How do you get started with Instagram Shopping?

Acquired by Facebook in 2012, Instagram has become a powerful marketing tool for companies. The app now has more than one billion monthly active accounts worldwide and therefore offers businesses a great opportunity to increase their number of prospects and sales. In fact, 50% of platform users follow at least one brand and 83% of Instagram users say they discover new products and services there.

Photos, videos, boomerangs, Stories, IGTV or Reels: the app focuses on innovation and continues to offer new publishing formats. In addition, it provides a very comprehensive analytics tool for tracking impressions and conversions for each post.

How can you launch your business on Instagram and take advantage of its benefits? We explain everything you need to know about this new channel for e-commerce businesses.

Instagram, an Advertising Powerhouse

On this image-focused social network, visuals are obviously essential. The platform offers different advertising formats for this purpose, such as single images, videos or Carousels, as well as several placement options. Instagram ads can therefore appear to users in their news feed, Stories or the Explore tab, allowing brands to reach users who do not follow them. They appear among organic content and always display a Sponsored label and, in most cases, a call-to-action button.

Instagram ads can reach large audiences thanks to more targeted traffic because the app benefits from data collected by Facebook, Messenger and WhatsApp. As a result, an ad that is well integrated into the news feed generates a high click-through rate.

Using Instagram advertising can therefore be useful for acquisition: the Mobile Collection format (where visual creatives and the messages to convey become especially important) will allow you to reach new customers, while the Product Carousel format (which requires a feed that complies with a specific format and the corresponding pixel) will help with your retargeting campaigns.

Instagram Shopping: What Is It?

Launched in 2018 for business accounts, Instagram Shopping is a free feature offered to e-commerce businesses by the number one social network among people under 35.

Thanks to this service, brands have an immersive storefront as well as a “Shop” tab on their profile to showcase and sell their products through the app. Shopping also makes it possible to present products through organic posts on their profile. By tagging the products shown in their photos, e-commerce businesses activate a tag displaying the product name and price. The purchasing process is made easier because when users click on an item, a link automatically redirects them to the product page on the website. In this way, Instagram Shopping makes it possible to attract qualified prospects.

Conditions for Being Eligible for the Program

To be eligible for the Shopping feature on Instagram, several conditions must be met. You must:

1. Have a professional Instagram account.
2. Sell physical products.
3. Have a product catalog set up in your Facebook Business Manager.

A New Social Shopping Feature Currently Being Rolled Out: Instagram Shop

In order to “offer a new mobile-first shopping experience,” Instagram decided to launch Instagram Shop, which will allow users to complete purchases directly on the platform. Thanks to this integrated payment solution, currently being rolled out worldwide and soon to be available in France, Instagram becomes a true online store where users can move even faster from discovery to purchase, directly through the app.

With this new option, brands will be able to create collections and select the products they want to highlight in their customizable online store. A development that every e-commerce business should monitor closely!

Our Tips and Recommendations

To make the most of the Instagram Shopping feature, here are our recommendations:

• Analyze your account data and insights to identify your followers’ expectations in your Facebook Business Manager account.
• Optimize your product catalog according to Facebook’s recommended specifications (for example: titles should not exceed 60 characters, send your products’ GTINs, etc.).
• Define which advertising formats to choose according to the audience you want to target (Carousel, Collection, Photos, Story, etc.).
• Use high-quality visuals (images, videos) adapted to the correct format (1:1).
• Your campaign is ready to go live!

Feed Manager remains at your disposal if you need support with your launch!