Are you planning to start an online business and wondering where to find buyer?
The good news is you don’t need a website to have a successful eCommerce business! You can generate good sales by just focusing on Instagram.
“A picture is worth a thousand words.”
Your pictures will speak louder than text on any marketing channel you choose today. This is probably the reason why Instagram sellers are doing well these days and why you should start to sell on Instagram too.
After reading this post, you will know how to optimise your Instagram profile as a business account, bring audience, and accept payments smoothly.
Why sell on Instagram?
1. Large audience
According to the latest data in 2022, Instagram reached 100 crores monthly active users. India has the second highest number of monthly users (10 crores). This is a winning formula for making a sale on social media. This means that Instagram is a good platform to sell products online in India.
Source: Napoleon cat
People don’t just use Instagram for entertainment. Almost 90% of the app users follow a business. Which means almost everyone follows at least one brand.(Source: Hootsuite)
2. Great engagement rate
80-90% of the audience on Instagram are using the platform to research on products or services. A large section of the app users find it a useful place to do brand research. Instagram is leading the social media race for the highest user engagement rate. Have a look at this data:
Image source: Hootsuite
Where there is engagement, there is a relatively higher sale.
A good audience and higher engagement rate on Instagram makes it easier for sellers to get more “reach” for their products.
How to sell on Instagram without a website
1. Edit your Profile:
Download the app and Sign up with Instagram.
Your username is your brand name – keep it simple.
Use the Bio section to inform your audience about your product and service in simple language. If you don’t have a website, you can create an account on Instamojo and share your link in the website section. We will dig in deeper about this later in the article.
2. Upload your product pictures:
No Filters: Don’t use filters for uploading your product pictures, they distort the image.
Content: Pictures showing real customers using the product has 40% more engagement rate. Also, light tone images get 30% more engagement than dark ones.
Make sure your picture caption is descriptive. Include all the information a customer would want to know in the description and towards the end, mention how to contact you if they want to buy your product.
3. Increase Reach:
Use hashtags: Instagrammers use hashtags to search and discover the content they are interested in. Please use hashtags to define your product and make it discoverable. Do a little hashtag analysis and see which are the ones your customers are most searching for. Find out the best Instagram hashtags for small businesses.
Never overdo the hashtags though, up to 5 hashtags should be better but you can use up to 8 too, just pull it off.
View this post on Instagram
Find and Follow your target customers: Use Instagram search to look for people who would be interested in buying your products. When you follow them, they will be notified and most of them will end up checking out your profile.
Reach out to Influencers: Influencers have a growing influence on social media. Find popular accounts on Instagram that are followed by your customers and request to talk about your product on their profiles. You might need to send a sample product to them. It’s highly likely that if they like your product, they will talk about it on their own. If not, you can at least engage with their followers in comments and see if they can be your potential customers.
Don’t just sell, engage!
Artists are selling more on Instagram than on any other platform.
A key piece of advice one must take away from them is – do not just sell products, engage with your audience too. for example, Nikhat, an artist sells prints on Instagram, but she also rewards her loyal customers with aesthetic videos of her painting and sketching.
View this post on Instagram
Now that you have created a presence on Instagram, let us discuss how to accept payments.
Related Read: 25 Instagram content ideas that every small business will need
How to accept online payments on Instagram without a website
You need to make sure your customers have different payment options and the process is smooth and secure.
You can’t share a link with your Instagram pictures. A lot of customers will inquire as comments and direct messages on Instagram. Map them regularly. You have two options for collecting payment. The first one is to share them a phone number linked to UPI and ask for them to pay. This method can get highly inefficient when your number of customers go up. So, you need a better system to accept payments through Instagram.
Here is how you can seamlessly accept payments on Instagram using Instamojo:
Step 1: Sign up
Sign up with Instamojo and create your account. Follow the verification steps. It should take a few minutes to approve your account after you have uploaded your KYC.
Step 2: Get your own Payment handle
While you are signing up with Instamojo, @username is your payment handle (Pretty much like your Instagram handle). This automatically creates your link as www.instamojo.com/username. This is like a simple product listing page where all your payment links will appear to others. You can create these product links by clicking on the “Create a Payment link” in your Instamojo dashboard.
Step 3: Share with customers
Share the product link with your customers in a direct message to let them buy your product. As soon as your customer buys the product, you are notified via email.
Step 4: Use Instapay or Request a Payment
If you don’t want to create separate links for each product, just send your payment handle (www.instamojo.com/@username) to your customers via messages. They will land on your Instapay page where they can make a payment.
You can also request payments directly from your Instamojo dashboard. Here is how: Request a Payment with Instamojo
Too long? Let’s see how you can sell on Instagram using Instamojo with a simple video.
Selling on any social media channel is not an easy task, but if you keep at following the right practices and experiment with your marketing techniques, you can reach your sales target with time. Give it a chance.
Why wait?
We’re looking forward to seeing you start selling on Instagram. Let us know how it works out for you in the comments below. Happy ‘grammin’!
Start Selling on Instagram Now!
