How to sell your products with Instagram Shopping

Instagram now offers much more than just sharing pictures or videos. More and more influencers and online stores are advertising products on Instagram. But users are always redirected to external platforms to complete their purchases there. Why not simply use Instagram Shopping and offer customers the opportunity to buy products directly on the platform? With Instagram Shopping, switching between platforms is no longer necessary, so customers can complete their purchases faster and then continue to scroll through Instagram in a relaxed manner. We’ll show you the benefits of Instagram Shopping and how you can sell your products directly on Instagram.

But how exactly does Instagram Shopping work?

The Instagram Shopping feature enables the trend of social commerce, making it easy to sell products within the social media platform. Through your company’s posts, users can easily click on your products and buy them directly. To do this, the post just needs to be tagged with a product name, price, and a link and they can buy. Once you’ve added a product catalog to your Instagram profile, you can easily offer your products via posts, stories, in the Explore section, or in the Shop tab. Products are easily tagged like friends and identified by a shopping bag icon on the post.

Learn more about the benefits of social commerce, how exactly it works and how you can leverage the trend for your business.

Advantages of Instagram Shopping

Nowadays, there are a lot of distractions on the internet, so a lot of things just get lost due to the huge information overload. That’s exactly why you can use Instagram shopping to grab users’ attention for yourself. The ability to do everything directly in the app, without having to switch to an external site, is a huge advantage. This sets you apart as a business. Besides the direct and uncomplicated purchase, there are also some other advantages that come with Instagram Shopping:

Basically, it is only possible on Instagram to integrate a single link in the bio. As a result, there are hardly any opportunities to present one’s own products, because a display of multiple product links is thus only possible to a limited extent. However, Instagram Shopping offers exactly the right solution for this: customers can view a variety of products directly on the platform and get excited about them.

Companies can thus use Instagram Shopping for collections and present their offers to customers directly in the app. Through the company’s current feed and offers, customers develop more trust in the brand and are more likely to intend to buy something. Once the will to buy is there, everything can be done directly in the app and there is no need to redirect to an external platform. It’s also worth mentioning that Instagram Shopping is completely free.

How can I sell products with Instagram Shopping?

In order to sell one’s own products within the Instagram Shopping function, they can be linked in the popular posts through product pins. The following options are available:

Tag products with Instagram Shopping on posts

• Product posts and videos
  Up to five products can be tagged within product posts, and even up to 20 for carousel posts. In addition to product-only posts where products can be linked, there are a few other placement options on Instagram, such as tagging in videos
• Stories with product or store link
  In Stories, a product can be tagged using the sticker feature. There are different display options, even swipe-up links can be used. However, it is important to know that only one product may be linked in Stories.
• Shopping Ads
  To expand your reach and make your products more popular in the process, you can either promote your organic posts on Instagram with the product pins or you can run ads with product tags, called “Shopping Ads”. These are created and managed via the meta ad manager.

We will show you how they can easily create ads for Facebook and Instagram with the meta ad manager in another blog post.

Requirements for Instagram Shopping

First of all, some requirements must be met in order to use Instagram Shopping for your own business. Services generally cannot be sold via Instagram Shopping, only pure product sales are currently possible. In addition, Instagram’s commerce guidelines must be adhered to and the latest app version must be used. You can recognize this by the shopping bag in your profile. If this feature is not yet available, you can simply update the Instagram app. An Instagram business account and an existing online store are also basic requirements. Instagram Shopping can then be set up with a few clicks in the Instagram settings.

Learn how to create an Instagram Business account and what useful insights it will provide you.

How To: Set up Instagram Shopping

We’ll show you how to set up Instagram Shopping for your account in four steps:

Step 1: Link Instagram with Facebook Account

First, you need an Instagram Business account, this will then be linked to your Facebook account. The linking can be done easily through the Instagram settings. In the settings under the item “Accounts” select “Linked accounts”, there you log in with the Facebook profile and a link will be created automatically.

Step 2: Set up product catalog via Facebook

If the Instagram Business account already exists, you can go directly to the “Set up product catalog” item. This will link the profile to a catalog via Facebook. There are two options here. Either an existing online store, such as from Shopify, can be linked to the Facebook account or you have to create your own product catalog directly as a Facebook store. Important to mention: The “E-Commerce” tab must be selected in order for shopping tags to appear on the images.

Step 3: Display store on Instagram

Once these steps are done, you can go to your Instagram profile. There, in the profile settings, first go to “Business” and then to “Instagram Shopping”. Here you now need to submit your account for review. Approval can take anywhere from a few days to a week and a half, and you will receive a notification via email accordingly. After the approval, you only need to select the appropriate Facebook Shop in the Instagram settings and the creation of products can start.

Step 4: Create products in the Instagram Shop

For this purpose, a function will be enabled for you both in the feed and in the stories. When uploading new products, you can now work with the help of the “Mark products” option. Once you tag products on the photos, they will appear directly in the Shopping Feed on Instagram. Multiple products can also be selected on one image. Users can thus directly view the products for sale, click on them and, in the best case, buy them directly via Instagram Shopping.

8 tips for using the Instagram shopping feature

1. Correct representation of the products
   Present the selected products as accurately as possible, it should not be too different from what the customer will eventually get. Here, no embellishments should be used, but truthful images.
2. Captions and hashtags
   Captions and the use of hashtags can attract the attention of customers, as well as favor the Instagram algorithm for better placement.
3. High-quality product images
   Above all, it is important that the images are high quality and proper captioning is used. This is because customers are usually more critical of a shopping post, as there is a clear sales goal behind it.
4. Direct information about order
   When a purchase is made, customer information such as name, email, delivery address and so on are stored directly. This also gives you the option to send the customer a direct message to inform them about the progress of their order.
5. Use Instagram and Facebook Shop together
   In general, you can also use Instagram Shopping in combination with the Facebook Shop and link your own products on both Instagram and Facebook.
6. Payment options within the app
   In addition, especially the payment in the app is a great advantage of Instagram Shopping. To make this possible, Meta Pay can simply be used to provide users with an easy shopping experience.
7. Link posts to products after the fact
   Also important to mention is the ability to subsequently add products from the catalog to previous posts. This can increasingly increase the reach of your own products. With Stories, however, this is not possible retrospectively
8. Live shopping
   If you go live on Instagram as a company, you can also easily tag your products here and present your own products to your target group.

So why should I use Instagram Shopping?

It may sound elaborate at first, but Instagram Shopping offers, in addition to the already mentioned advantages, above all a simplified buying experience. After all, when making a purchase, most customers usually want it to be quick.

Via the catalog in their Instagram profile, that’s exactly what’s possible. As users scroll through Instagram, they discover posts with linked products. If their interest is piqued, they click on the highlighted products and are taken directly to the stored product catalog. There, they can now look at and select any products they want.

The step to purchase is then not that big anymore, because everything can be completed directly via the app. As a result, there is no need to switch platforms, and browsing is hardly interrupted by the short checkout process.