Want to increase your online sales? Have you thought about the different features of social networks? In this article, were going to describe important aspects of a fantastic social feature and its role in boosting sales: Instagram Stories.
Social media marketing
Social media has now taken over all aspects of our lives, especially marketing. Almost all brands have active accounts on the top social networks to build sales funnel. With more than 3 billion active users across the world, social media can provide them with an unprecedented audience reach.
Although using social media apps are insanely easy, marketing is a different matter. You cant just throw some posts and expect lead generation. A good social media literacy and command of using different features of social services is required to get ahead of the competition.
With more than 1 billion active users, Instagram is one of the best apps for marketing. Its a multimedia-based platform allowing you to share your moments in different formats. It has numerous useful features by which you can build your brand identity and keep your ROI high.
Instagram Stories
Instagram Stories are among the most attractive features among all social services. Stories can help businesses engage with their followers more friendly and make their customers loyal to their brands.
Three years after launching Snapchats My Story, Instagram released this feature. Now, Instagram Stories have out-competed Snapchat Stories. Stories have been such successful that many other social networks such as LinkedIn are trying to present their own Stories.
This feature lets you share several photos/videos together in a “slideshow format” for 24 hours. If you want to share a moment with your followers without keeping it on your profile, Stories are the best way.
But the thing is that how you can increase your sales using Stories.
Show behind the scene
The world of advertisement and marketing has entirely changed during the last decades and social media has been at the core of this change.
Actually, attitudes have mainly shifted towards more informal advertisements rather than wooden commercials. In other words, on social media, you dont need to speak with your customers officially.
The more friendly you can interact with your audiences, the more leads you can generate. Instagram Stories can greatly help you to do this. In fact, you can humanize your relationships with your followers and make them feel theyre part of your brand’s story.
Using Stories, you can show your followers behind the scene and gain the trust of them. Actually, Stories are useful for those audiences that have followed you and know your brand. So, you just have to encourage them to buy from you.
Keep in mind that interacting with followers in a friendly and funny way is now a trend among brands to keep customers loyal. Try to engage with your followers at a personal level and avoid acting too promotional.
Keep in mind that making a long-lasting relationship with your customers takes time and effort. Actually, building a brand identity isnt an easy task and many beginners use social escrow services to acquire and customize new Instagram accounts. Instagram Stories can greatly help you succeed in strengthening your brand style in a friendly way.
Leverage the power of influencers
Influencer marketing is one of the top social media marketing strategies. More than 60 percent of marketers want to increase their influencer marketing budget in 2020.
Including influencers in your Stories is a must if you want to generate leads and convert them into sales.
You can categorize Instagram influencers as below:
- Mega-influencers (more than 1 million followers)
- Macro-influencers (more than 100,000 followers)
- Micro-influencers (less than 100,000 followers)
- Nano-influencers (less than 5,000 followers)
The first two kinds of influencers are so costly. We recommend collaborating with the last two options in two ways:
- The influencer control your account
- Your brand control their accounts
Of course, when choosing influencers you need to be careful.Social Tradiareports that many influencers aren’t really focused on a niche and cant bring you brand awareness. Make sure youre collaborating with a niche influencer using credible sources like Awario and BuzzSumo.
Add Swipe-Up links to your Stories
Remember that youre a digital marketer who should direct your followers to the sales page. Instagram Stories are the best means of increasing conversion rates on social media.
If you can tell your brand stories professionally using insta-stories, you shouldnt be worried about the results. You just need to add Swipe-Links to redirect your potential customers to your website.
Remember that, on Instagram, you have several options to add links:
- Bio: you can use tools to showoff multiple links.
- Posts: you need to change to a business profile and pay for it.
- Shoppable tab: a shopping tag links to one product.
- Swipe-Up links: free but you need to be verified or have more than 10,000 followers.
Use viral hashtags and Geolocation tags in your Stories
Hashtags are at the heart of the search algorithms of social media services. They were first used on Twitter and now on all social platforms, especially Instagram.
If you put hashtags in the captions of your Instagram posts, the images/videos will appear in the search results of that hashtag. In Instagram Stories, on the other hand, you can place the hashtag in a sticker, in texts, or as a Geolocation tag.
Features like hashtags and Geolocation tags make it easy for Instagram users to find your account based on their locations and interests. Using hashtags, you have the chance to reach out to thousands of Instagram users in your vicinity, within your niche, or even across the world.
Try to create viral industry-based hashtags along with branded ones to use in your Stories. Make sure youre using all 10 allowed hashtags in Instagram Stories.
Use video content
More than 70 percent of Instagram users are aged less than 35. So, the more visualized, funny, and attractive content you generate, the better. Video clips are insanely popular among social users, especially youngsters.
Fortunately, Instagram Stories allow you to use a combination of pictures and videos in a single Story. So, make the most of it and generate high-quality video content being supported by pictures, stickers, hashtags, etc.
This can significantly increase your engagement rates and clicks.
Get feedback using Polls on Instagram Stories
As a marketer, you always need feedback to know where you are going. The poll feature on Instagram Stories is a creative way to get feedback directly from your followers and customers.
You can use polls to ask your fans anything! Ask about their thoughts about new products/services, the quality of your posts/Stories, your future plans, and so on.
Also, try to inform them of your coming events and ask them about their opinions on how the events should be. Include your experiential marketing in your stories and get feedback from your audience.
Analyze the performance of your Stories
Social analytics tools are now a must for every social marketing campaigns. You need to track all your activities on social media to know your strengths and weaknesses. Stories are certainly not an exception.
You can make the most of Instagram Insights to analyze your performance and optimize your strategies. Of course, you need to switch into a business profile to be able to reach all the capabilities of Insights.
By the way, you can use it to find out your best-performing posts and Stories and repurpose them for future campaigns.
Final word
We tried to summarize the important aspects of Instagram Stories and the way you can utilize them to boost your sales. However, practice makes perfect. You need to try it by yourself to be able to make the most of it. Remember that creativity and visualization are key to get ahead of the competition.