Can You Finally Sell Your Products and Services on Instagram?

After 12 months testing shoppable posts in the US, Instagram is launching its new shopping tool in Australia and seven other countries, including the UK, France, Germany and Spain this week.

As anything new Facebook is rolling this out account by account. If you woke up to the new update this morning, congratulations. Let’s explore!

This is the Instagram Story from Instagram you might have seen today:

This update has been anticipated by many Aussie business owners for a while now, mostly in the retail space. Most entrepreneurs have had enough of the disappointing “customers use the platform for inspiration and ideas on fashion, beauty and lifestyles” type of ROI, seeking an opportunity to be able to make money out of their endless efforts on the platform.

Now sellers can tag up to five products per single image post or 20 products per multi-image post. At present, Insta-shopping is only for physical items such as clothes and beauty items. After an account has posted nine times, the option to Shop becomes available, letting users scroll through all tagged for-sale items. Instagram will not be charging businesses or consumers for the service, and at present it only applies to organic rather than sponsored content.

Although Instagram has finally enabled retailers (not influencers yet!) tag their products in images to sell directly to people on the social network, for now, transactions are completed on the retailer’s e-commerce site, rather than within the Instagram app.

The new update is certainly very excited. However, getting a ‘shop now’ button doesn’t magically make all your prospects fall in love with your brand and shop like there is no tomorrow.

I highly encourage you to suspect your excitement and research the update making sure it is applicable in your business.

With any new shiny tool goes your attention and resources.

Before you decide to throw all your time and effort into “selling on Instagram” consider a few steps:

1. Is your audience on Instagram? All of them or what percentage of it?
2. How do they use Instagram: are they prom to purchasing online or use it to inspire their creative and kill some time?
3. Are there better ways to achieve your goals?

P.S. Whenever you are ready… here how I can help you leverage social media technology to really power your mission:

I design simple and effective social media and Facebook ads strategies helping gifted not for profits and businesses for purpose leverage their social media technology and loyal community to really power their mission, building more donations and creating impact. My work is custom solution aiming at the specific needs of your work.

There are many ways you can reach out to see if I am a good fit for your goals. Check out the Facebook Messanger bubble on the bottom right, contact page on the top and/or a form and a calendar, if this type of communication suits you better.

I look forward to supporting your vision of the future!