Instagram is a great platform (in most cases) to build a following for your ecom brand. You can build a great following on Instagram by being consistent with posting content on your account. The more consistent you are with great content, the more followers and engagement you will receive.
Followers + Engagement = Sales
Let’s dive right in and explain how you do this…
Create Great Engaging Content
Definitely first on the list when it comes to developing your Instagram page is to make great engaging content. Start publishing your offers, make engaging, fun, interesting stories. Adding humor to content is always a good bet.
Take a look at your competitors and see what sort of content they are publishing. Pay close attention to the engagement they receive (their likes and comments) on their posts. You can use a tool called Social Blade that will help calculate the engagement rate on the page. The higher percentage the better.
You can take your competitors content ideas and use them as a benchmark for your own creativity. Make content that has a similar angle to the popular content being published by your competitors. Look at the type of images, and video being used to see what is getting engagement. Use these ideas and make it congruent with your messaging and brand. You need to be consistent with this. Post at least once a day (multiple times if possible).
When you start posting consistently using appealing & engaging content, along with good hashtags to help you get found in the explore page, you’ll start to see an increase in followers and engagement on each post. Use hashtags with low to medium competition and test what works to drive engagement.
Like I said, it’s all about being consistent. Consistent production and publishing of content will drive results.
Run a Giveaway
This can be very effective at building out your following! I suggest you run these giveaways frequently. I know of a couple of brands that run giveaways a couple of times a week and they have close to a million followers.
You want to make sure you have a solid following first (2k plus) before you start running giveaways. Followers who are actually following and engaging with your content. I say this because knowing you have a good base of people who are enjoying your content will be better at tagging like minded friends.
Giveaways are great for adding more followers, but you want to make sure you are attracting the right kind of folks to your page. You don’t want to attract too many competition seekers/sweepers who are just there to try and win a prize. They usually have no appreciation for what your brand has to offer and those types of followers typically engage with your posts when you have a giveaway to offer.
From my own experience, I can tell you that this can be a headache! But once you do have a good following already, start adding some fun in the form of giveaways and contests to those followers. This will result in more followers and engagement to your page.
You want to attract authentic followers and it all starts with a good solid fan base. A giveaway with the right offer to your target audience will help grow your following on scale. You can also use some paid traffic to really push some numbers to your giveaway.
Connect With Other Pages in Your Niche
You also want to form partnerships and build solid relationships with Instagram pages that are similar to yours. You don’t have to partner with competing brands, but more so influencers in your niche.
For example, if you sell makeup for young women.Why not reach out to influencers that have the same audience and start to build relationships with these people. Offer them value through content or even offering your product for free so they can try it themselves and experience the benefits it has to offer.
This can lead to some great brand awareness. If the influencer really likes the results of your product, they may very well use this as content to publish on their profile pages.
Here is what I would suggest you do if you are going to send your product for free to these influencers. If they like the results from your product, ask them if it’s possible to run an “exclusive offer” to their audience.
This can be a coupon code that can be used for a specific time only. You can even tell the influencer to promote the offer for the next 5-7 days via their content in stories and posts.
Showing things like:
- The product & how it works
- What results it delivers
- What they like about it
- What they don’t like about it (no product is perfect)
- Who this product is for
- Encourage their audience to visit a link to bring them straight to the product page where they can purchase. Always mention the coupon code!
The reason they would be keen on doing all the above (Content creation for your product, promotion the coupon offer) is because of what you are going to offer to them.
That is…
To joint venture with them on a revenue share deal. Basically split the revenue/profit made from this promotion 50/50 with the influencer. That might seem like a lot… and indeed it might just end up doing so. But you have to think long term.
If you partner with a really good influencer and you incentivize them like this to create content and promote your coupon offer, they’ll be excited and motivated to do their best for you as you have a great offer to promote to their audience and their audience will be grateful for this opportunity of this exclusive offer.
A great offer in place that converts, will give a nice payday to your influencer. This will motivate them to do their best to engage their audience on your offer.
This turns into a win win for you, your influencer and their target audience.
You as the brand have to think long term about this particular promotion. You’ll be converting new customers from this influencers audience. Even though you are doing an attractive revenue share deal, you must think about the lifetime value of these new customers. What are these new customers going to be worth to you in three, six and twelve months time?
That’s the real value you need to be looking at for your shopping brand. You develop this lifetime value using remarketing channels like Facebook/Google retargeting lists, email marketing, push notifications and even chatbots.
Pro Tip:
Make sure you have your retargeting segments in place within your sales funnel so you can recapture those that have gone so far in your sales funnel, but didn’t purchase. Or indeed did purchase. These segments are important to pay attention to as you can make even more money from your partnership.
If you like this content, please drop a like so I know you’re getting value out of it. Any questions? Let me know in the comments below.
