6 Ways to Generate Sales via Instagram

1. Be Where Your Audience Is

The first rule of social media marketing is to use the platforms that your audience uses. You can’t just sign up for Instagram and expect to find your target B2B customers there.

First, look at your target demographic and try to find out where they’re most active. You can choose to be everywhere, but that might be a bit too time-consuming.

If you’re targeting a B2B audience, LinkedIn may be a good starting point, along with Facebook, because each one has a massive user base. The 18-29 age group dominates all of the popular social media platforms, including LinkedIn. You can also choose a popular hashtag that your competitors use for their campaigns.

2. Work with Social Media Influencers

You’ve heard of influencer marketing, and are wondering what all the hype is about. Influencer marketing is such a popular marketing tool because it works. 40% of social media users felt compelled to make a purchase after seeing an influencer’s post.

The amount of trust people place in influencers is comparable to the trust placed in their friends. This simply goes to show that promoting your brand and products through social media influencers is very likely to drive sales, and has been shown to deliver ROI as high as 600% in some cases.

If you want to make more sales through social media, you need to utilize the power of social media influencers. Get them to strategically feature your product in their photos or videos, or have them tell a unique and engaging story about your brand. You can also work with influencers who will give honest reviews about your product, and/or provide tutorials and how-to content regarding your product. The opportunities are endless, but if you want to drive sales, an effective way to do so is to have your influencers promote unique discount codes.

3. Turn Loyal Customers into Brand Advocates

If you want to promote your products using real people, you don’t necessarily have to always rely on influencers. Your existing customers can become effective brand advocates if you can entice them to promote your products in exchange for freebies and discounts. Conducting keyword and hashtag searches related to your brand or product name on social media will help you find people who are already posting content about your brand.

4. Share User-Generated Content

Before buying something online, consumers tend to read several reviews to make sure the brand and product are trustworthy. These types of reviews ease the anxiety about buying from a brand that a customer barely knows, or about investing in a product they’re not familiar with.

When these reviews are the opinions and experiences of other consumers just like themselves, then they feel a kind of honesty that they can connect with. When it comes to social media marketing, you need to make the most out of the content created by other consumers to drive more sales.

5. Create Valuable Content to Educate and Entice Your Audience

Social media is an excellent platform for brands to provide bite-sized, yet valuable content to their audience. This content should be engaging to your audience, and compelling enough to entice them into making a purchase. In addition to promoting your blog posts on social media, you can also create bite-sized informational content that will provide value to your social media audience.

Ideally, you should provide guides and how-to content. The goal is to provide customers with the kind of information that will entice them to try your product. Similarly, you can provide useful tips on how to use your products in combination with other things.

Making use of this kind of “informational” content gives your product a broader context, and it give potential customers ideas about how to use it. As a bonus, this kind of content provides your target consumers with more reasons to consider buying your product, which can lead to more conversions.

6. Invest in Social Media Advertising

Social media platforms have millions of users. Even when you’ve found the perfect social media platform to engage your target audience, your marketing efforts may not be effective if none of them have heard of you before. You can make sure that they take notice of your brand by investing in social media advertising.

Every social media platform has an option to either create ads or promote your content. This will ensure higher visibility for your brand among a relevant target audience. Increased visibility will further improve your chances of driving sales from social media.