How Ecommerce Brands use Instagram to Increase Sales

Instagram matters to marketers and businesses! Whether you are a growing ecommerce business or a giant, there is no way you would not share a single post related to your brand or offerings on Instagram.

Well, that is a very basic way to promote your ecommerce business online. Undoubtedly, you can do it a lot better and get desired results out of your marketing efforts on Instagram!

There are more than one billion monthly active users on Instagram, who spend about 30 minutes every day on an average browsing through their feed and researching about products they need.

Over 50% of Instagram users follow at least one brand account. And about 130 million people tap on shopping related posts on Instagram every month.

These insights give enough motivation to ecommerce marketers to showcase their brands on Instagram (via timeline updates and ads), and convince their audience to shop.

Not sure how to get started? This blog talks about some of the fast growing ecommerce businesses that are making an influential use of Instagram to boost their sales. Take inspiration from these examples to build your own content and marketing strategy and make the most of this platform:

Coconut Bowls –

Coconut Bowls is a brand that promotes “Healthy Eating & Sustainable Living” through its “Made by Nature, Crafted By Hand” products.

The owner of the brand wanted to make his products reach potential customers without investing in paid ads. Instagram was the sole marketing channel for Coconut Bowl during the first few months. He instead focused on identifying and sending products to people of high influence within his niche or target market.

Coconut Bowl worked with influencers, and encouraged them to educate their audience about their brand and products. This way, the brand was able to drive 3000 unique visitors to their website, and Instagram was the highest converting marketing channel and traffic source.

You can interweave a similar ecommerce marketing strategy for your unique products without indulging in paid ads and pay-per-click marketing.

XRS Beauty Hair –

XRS Beauty Hair is an ecommerce store that offers a wide range of wigs to their unique audience. Their wigs are made from 100% virgin human hair, and that’s what sets them apart.

They do use paid ads on their Instagram to connect with fashion influencers and those whose interests include fashion, hair & makeup, and wigs. They use advanced, location-based filters to find and target their unique audiences.

They work with influencers to encourage the target audience that these wigs look completely natural and are easy to use with no preps required. This is something that convinces the users most – they want a product that enhances and eases their lifestyle.

With their Instagram influencer marketing, they were able to generate 3500 unique visits on their website between July and September 2021 with a conversion rate of 7%.

What you can take from here is, you need to highlight the best feature of your brand, and this will kick start your journey to towards the ultimate ecommerce success.

TruWood –

TruWood offers truly handmade products at affordability. Not just that, they plant 10 trees for every order they receive. Their handcrafted products and commitment to make the earth a better, pollution-free place to live gave them a huge recognition!

Apparently, a large number of people buy from you – not because you sell it, but because why you sell it!

TruWood delivers this very message on their website, Instagram and other marketing channels. They don’t work with influencers much, but they make an impelling use of Instagram’s organic and paid features to promote their products and mission and vision.

Their Instagram posts are highly engaged, and generate traction for their website. As per an estimate, TruWood generated $1M in sales from their Instagram in just 12 month.

Their 35% of sales and traffic on their website comes from Instagram – that’s the power of Instagram, if used effectively and strategically.

So, you can involve storytelling in your Instagram updates and ads to gain the momentum.  You can use your story, as well as the stories of people whose live your product transform. Your audience will start identifying and appreciating you soon!

iCustomLabel –

iCustomLabel is an ecommerce store that sells customized stickers, labels, and different types of graphics for individuals and businesses.

They offer something that people want occasionally and repeatedly, but that is rarely available in the market. Because of this approach, they are able to maintain a solid and returning customer base.

They use Instagram and Instagram ads to promote their offers. But, they do it based on their strategy to re-target their audience. For example, if a set of audience purchases customized stickers and labels for Halloween, they would retarget the same audience around same time next year.

Likewise, if a business hosts festive events and often buys stickers and other visual graphics from them, they pitch them when an occasion is around. While this is more a part of their email marketing strategy, they include the same offers on their Instagram too.

With their targeted Instagram ads, iCustomLabel converts about 37% of their audience.

Bottom Line –

To get started with Instagram for increased traffic and sales, you will first need to understand how Instagram works and how different it is from other social networks. And you will need to do this especially if you are new to ecommerce marketing and Instagram.

Instagram is a beautiful place to market your brands. So, make sure that the graphics you post have a high-end visual appeal.

There is no denying that the platform helps you generate visibility and engagement with captions and hashtags as well. Therefore, you will also need to learn how to create captions and use hashtags on Instagram.

But most importantly, you will need to create a compelling bio that grabs attention at the very first sight when as a user comes to your profile. You should present all essential information on your bio.

And how can we forget Calls to Action. Each post and ad you share on Instagram should have an actionable CTA that encourages users to take an action such as to visit your website/link to buy or for more info! You can create CTA to take users to another post as well.