Earlier this year, Instagram rolled out option Shoppable Instagram Feeds outside the US.
Music to every marketer’s ear, and the dream of every online merchant, right!
We are pumped up as you are so let me just go into more details what this features can do for you and how you can start preparing.
If you are tired of writing captions that end with a ‘click the link in bio’ to buy this product, then you will definitely love this feature.
What exactly is Shopping on Instagram?
Shopping on Instagram enables you to tag up to five products per image or up to twenty products per carousel. This function allows your followers to shop your feed or visit product page with a simple tap. The tagged product has all the information and pricing and makes shopping on Instagram a perfect solution for businesses mobile shop.
Should you use Shopping on Instagram?
Whether to implement Shoppable Instagram feeds in brand’s marketing strategy is a dilemma most business owners had when the feature was first rolled out. While certainly being beneficial to your sales funnel, this feature takes away authenticity from your profile.
Shopping on Instagram presents many new opportunities for businesses:
• Sales Funnel optimisation
• Quick product look-up
• Instant shop
However, there are a few drawbacks that may deter businesses from using this feature:
• Loss of authenticity
• Selling instead of giving value
Whether the feature presents more opportunities for your business than downsides should be decided in accordance with your brand’s goals and overall brand image. After all, not everyone can pull this off without turning your feed into the ad machine turning away your customers.
How to enable Shopping on Instagram?
Before you start:
• Make sure you have the latest version of the Instagram app
• Your Instagram account must be converted into a business profile
• Be an admin on a Page or Business Manager account
• Have a shop on Facebook or a product catalogue within Business Manager
As you noticed, you are only able to tag products on Instagram photos if they are coming from eligible shops and are related to an actual e-commerce business. By doing this Instagram limits the ability to manually add links to Instagram posts.
I assume the major reason for this rule is the efforts by Instagram to make the platform highly trustworthy and make sure the shoppers actually see tagged products and eventually buy them, from relevant sellers.
So if you fulfil all the requirements, you will be able to activate the Instagram shopping feature by following the steps below:
• Go to your Instagram profile
• Tap the ‘Get Started’ alert at the top of your profile
• If you don’t see the alert in the image above, tap the settings icon
• Tap Products
• Tap Continue
• Select a product catalogue to connect to your business profile
• Tap Done
That’s it!
Now your Instagram business account can tag products with links to Instagram posts.