You’re a business owner who believes in their products and that the money and time put into them is well-spent; the long hours and countless courses have paid off and made you a master of your craft. Your time, however, is valuable, and it should be spent on things other than figuring out how to maximize your brand’s online presence.
You have products that outshine the competition and are what your potential customers are after. So, why not show them off and incentivize people to buy them on social media? After all, you’re not interfering with anyone’s user experience, you just appear in their feeds.
In this article, we’ll talk about what shoppable posts are and how you can get started with them, as well as how to target audiences with effective posts that connect your brand with customers on a deeper level by encouraging product testimonials.
What are shoppable posts and how do they work?
Listing products on your social posts as shoppable posts is a trending (but successful) way to encourage faster transactions from customers who will want to buy from you again. You can use platforms like Instagram, which already offer businesses plenty of opportunities to tell stories about brand identity, to let people buy your incredible products directly from you. Shoppable posts help potential customers avoid spending lots of time on research by getting a direct link to buy your product as well as a description about it that shows off your passion and product expertise.
At the time of this article’s writing, you can currently use Instagram as well as Pinterest to keep people from getting distracted or frustrated with their search results before they buy your product. Rather than your website, your Instagram or Pinterest account becomes the place customers go to make their purchases, which gets rid of the additional step of driving customers to your website from your social media. You can go to a brand profile on Instagram and tap ‘View Shop’ or tap the tags you see in feed posts to find and use shoppable posts.
Getting started with shoppable posts
Before you settle on using shoppable posts, you may want to ask yourself if you still want people checking out your website. If you also sell your products on Amazon or are using an Amazon webstore, an Amazon PPC agency can encourage people who may not have yet seen your products in their social feeds to check out your online store. Many agencies worth working with will also analyze things like PPC sales, CPC, and search frequency rank to give you a wider picture of how your business is doing in the marketplace.
Once you’ve figured out how you think shoppable posts could work for you, you’ll want to set yourself up with a business account. If you’re in the Instagram app, you can make the switch through your account settings. Remember to use Instagram’s latest version, too. Now all you need is approval to sell your physical product, which can take between 1 day to 2 weeks on average.
How to connect with the audiences you care about
The sky’s pretty much the limit when it comes to making your Instagram content shoppable, so if you want to target specific audiences you’re interested in, you’ll want to think about the type of content you want to make shoppable. There are plenty of ways to start researching your target audience if you need some help figuring out what products they’re looking for and where they get their information.
Attract knowledgeable people with knowledge of your own
One of the best ways to establish brand loyalty and trust among your target audience is by adding some personalization. Instagram lets shoppable accounts use live broadcasts to set up times to chat directly with people in a relaxed environment that encourages questions.
Live broadcasts give you the chance to take a deeper dive into your products and their backgrounds, which is helpful if you want to draw certain customers in with your expertise and experience. You can also tag your products during a live broadcast so that they appear at the bottom of your viewers’ screens.
Follow the data
Using shoppable posts gives you the ability to see data coming from whichever platform you posted on. If you have shoppable posts on Instagram, for instance, you can compare their data with data coming from your organic posts. If you notice that your shoppable post’s reach and engagement are lower or higher than that of your organic posts, you can fine-tune the description and photo it’s using to relate more directly to a target audience you have in mind.
Gain exposure with Instagram shop
You can take advantage of the fact that more people are hopping on Instagram to find new products they’re into by using Instagram’s shopping feature to gain more audience exposure. So long as your brand is using Instagram Shop, it’ll also get featured on the shop’s ‘explore’ tab, making it easier for you to gain exposure from people who may be interested in the products and services you’re offering.
Gear your posts toward people in browsing mode
When you open apps like Instagram or TikTok, you’re probably feeling relaxed and maybe even receptive to buying something that looks neat. By remembering that nearly half of the people using Instagram buy something on the platform every week and often enjoy being advertised to, you can generate more ideas for targeting people in “browsing mode”.
Will shoppable posts boost my brand?
Shoppable posts do a few things that get your online brand in front of more people who probably care about your products. For one, simply being on someone’s feed and popping up on it gets you in front of more people who would otherwise have never seen you.
Plus, being a shoppable posts sponsor further increases your reach and gets you seen by plenty of new eyes. Shoppable posts done well will give you strong reach on Instagram; you can also improve your organic reach with strategic hashtags that make it likelier for a wide audience to interact with you.
It’s important to keep visual appeal in mind when it comes to shoppable posts, too. You should avoid making your posts appear like blatant advertisements by making their aesthetics consistent with those of your organic posts. Visually appealing and finely curated shoppable posts will blend into the feed and appear more inviting to people scrolling.
Conclusion
Shoppable posts allow customers to purchase your products directly from your social media posts. Popular platforms for shoppable posts let users avoid having to research products; they can instead easily find a direct link to the item or service alongside a description of the item.
By doing this, there is a smaller chance that potential customers become frustrated with search results before making a purchase. Overall, shoppable posts are an effective way to showcase new products, promote sales, and create excitement around your brand.
