talk
more about that later.
If you don’t have the time to keep up with both a Facebook and Instagram page, you can
either make the Facebook page secret after you have connected it to your Instagram profile,
or you can plan all of your Instagram posts to go to Facebook automatically, so you will
have fresh content on there without any extra effort.
If you don’t connect a Facebook page, Facebook will create one for you and you will have
the ability to claim it and add information later.
You can find a link to a detailed step-by-step tutorial on switching to Instagram Business
in the description below.
STEP TWO: MAKE YOUR INSTAGRAM PROFILE YOUR SECOND HOME PAGE
Now, if there ever was a platform where your profile needs to look good, it’s Instagram.
Let’s start with your name.
While it is important to put your store name on here, you can also add your top keywords,
as this part is searchable on Instagram.
Next, your website.
It is crucial that you put a link to your store here, so that people can actually go
to it to buy your products.
But you can also use this space to direct your followers to specific products or other
places you want them to see.
We’ll talk about this again later, so keep this in mind.
And then, your bio.
Be clear about what exactly it is that you are doing - so that your followers don’t
have any questions about what kind of a profile this is.
Next, use this opportunity to add a unique brand hashtag your customers can use to show
off your products.
Before you add it to your profile, though, post some pictures with it or ask your customers
or friends to post some for you, as you don’t want it to be empty when people click on it.
You can also tag your personal profile in the bio, giving the business a bit more personality
and you can use emojis to spice up your bio.
It’s not possible to start a sentence in a new line on Instagram, but for that, you
can prepare the text somewhere else and copy it in this field when you’re done.
When your profile is filled in, you can move on to the content.
It’s very important to post regularly.
You can post to keep your customers up to date on any new product releases or other
announcements, find new ways to showcase your products, and create variations for your mockups
that will appeal to different customers.
Ideally, you should post a photo a day if you can.
If you feel like you don’t have the time for that, with Instagram Business you can
use third-party apps like Later or Planoly to schedule your posts for the whole week.
You can also plan your feed there and make sure that it will all fit together nicely.
You can find the links to all of the resources in this video in the description below.
If you don’t want to take the pictures yourself, you can use Printful’s mockup generator
for your product photos for free, or subscribe to Placeit or a similar service.
Next, it’s important to work on your captions.
Engage with your audience when you can, ask questions and answer any comments they make.
Add relevant hashtags to your posts - you can use a service like Display Purposes to
give you the most popular tags, similar to the ones you already have in mind.
You should try to use a mix of popular and less popular hashtags - that way you will
get a big audience with the popular tags and also have a greater chance to appear on the
top of the less popular ones.
If you are using a lot of hashtags, try putting them in a comment, and start the comment with
five dots, each on their own line.
Instagram will collapse the comment, showing only an ellipsis, giving your post a cleaner
look.
STEP THREE: MAKE YOUR POSTS SHOPPABLE You have probably seen posts like these on
Instagram all the time.
The good news is, with an Instagram business account, you can join the fun!
All Instagram Business account owners can tag up to five products per image, or up to
twenty products per carousel to display product names, short descriptions, and prices.
If a follower clicks on the product in the picture, they’re automatically directed
to your shop for more details.
Instagram Stories can feature one product sticker per story as well.
Now, one of the easiest ways to make product tagging available, is connecting your Instagram
business profile to a Facebook page catalog.
There is a link in the description to a step-by-step tutorial on how to create a catalog.
During the process you will be offered two options - adding new products from your store
manually or connecting your account to e-commerce platforms where you have set up your shop
like WooCommerce, Shopify or BigCommerce, automating the whole process.
Choose whatever makes more sense for you.
Once your products are added on Facebook, your account will be reviewed.
This will happen automatically, but it can take a couple of days for the “Shopping”
option to appear on your Instagram business account.
When it does appear, your last step is to enable it on Instagram and then connect the
catalog.
Link to the tutorial in the description.
Now, when you add new posts, you will see the option to tag products here.
Choose what you want to tag, add an engaging description and you're done!
You can now see all of your products in the “Shop” tab on your profile as well.
Note that products tags don't show up on Instagram desktop, so you still need to send people
to shop on your website as a backup.
STEP FOUR: INTERACT WITH YOUR CUSTOMERS WITH INSTAGRAM STORIES
While your Instagram feed is all about consistency, Stories are less permanent - they disappear
after 24 hours and give you a great opportunity to play around and engage with your audience
without spamming the feed.
In addition to being able to tag your products, you can add poll stickers, ask and answer
questions and showcase your latest products live.
You can also test some of your designs and ask people to vote for the ones they’d like
to see on your store.
Use this opportunity to really connect with your customers and show them the person behind
the brand.
Stories are the best place for a call to action - and while the “Swipe up” link option
is only available to accounts with more than 10 000 followers, you can always direct your
followers to the link in your bio.
Don't change it up too much, as it should always link to your store if anyone is visiting
your profile and want to see what's up, but you can link to a specific product category
or blog post.
If your Story happens to be a great success, you can always make it permanent by saving
it to your profile Highlights.
Keep them organized and give them easy to understand titles and you are good to go!
STEP FIVE: USE USER GENERATED CONTENT Finally, user-generated content is a big part
of marketing for many brands.
It gives social proof to your brand, which is one of the main motivators for customers
to buy your products, because it makes the brand more trustworthy.
Using user-generated content puts customers in the center, and lets them tell your story.
Plus, it’s free!
One way to encourage your customers to post photos of your products is to promote the
use of that unique brand hashtag in your bio.
You can offer a discount for the next product they buy if they post their review on Instagram,
but ask them to be transparent with their followers if they do so.
This also gives you a lot of new content to post on your own profile, which is great if
you are struggling to think of original posts.
The rule is - you should always ask permission before regramming posts on Instagram.
Once you have the green light from the author, you can download the photo and post it on
your profile or use a third-party app like Repost for Instagram to regram the post.
Always give credit to the original author - it makes you look more trustworthy and creates
a positive relationship between you and your customers.
Everyone likes to be seen, and this is a win-win for both you and your Instagram followers.
And it doesn’t need to be just around your products.
If your brand is connected to a more general idea or trend, like fatherhood, for example,
you can engage with people on any topics related to that.
People submit a lot of photos of their dads, and people tag their dads and send us video
content of their dads.
We are very grateful and appreciate all of the good content we get.
We hope to embrace our fans more and grow the community more.
Ask your followers to share their stories and show support for their struggles, celebrate
their successes.
Create a community.
It can help you grow and reach a wider audience, not just your customers, giving your brand
more exposure, plus your engagement rates will be over the roof.
And that’s all five!
You can find a checklist of all five steps and the resources we mentioned to help you
along the way in the description below.
What else would you like to know about selling on Instagram?
Post in the comments bellow to get some more tips!