8 Best E-Commerce Brand Building Strategies for Instagram

With over 500 million daily active users, Instagram serves as a spectacular platform to build your e-commerce brand. This social media platform is now at the forefront as the most engaging marketplace for business owners.

Instagram provides entrepreneurs more power than ever before. Social media statistics report that 68% of Instagram users engage with the brands they follow regularly. Businesses are also able to reach 100% of their followers as opposed to a way lower number of 6% reach on Facebook.

That said, it takes more than product quality to get attention on Instagram. If you are new or looking to establish a better engagement, these six brand building strategies could help you make a difference.

Automate Your Consistency

The number one rule of staying on top on Instagram is to be consistent with your posts and stories. However, creating unique posts everyday might not work out for everyone.

Especially if you are working alone or are a student, taking the time to write your essay instead of composing creative posts. Having only some spare time will not suffice to meet all the demands of an e-commerce brand.

The best strategy that would work for you is batching. Take time to create posts that would work for a longer period in one sitting.

Get to work with software such as Canva or Pablo to generate content around relevant hashtags. You can also find apps to automate your posting.

Allocate Time for Followers

The one thing that you will have to personally attend to is responding to your followers regularly. This will add authenticity to your brand and more value to it as well.

As a social platform, user-generated content is significant on Instagram. For a new brand, engaging with your followers on a daily basis will make you more approachable.

On the other hand, it is best to avoid automated responses on Instagram. It is not only against the policies but might also bring about unwanted consequences.

When your business grows, you can further integrate customer service or hire social media managers for managing this part.

Encourage Followers to Buy

Redirecting your followers to your website is one of the best ways to persuade them to make a purchase. It is not only about adding your website link in your bio.

If your account is approved for shopping feature, make sure you have also created a product catalog. Instagram now allows business accounts to use their native shopping feature, to promote users to shine light on their products. This shoppable media is a game-changing tool, where users can discover and purchase a product directly by tapping on the post itself.

Nevertheless, regularly update your bio link and instead of creating a generic lead to your home page, you can work on building a separate Instagram landing page, which is equally responsive on mobile devices as well. This will help your followers identify the items from your gallery with more ease.

Keep Tab on Competitors

Your biggest resource of database and inspiration might be your competitors pages. There is nothing wrong in using this to your advantage in the right way. Check out the profiles of your competition and see how they are creating engagement and sustaining it.

Search for keywords, and hashtags relating to your niche and you will soon know which accounts are prospering under them.

There are competitor analytical tools that offer detailed stats by comparing your account to others. This lets you see how accounts with similar content are performing and find out where you are falling behind.

Share Non-Product Related Content

As much as the end game is sales, a social media place is all about the brand image you are projecting. One way to achieve this and make the brand more relatable is to occasionally share social content that is not related to your product.

It should be appealing to your customers and still connect to your brand image in some way. For instance, you see brands such as Nike’s marketing campaigns advocating for women’s presence in sports and athletics. Sharing or reposting relevant social content will draw attention to your brand.

Reposting content, from other popular pages would also open the possibility of your content getting reposted or shared, promoting your page in consequence.

Identify Customer Segments

Unless your brand caters only to a very narrow niche, most likely it will have multiple audiences. Out of this, there would be over one category with different interests and personas, making for customer segments that would buy different products.

Maintaining a single account that addresses the multiple characteristics might be tricky. This would require you to have different ad campaigns, and modes of engagement.

The better alternative to this is to create multiple accounts, each accurately tailored for specific audiences. For instance, you will find that brands like H&M have multiple accounts that target different audiences.

Breaking down your audience further into these segments will give you indication on their shopping behaviour, engagement and how exactly to attract them.

Attract with Contests

Want to increase followers? Introduce a contest.

While doing it, encourage your followers to tag their friends and suggest following your account as well. You can also ask users to include pictures of them using your products and share them through stories.

This will allow users to introduce your brand to their friends and create an incredible engagement quickly.

You can also resort to contests and promotions to introduce a new brand. Later on, include behind the scenes and exclusive footage of your brand journey to make the product even more relatable to the audience.

Influence with Branded Content

There are two main sources through which people find new products; the first is through display ads and the second from recommendations. There is a rising phenomenon that blends both these characteristics really well.

Influencers have brought more value to branded content by adding a layer of authenticity to it. With the audience trusting peer reviews overpaid adverts, these partnerships could increase brand awareness through a healthier approach.

If you are new to the field of digital influencers, make use of platforms that connect influencers with brands to access influencer marketing and gain wider exposure.

Take Advantage of User-Generated Content

Nothing works better as an advertisement than user testimonials. User-generated content could yield more benefits than branded content. Share stories, posts or videos of your customers speaking about your products, and reviewing their experience.

Make sure that you give credit to all the posts you share. This will further encourage users to share their personal journey with your brand. Create a dedicated Story Highlight on your account so future audiences can refer to these user-generated content as reviews.

Do a shout out through your stories – engage users in including your hashtag to be featured on your page. This branded tag will create tons of interest and free publicity.

Stay Active Through Stories

Instagram stories have remarkably changed the way users engage with brands. It is no longer restricted to comment sections or Direct Messages. Stories give you an opportunity to converse directly with your audience and respond to the followers.

The Instagram Live feature is gaining a lot of traction by getting prominently featured for your followers. Use this to your benefit, by promoting products through conversational tones and creating industry awareness by showing product journeys. Collaborate with other accounts or invite influencers to join you on Instagram live.

Moreover, stories are also a great tool to find the interests of your followers. This will bring ideas for future posts. You can do a Q&A session or take a vote to see what new content or products your followers would like to see.

Attend to Analytics

So you have implemented all the right ways that the expert marketers tell you to. How do you know whether these are working or how much you are benefiting from them?

Your sales might be up, but knowing which campaign is responsible for that would help you strategize for the future. Instagram comes with some great in-app analytics that provides useful information on your engagement. You can follow up on each post, see how much attention they are getting and how far your reach is growing.

If you require further scrutiny, do not hesitate to use third-party analytics that would give additional insight into how your e-commerce site is performing relative to Instagram marketing.

Wrapping Up

At the end of the day, remember that Instagram is a social platform. You have to regard the public and use every form of content that appeals to the users.

Reach out to influencers to collaborate and create content together. Instagram works best when you engage with others. Knowing these tips, you will surely get some new followers and, subsequently, boost your sales.

The only downside here would be that Instagram primarily serves as a place to discover, rather than a place to shop, at least for now. So use this time to test your creative choices and set the mood to reap the benefits of the Instagram marketplace.