Asides sharing pictures, posting and following celebs Instagram can be used for business purposes also as various brands can be found on the platform especially fashion brands and this is so because most of the audiences on instagram are young people and mostly fashion enthusiasts, other industries are also coming in.
Still want more; Instagram hit one billion monthly users almost an eighth of the world’s population and this will continue to increase. It is a wildly popular platform, and its growth trajectory is showing no signs of plateauing. Unfortunately for advertisers, the same can be said about the amount of money businesses are currently spending to promote their products and services in the name of selling on Instagram. Ad spend jumped 177 percent year-over-year in Q2 of this year. Impressions grew by 209 percent, and CPMs (average cost per thousand impressions) fell by 10 percent. Advertisers are spending more money than ever in the photo-sharing app, and they’re getting better at doing so. Competition is high.
Steps to selling on Instagram
Create an Instagram business account: This is super easy to do, if you have a personal account you can easily have it converted to a business account if not click here to learn more about creating a business account but know that you must have a personal account first.
Add a nice and capturing bio: This goes a long way as there are lots of people doing same thing so it’s always good to stand out of the crowd. If you have a website you can also add it to your bio.
Take good shots or use nicely taken photos: This also helps attract customers, as it makes your products look nice and attractive to your customers when they land on your page.
Use Instagram stories: Uploading good content in your stories also creates good impression also add links to your stories.
Use trendy hashtags: This will help you trend or attract the right audience.
Promote your products or posts: This will help you reach more people.
Avoid buying followers: This is not good for your business as you can end up wasting your investment as in most cases most followers you get are not even in your niche or even interested in your products.
Starting Up
Getting products to sell: You can do this in two ways even if you don’t have products, you can take orders and eventually have them delivered. Find people who can supply you with products, make sure it’s quality, so as to create good impression and you know set your price and make sure your products are quality and affordable.
You can even look for quality bend down select (Katangwa) package them nicely and you will be amazed at how people will rush them.
Good Logistics: You can use good logistics companies to have your products delivered examples of them are SendBox, Max, GIGM and you can also use local interstate transport companies for your interstate orders if you feel logistics companies are too expensive for you. Note: when using local interstate transport companies ensure your packaging is lit; also have your customers pay for the delivery.
Be friendly and respond to DMs ontime: People can be frustrating at times even when people Dm you and send unnecessary messages still be friendly as you don’t know that person eventually recommend you.
Getting your customers: Asides Instagram you can create a WhatsApp business account, and promote your products via WhatsApp tv’s, Facebook ads (ads placed here are automatically placed on instagram), Twitter ads and you can also advertise on WhatsApp and Facebook groups, you can either drive the traffic to your WhatsApp account or to your Instagram page.
Roll with influencers: We can’t talk about Instagram and not mention this as influencers play a vital role in your marketing and also helping you get customers not all of them are expensive you can start with affordable influencers like Tunde Ednut, Uncle Azeez, Noble Igwe and so on. You can also checkout 9jaadszone, 9jaonpoint and so on there’s a lot of them.
Instagram can be more interesting especially when you’re making money of it.
Don’t forget to leave a comment and let us know if you have questions with your comments or by signing up on the forum and leaving your questions there.
Best wishes from us @ Youngprenuers