As implied earlier, e-commerce is a booming field of business on the internet, providing substantial amounts of goods for innumerable different consumers, and utilizes the internet’s global network to provide the most reach and attraction of consumers. As many things, advertising and self-promotion is a key aspect in increasing sales and attracting more consumers, and in the modern age of information and technology, the best place to do this is on the internet. With its total 700 million active users monthly and 400 million active users daily, Instagram is a platform that would allow for a potent connection with consumers to advertise products as mentioned previously, at both a global market, and traditional local retailing to create a brand image, since typical consumers are likely to have the app installed on their smartphones and so will rapidly see new activity from said e-commerce store.
Instagram has proven to be a versatile platform for a range of different users. It’s simple and familiar user interface, along with the extensive reach of visual media makes it the perfect app to share, distribute and advertise content; and this is not just limited to that of somewhat casual photos and videos of personal life for individual users. Instagram holds strategic importance as a potent marketing tool for businesses, particularly for those involved in e-commerce, due to its simplicity and engagement with users, allowing for a less intrusive and unforced advertising, and far more potential for the creation of a brand image and identity, increased traffic and consequently, sales.
Overview of Instagram
Instagram is an application designed for the creation of user-generated content, also known as UGC. This ranges from pictures of activities like skiing on a vacation, all the way to short videos of a chef preparing a delicious dish. Instagram has over 600 million users worldwide. The photo and video sharing social networking site was created in 2010 by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. Instagram has been extremely successful in the past few years and has been recently acquired by Facebook Inc. for 1 billion dollars. The acquisition has positively affected its development and implementation in smartphones and other mobile devices. The application itself is now available on the iOS and Android platforms. Instagram has a multitude of features allowing UGC to be as creative and professional looking as possible. The most notable features are its 15 selectable borders around a picture, digital filters to enhance image quality, photo tagging (up to 5 tags per person), hashtagging to allow users to search for different UGC, video sharing features, and the recent story feature that allows content to be viewed for up to 24 hours. With all of these features, Instagram has become an essential tool for marketing and advertisements. Businesses around the world have been utilizing the application for a number of reasons but mainly to improve public image, customer traffic, and product advertisement. By using Instagram, companies can engage in their customer base, improve customer photo submissions, and appeal to a broader audience by connecting with popular UGC. All of this essentially improves store sales and customer retention. With e-commerce businesses, Instagram has a substantial amount of benefits from its features and vast user base. A few of these key features have been a frequent influential tool for product sales and business decisions. Hashtagging has been a powerful tool for attracting customer traffic. By using hashtags, businesses can label their image or video with their brand and a description of the product displayed. Customers searching for a specific product can make use of the search function (recently allowing free input of hashtags) and find the desired product that fits the hashtag description. This will also be helpful in customer translation as a product search function cannot compare to the broad array of languages available by human translation. A similar method is using the tagging feature on product images with links to product webpages. This will allow customer redirection to a host website and improve webpage traffic. Although Instagram’s tagging feature only allows tag location ID up to other Instagram users, this method can still attract customer interest inquiring where the product displayed can be found. With improved customer traffic, webpages translated to multiple languages can improve customer purchases and decisions on the product provided.
Instagram has become one of the most popular social media platforms for e-commerce businesses due to its visual nature and high engagement rates. Here are some of the key benefits of using Instagram for e-commerce:
Visual storytelling: Instagram is a highly visual platform, making it ideal for showcasing products in a visually appealing way. E-commerce businesses can use high-quality images and videos to tell a story about their brand and products, helping to engage and attract customers.
Reach a large audience: With over 1 billion active users, Instagram offers e-commerce businesses a huge potential audience to reach and engage with. By using hashtags, geotags, and targeted advertising, businesses can reach new customers and increase brand awareness.
Drive traffic to your website: Instagram allows businesses to include clickable links in their posts and stories, making it easy for customers to visit their website and make a purchase. By regularly posting engaging content and promoting products, businesses can drive traffic to their e-commerce site and increase sales.
Build brand loyalty: By regularly engaging with followers through comments, likes, and direct messages, e-commerce businesses can build strong relationships with customers and create brand loyalty. This can lead to repeat purchases and word-of-mouth referrals.
Increase sales: Instagram offers various features such as shoppable posts, product tags, and Instagram Shopping that make it easy for customers to discover and purchase products directly from the platform. By optimizing these features and creating a seamless shopping experience, e-commerce businesses can increase sales and revenue.
Analyze performance: Instagram provides valuable insights into the performance of posts, stories, ads, and overall account engagement through its analytics tools. E-commerce businesses can use this data to track key metrics such as reach, engagement, website clicks, and conversions to optimize their marketing strategy.
Overall, using Instagram for e-commerce offers numerous benefits including increased brand visibility, customer engagement, website traffic, sales growth, brand loyalty building opportunities as well as access to valuable analytics data that can help businesses improve their marketing efforts.
