Jan 27th 2023
Resources
- Facebook Ads for Amazon [Video Course]
- Drive Traffic To Amazon [Ultimate Guide]
- Get More Amazon Reviews [Ultimate Guide]
Amazon today is as popular and competitive for sellers as it’s ever been. With more than 2 million active sellers and 12 million products on the platform, getting ahead is increasingly complex.
You can no longer simply list products on Amazon and hope to get sales. Today, you need to actively market your products. Many successful sellers utilize social media platforms like Instagram to do this.
That’s what we’ll look at in this post – how to use Instagram to promote your products and drive traffic to your Amazon store.
Why You Should Use Instagram
Instagram has a huge user base, and is perfectly optimized for engagement and drawing people into your brand.
The photo and video-sharing social network has more than 1 billion monthly users. It’s the second most downloaded free app in the world and has a potential advertising reach of 849.3 million users. These are all valuable statistics if you’re a marketer.
Instagram is often positioned as the “Home of Brands.” While Facebook is focused more on connecting with friends and family, Instagram works better when it comes to brand promotion. It’s easy to redirect visitors from Instagram to a landing page, or you can allow them to shop directly on the platform. For example, you can highlight items from your catalog directly in your Instagram images and videos.
This is where you can:
- Use visual effects to promote your products/services;
- Increase brand awareness and build credibility;
- Help users shop on Amazon through direct links;
- Stimulate your customers and encourage them to make a purchase.
Here are a few more details on why Instagram is so powerful for Amazon sellers.
High Engagement
More than 130 million Instagram users view shopping posts every month. This kind of engagement is what every online store wants to see.
Instagram posts generally get higher levels of engagement compared to Facebook or Twitter. Higher engagement leads to higher reach, and more users seeing your products, services, or promotional posts.
This increase in visibility can lead to more brand awareness, or increased traffic to your website, landing pages, or Amazon store. You can utilize a data analytics company to break this traffic down and build an extremely powerful data funnel for your brand.
Brand-Focused Content
Instagram makes it easy to build up a wealth of content that shows your brand in a great light. You can create your own content, and it’s easy to collect content from users which helps you promote your brand.
For example, your customers will post photos near your offline store and use relevant hashtags, all of which add to your brand’s image.
This shares more information about your brand, boosts social proof, and makes your existing users or customers more engaged with your brand.
Building Credibility
The social proof element is worth mentioning again. Every post, and every engagement you get, is proof to potential buyers that your brand is real and trustworthy.
You can further increase trust by showing people what goes on behind the scenes in your brand, or posting user-generated content (as mentioned in the previous section). This is a great way to further boost engagement, build loyalty, and build your brand’s identity as one that people trust.
Related: Why (and how) you should use Amazon Attribution to power up your external marketing campaigns.
How to Promote Your Products on Instagram
Promoting Amazon products on Instagram is not as simple as just making a profile and posting pictures. There’s a lot to consider when it comes to making sure your posts actually get seen, and that you make the most of the platform.
Here are some tips, best practices, and a full walkthrough on how to start using Instagram for your Amazon brand.
Profile Optimization
As an Amazon seller, your main goal on Instagram is to increase your brand awareness. To do this, you need to create a profile that clearly delivers the main message of your business.
There should be no confusion, and you don’t want to mix your personal Instagram account with your business account. People should understand exactly what to expect from you.
- Convey your brand message in the header;
- Create a short and straightforward business bio;
- Provide links to your Amazon product page, storefront, or website.
You have 150 characters to tell your customers about your Instagram profile. Make sure you deliver the right message, explain what your brand is about, what you offer, and why people should follow you.
Once you set up your Instagram business account, the next step is to make sure it’s optimized properly for sales. Be sure to:
- Go to your profile and tap Menu in the upper right corner;
- Tap “Settings” and “Switch to professional account” to access analytics features.
After that, you’ll have advanced options:
- Create linked pages, including linking your Instagram profile to your company’s Facebook page;
- Add contact information;
- Gain access to advanced statistics.
You’ll now be able to study how actively your profile is being visited and how many people clicked through to your website. Additionally, you will get access to more detailed information about your visitors, e.g. impressions and weekly reach.
For each post, you’ll be able to study the number of interactions and a breakdown by traffic source: your profile, hashtags, and other sources of conversions. You’ll also be able to analyze posts in stories and understand when users are interested, and why they leave or skip your content.
Next, you need to regularly post compelling images that will keep your followers interested. Remember to be consistent and keep up with the latest trends.
Post Stories
One of the main keys to success on social media is storytelling. Sellers often confuse Instagram for an Amazon catalog, and therefore mostly just post photos of their products.
Remember that Instagram is first and foremost a social network – a place that most people visit to see engaging and entertaining content. They don’t really expect you to tell much about your product lines and pricing policy, as they do on marketplaces.
Therefore, you want to talk about how your products are being used. Engage customers with interesting stories. Demonstrate how your products fit into other people’s lifestyles. This can be the key to increasing brand loyalty and sales.
Instagram Stories and Reels
Did you know that Instagram Stories are one of the most popular features on the platform? Each story is live for 24 hours, but you can post as many as you like without any limits.
They can be experiences using your product, or anything that can engage and interest people. You can share an interesting production story or case in your store, explain how people can use your products/services, and post some illustrative tips for maintaining your products.
Sharing your customers’ stories, and showing their experience with your company, is also a great idea.
In addition, you can add highlights to your account, e.g. Stories or Reels that are particularly important to your brand. Use this for the best content, that you want to make available for anyone who is new to your brand.
Instagram Reels focuses more on content creation, while Instagram Stories is more about real-time events.
In addition, Instagram Stories have a few amazing features:
- Stickers;
- Questions;
- Polls;
- Reviews, etc.
Communicate through these tools with your customers as often as possible for maximum engagement potential.
Open Communication Is Crucial
Instagram is better when it’s a two-way street. You don’t want to just be posting at your followers. You want to encourage them to interact with your brand and work to build a relationship with your followers.
Communication is important for this. The more you focus on communication on Instagram, the better it becomes as a tool for building loyalty, engagement, and overall follower numbers.
Here are some tips for communicating with your audience:
- Respond to messages and comments on a regular basis;
- Ask your followers for impressions and thoughts;
- Ask for suggestions. Find out what people really want to hear from you, what should you improve;
- Create surveys and polls;
- Collect feedback, and so on.
Also, be sure to respond as quickly as possible to any complaints from customers, especially public inquiries. Even a single negative comment from a potential customer needs a quick response. Negative feedback attracts attention, but you can turn this into a positive if people see that you’re quick to get back to complainants and take their issues seriously.
Hashtags
Hashtags are used heavily on Instagram. They are crucial for searching and help Instagram choose relevant posts according to users’ interests. That means the right hashtags are vital for brand promotion.
Instagram has built-in tools for choosing popular hashtags. You can also use numerous outside software solutions to analyze, choose, and collect different kinds of hashtag statistics.
Before choosing your hashtags, be sure to analyze what hashtags your competitors use. Also, study which of them fit your niche to better promote your brand. It pays to test out a few different approaches and choose the most relevant hashtags through experimentation.
Contests and Giveaways
Everyone likes free stuff. That’s why contests and giveaways are great tools to help you grow your channel and get more followers.
You might want to run giveaways for your Instagram followers or contests that encourage people to share your brand, increasing your following in the process.
Often, the boost in visibility and engagement that a contest or giveaway delivers is worth far more than whatever it is you’re giving away.
Influencer Marketing
Influencers can be found all over Instagram. These can be famous celebrities, singers, actors, journalists, bloggers, and other thought leaders. They have a large following, and their posts carry a lot of weight with their audience, making it hugely valuable whenever they recommend a product or brand.
It’s a great idea to contact and work with influencers whose audience crosses over with yours. You might arrange for a product review, a short article, or a post promoting or mentioning your brand/product.
As payment for the deal, you might offer a free product, a one-time fee, or a rising fee depending on how many people click through and view your product.
A lot goes into crafting the perfect influencer marketing campaign, from finding the right influencers, to tracking your results so you get a clear idea of the ROI you’re getting. But done well, influencer marketing is one of the best ways you can grow your brand on Instagram.
Learn More: How to do Influencer Marketing for Amazon Products
Cross Promotions
Cross-promotion is an interaction with other brands where you promote each other’s products (e.g. running joint advertising).
If a company mentions your brand or tags your account on its official page, all of that brand’s followers/subscribers will automatically see your product. In doing so, some people will be interested in visiting your Instagram account.
Cross-promotion, like influencer marketing, is largely about finding the right people or brands to partner with. But the results are certainly worth it for both sides, if you put the work in.
Analysis
You’ve set up everything we mentioned above – your account, hashtags, content plan, posts, strategies for influencer marketing, cross-promotion, etc. The next step is analyzing your results, seeing what works and what doesn’t, and doubling down on what works.
You don’t want to be married to your plan. Study each thing you’re doing, and the effect it has on conversion rate, sales, the engagement it generates, and the cost and effort you put in.
Take what you learn and constantly adjust your plan. Over time, you’ll fine-tune it in a way that delivers the best ROI, and most effectively builds your brand.
Further Steps
The content above outlines a lot of the basics of promoting your brand on Instagram. If you’re brand new to the platform (in a business sense), that’s all you really want to focus on for now.
If you want to get more advanced, here are some additional things you can do to maximize what you get out of Instagram.
Utilize Instagram Ads
In this post, we’ve mainly focused on organic or relationship-based promotion strategies. But the Instagram Ads ecosystem is also huge, and can deliver great results.
Instagram Ads is part of the Facebook Ads (now Meta) platform, meaning you’ll set up your ads through Facebook Ads manager.
Instagram Ads take a bit of a different approach than Facebook Ads and are generally a bit more competitive (thus more expensive). But as Instagram is a more engagement-focused platform, the sales and conversion rate potential from Instagram Ads tend to be higher.
Click here for a more in-depth look at Instagram Ads for Amazon brands.
Set up Your Own Store for Multi-Channel Coverage
A lot of Instagram shopping features require access to the code on your product pages or checkout. You can’t do that with your Amazon product listings, so for full coverage, you might want to set up your own store.
You can do this using a platform like Shopify or WooCommerce. These are the two most popular e-commerce platforms for self-hosted stores, holding over 50% market share together.
It’s easy to link your Shopify or WooCommerce store to your Amazon store, so you can still use Amazon to fulfill all orders. But having a presence outside of Amazon offers additional options for what you can do, and what you can provide for customers who don’t want to buy on Amazon.
Chatbots
We highlighted the importance of effective communication. You can do all this yourself, but if once you start getting a lot of engagement or customers messaging you, it can be hard to keep up.
That’s where chatbot software can help. Today, you can automate your business using AI APIs and automated software tools can do just about as good a job as a real human, in replying to messages, engaging with customers, and allowing people to interact productively with your brand.
Jumper.ai is one example – there are a number of other tools on the market today as well. You may want to shop around to find the right tool for you.
Bottom Line
Instagram is a powerful platform for brands, particularly those selling on Amazon.
It’s a great way to engage with your customers, build a following, and differentiate yourself from all the competition on Amazon.
But it all depends on how you use it. You need an effective strategy, along with constant analysis and refinement of that strategy, to make sure you get a decent ROI out of your efforts on Instagram.
Follow the tips we’ve outlined in this post and you’ll be off to a great start.
About the Author: Dmytro Sokhach is an entrepreneur and a 6-Figure Flipper Club member, who founded Admix Global (web agency) that builds websites, makes them profitable, and sells them.
RANK LIKE THE PROS
Discover a better way to rank products from external traffic, like Facebook, Google and TikTok, with LandingCube promo pages.
Try it free for 21 days.
