4 Ways To Sell Products Directly Off Instagram

While many agree that Instagram is the best social media platform for ecommerce stores and retail brands, it’s also one of the hardest places to sell your products.

Why? Well if you’ve used Instagram before, you’ll know that you cannot place URL links into any of your updates. In fact, the only place you can insert a URL is in your profile, but very few users actually bother to read your profile and even less will click the link to your website.

For example, if someone wanted to buy this Nike sneaker, they would need to visit Nike’ Instagram profile, click the URL in their profile and then find the item on their website:

Pretty long winded and very difficult on a mobile device. So how do you sell on Instagram?

1. Instagram Ads

As of this moment in time you can use Instagram Ads with the following objectives:
⦁ Page Post Engagement
⦁ Clicks to Website
⦁ Website Conversions
⦁ Mobile App Installs
⦁ Mobile App Engagement
⦁ Video Views

Depending on what you’re selling, clicks to website, website conversions and mobile app installs are objectives best aligned with selling goods. After selecting the Instagram placement option, your advert will now have a call-to-action going to a specific product page:

This makes it much easier to sell your products than using the organic option.

If you can’t afford to run Instagram Ads (they are rather expensive), there are other third-party apps you can use.

Soldsie

Soldsie is an online tool that allows customers to buy your product by leaving a comment. Once a customer leaves a comment using the correct tags and keywords, Soldsie sends them an email (the buyer must have an account with Soldsie first) with an invoice asking them to make payment for the item they just ordered:

Inselly

Inselly uses hashtags to get your products to the right audience. You simply upload a photo to Instagram using the hashtag #Inselly along with other relevant tags, signup to Inselly and add a price and small description to your item:

All payments are made using PayPal and Inselly has become one of the better ways small ecommerce stores are selling their products through Instagram.

Have2have.it

Have2have.it works with Soldie and offers a vey smart solution to help you sell more products on Instagram. After users click on your specially created Have2have.it URL link on your profile page, they are taken to a curated page that looks just like your Instagram feed, except now they can click on your images and purchase your products.

Once a user has selected an item to checkout, they are then sent to your website to place their order.

Summary

With the right tools, Instagram offers huge potential to increase your sales and drive traffic to your website. Start by running a few adverts with small budgets to test the waters and see how you fare. If you want to take things one step further, use any of the 3 third-party tools above to generate more sales using Instagram.

Which tools are you using on Instagram?

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Nick Bridges

Nick is an Award Winning web designer, is also the Creative Director for the Agency, assisting in areas like funnel creation, copywriting, Landing Page development, and more. Nick also oversees all of the technical components of the creation and implementation of Social Media Ad Genius.

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