Instagram shopping
Instagram Shopping describes a number of ways users can browse the platform and shop. Through a whole range of features, Instagram Shopping allows businesses to link their shoppable products in Instagram Stories or in Feeds. Shoppers just tap on the product tags and be led to the brand’s website to view more information and purchase the product.
When Instagram Checkout is rolled out outside the US market, Instagram Shopping will become a fully-fledged social commerce native.
What are the best Instagram shopping features?
With much uncertainty about Meta’s commitment to the previously much-hyped Instagram Live Shopping – Live Shopping on Facebook is no more – Instagram will focus on creating shopping ecosystems for its popular Reels, Shops and Feed spaces. Here are the top Instagram Shopping features where you can best place your products and get the most from Instagram Shopping:
Instagram Shopping on Reels
Since 2020, Instagram has been slowly rolling out new ways for people to shop in its Reels feature. With Meta showing signs of losing confidence in Live Shopping outside of East Asia, Reels will become an area of focus for social giants. On Reels, you simply tag the shoppable products in Reels, and you can then find out more about them inline. Creators can also tag eligible products – once the creator and seller are approved for Shopping. Reels with product tags can be shown on your profile and in your feed, they cannot be Featured Reels.
Using feeds for Insta ads
Instagram feed posts were the first and still most important way for businesses with an Instagram Shopping setup to add Shopping tags to images or video posts. Shoppable feed posts can be effective pillars of your Instagram product-to-consumer (P2C) strategy because consumers are used to seeing these ads in their feeds.
You can also add up to 20 shopping tags to Insta’s Carousel ad feature. This is an easy way to showcase a new collection, item variants or a series of interconnected products.
Shops are your window display
Your Instagram Shop can be a gamechanger when it comes to finding new customers. As Instagram’s product discovery tool. Shops let you make a home for shoppable products, which users access from the View Shop button on their Instagram profile pages.
The Shop tab is an interesting way for users to find new brands and products as they use the tab to browse and explore actively.
When they click on a product they see all the info they need to make their purchase.
Stories are still effective channels
Favored more by smaller brands, tagging products using product stickers on Instagram Stories is also an effective way to drive potential customers to your products. Using stickers makes this a more subtle approach to simply adding tags to Reels.
Live Shopping on Instagram
Instagram Live promises to be one of the best ways to showcase products more authentically. Instagram Live Shopping means you can tag products directly in your Live broadcast for viewers to tap and then make a purchase.
Instagram Shopping using Guides
Instagram Guides are a great way to share recommendations, themes, or tips. You can select guides that focus on places, products, or posts. Ring Fence some products or ideas that suit your audience’s needs, then create your Guide as a business or work with a creator/influencer.
Let the creators do your work
Shopping with creators lets you leverage the power of influencers to promote your brand or products. Influencers and creators then drive sales on behalf of the brands they partner with. The creators/influencers create shoppable Instagram posts and tag products from a brand.
How to set up Instagram Shopping
Once you’ve been approved for Instagram Shopping, you can start getting your products out there in front of one of the world’s biggest and most active social commerce audiences. With Instagram Checkout set to roll out globally at some point (it’s currently only available in the US) there are boundless opportunities on the platform, especially with MIllennial, Gen Z and Gen Alpha consumers.
1. Prove your eligibility
Instagram has strict requirements for setting up shopping. You first need to ensure that you are located in an approved market. Remember, your business should mostly sell physical goods and also fully comply with Instagram’s commerce Ts and Cs.
2. Change your account to a business profile
Before you can even think of setting up an Insta Shop, you need to convert your account to a business account. Once you do this, add all of your business details like contact information, company description and, most importantly, add a link to your website.
3. Connect to Facebook
Instagram is part of Meta, and both Insta and Facebook share the same management suite. So you have to link your Instagram business profile with a Facebook Page. You can do this by clicking the Edit profile button in your business’s Instagram profile.
4. Upload a product catalog
To get your products into Instagram, you need to upload a product catalog or product feed which lists all of your inventory and the items’ attributes.
You can upload your catalog manually through the Catalog Manager, but there are a lot of requirements and specifications which means manually uploading catalogs is not recommended unless you are a micro-business with a small catalog.
The best way to upload a catalog is to use a product-to-consumer (P2C) management platform operated by a Meta partner. Productsup has the most comprehensive P2C management platform for social commerce.
5. Submit your account for approval
Once you have gone through the above steps, submit your account to Instagram for approval. You can do this via the Settings tab in your account. Go to Shopping in your Settings to check up on your approval status, as this may take a few days.
6. Turn on your shopping features
Once approved, you can turn on all of the shopping features and start getting more products to more consumers.