E-Commerce Business Instagram Marketing Mistakes You NEED To Avoid!
Displaying attractive eCommerce product photographs might increase the visibility of your Instagram account. There is, however, a lot more you can do if you're new to Instagram and trying to create an eCommerce brand.
You may start by avoiding the pitfalls made by other eCommerce companies, allowing you to get right to the good stuff: positioning your product, defining your audience, creating fascinating videos and stories, and focusing on persuasive product-focused writing.
Creative Instagram videos can help your audience better understand your business, engage with your content, and apply some tried-and-true tactics to cut down on video creation time.
We'll also show you how certain eCommerce companies may stand out and allow their audience to relate to their brand through user-generated content that effortlessly blends their products and services, pushing prospects to accept their offerings without a hard pitch in this post.
As we get into the details, you'll learn more about this and how you can mimic it for your eCommerce site.
But, before that...
Do E-Commerce Businesses NEED Instagram?
Instagram, as a visual medium, enables greater connection with your target audience. However, depending on how your eCommerce store operates, it may or may not function.
Not all eCommerce stores cater to customers. To begin, you have B2B, C2C, and B2G operators. Some firms operate with several SKUs, making it simple to establish a huge Instagram asset library, whilst others have a restricted number of SKUs that may appear to be challenging assets to deal with.
Unlike B2C clients, B2B clients frequently buy directly from other firms, reducing interaction on third-party platforms such as Instagram.
B2G companies work directly with government agencies, making them sales-oriented. Some B2G examples include auction platforms and tax portals, which may not require Instagram for marketing purposes.
However, if you run a B2C or C2C eCommerce firm, your clients are actively looking for businesses that can help them on Instagram. In any event, don't focus on your Instagram presence just because everyone else is.
Now, without further ado, let’s do further and get on to some common Instagram marketing mistakes.
✽ No Bio
Begin on the right foot by viewing your bio as a sales tool rather than a simple summary of yourself and your company. Avoid using descriptive language. Allow your personality to come through with bespoke branding that goes beyond keywords, hashtags, URLs, and CTAs. Create a "link in bio" page that promotes your brand using tools like LTX, giving consumers several reasons to learn more about you and engage further.
✽ Target
The exact words used by your customers to describe your business are known as the Voice of the Customer (VoC). So, if you want your eCommerce store to connect with your target audience, use customer surveys, online customer reviews, or emails to learn how and what they think of your brand.
Create a VoC plan that allows you to fully utilise Instagram. So, to determine the demand for a specific product or service, answer questions about your products or services transparently, respond quickly to Instagram DM enquiries, conduct Q&A and AMA sessions, watch brand mentions, and experiment with freebies.
✽ Inconsistency
Consistency improves familiarity with a company. If you are a new eCommerce business owner, you should understand that being visible and predictable assists your users to become accustomed to your message. Consistency helps your message to align with your sales.
✽ Match Online Sales Efforts
Being present on Instagram implies receiving a high volume of product-related DMs, depending on your client demographics. It makes sense to have virtual assistants working shifts to handle enquiries as soon as they are posted because conversions drop substantially if they are not responded to right away.
✽ The Right Metrics
Posting on Instagram at random will result in poor brand recall. A chaotic feed will simply generate clutter in the eyes of your prospects, causing them to leave your page before you can promote your offerings.
Chasing likes is an incorrect statistic because it does not reflect the relevancy of your message to your target audience. You could utilise all of your industry's hashtags, but they will clog your reader's timeline rather than give value.
When you routinely post at a certain time, tracking common inquiries and pitching your items as a solution is simple. You are not actively promoting your items in this manner. Instead, you're providing a chance for your prospects to see that you care about their challenges and that your solutions are well-positioned.
✽ Excessiveness
Reels are short videos posted on Instagram that are comparable to the TikTok style of video. Packing too much onto one Reel makes it harder for the reader to rapidly assess your message, encouraging them to skip to the next one. Instead, strive to create a single message that addresses a specific user's pain point and how you can assist.
Determine the optimal lighting circumstances, as Instagram prefers videos with a high resolution, suitable lighting, and relevant messaging.
Another thing to avoid is employing too much text. Try including as little text as possible in your Reels. Over other reels, videos with an audio track, pixel understanding, and entire frames are preferable. Making them a part of your Reels gives them more visibility than those that don't have any of these aspects.
✽ Content Quality
Using VoC and brand guidelines, keep it light and give entertaining facts about your company or a behind-the-scenes look at your product or service. By doing so, you humanise your brand and make it easier to develop interaction.
Ignoring user-generated content alienates your audience from your message. When you employ user-generated content in Instagram Stories, for example, you may include reposts from other users, giving your business more authenticity and trust.
✽ Clear Audience Identity
As a new business owner, define your audience on Instagram and position your company. Understand the appropriate demographic age, geography, and other factors that can assist you in reaching your target audience. Then, customise your material for your intended audience. Track your performance with Instagram Insights. Use @mentions for major accounts in an authentic approach — this makes it simple to reach a broader audience that is similar to your own.
✽ Exaggerations
Use product photographs or personal branding photos taken in natural light. This depicts your eCommerce business nicely and indicates that it is concerned with providing a high-quality service or product to the user. Keep in mind that product descriptions should not over-promise and under-deliver. Instead, concentrate on product content so that you accurately describe what someone will receive if they decide to purchase something from your site.
✽ Persuasiveness
Use psychology-based techniques to narrow your emphasis on enhancing your product-focused copy. Choose the most effective benefit-focused strategy for converting inactive users into active buyers. Keep them interested by employing sensory phrases that interact with a diverse spectrum of consumers in various ways. This aligns your message with the user's thoughts and primes them for future sales.
✽ Clear Objectives In Videos
Making Instagram videos can bring you a specific set of followers, but they are unlikely to convert into sales because they are not your intended demographic. Without clear goals, you will waste a lot of time and money on inconsistencies that do not result in increased sales.
Instead, make a detailed plan for each video. Determine whether your ultimate purpose is to gather fans, share product information, or provide exciting sneak peeks. Remember to repurpose your end goal once you've determined it.
✽ Repurposing Content
If you don't repurpose your videos, you're passing up an opportunity to reach out to a new audience and wasting a lot of time starting over each time. Instead, repurpose your movies so that your material gets shared in a new way.
On IGTV, use YouTube videos. Use suitable tools to resize it for the platform, and you're ready to repurpose material rapidly. If necessary, consider changing your message to better suit the new audience.
✽ Video Captions
Video captions are frequently overlooked while being the most useful asset. It enables viewers to watch videos in a sound-sensitive environment, making the content easier to consume. It also draws an audience that is unfamiliar with your language.
✽ No Audience Engagement
Ignoring messages on your postings can leave your viewers feeling disappointed. A non-responsive ad also indicates that you are unwilling to interact with your audience, allowing them to go on to a competitor who may drive greater interaction.
✽ No Plan
Instagram allows marketers to communicate their narrative through images, video clips, live videos, and Stories, but with so many features, it might be tempting to generate content for every potential post and hope that it's compelling.
Instagram is ideal for showcasing products in real-life situations, showing the progression of something through photos over time (such as the construction of a vehicle, the making of a new record, showing a new office space from empty to furnished and functional, or a new or favourite recipe from ingredients to the plated final product), or even answering frequently asked questions through short video clips or Instagram Live.
Yes, the possibilities on Instagram are nearly infinite, but like with any other kind of digital marketing, you'll want to set goals early on and devise a strategy to help you achieve them.
Whether you're using Instagram to raise brand awareness, promote a new product line, or bring a human element to your company, each piece of content you post should add value and help you achieve your goals.
✽ Purchasing Followers
Stop if you're even thinking of buying followers or engagements. For years, the network has been cracking down on bogus and spam accounts, and they're getting rid of them in droves.
"Companies that use social media are astute. Whether it's Twitter deleting bots or TikTok shadow-banning people, social media businesses are adept at detecting fakes. And here's the thing: your audience can, too "Hendrickson elucidates.
"A large paid follower account will not satisfy your brand's initial purpose of being on Instagram," Hendrickson argues. "It can be harmful to them. Do those bought followers assist your genuine audience in developing a connection for your brand? Is it causing people to look to your brand for value? Does it make them believe you?"
"In the end, all these purchases accomplish is make your audience wonder why the likes on a post are so low while you have so many followers," Hendrickson says.
✽ Retention, Not Acquisition
Instagram users are engaged, and they consume and enjoy branded material at a high rate. The social network continues to provide enormous prospects for brand growth. An engaged following now, however, does not guarantee an engaged following tomorrow. The way you interact with and leverage your Instagram following might spell the difference between success and failure on the social network.
Your audience is one of the simplest and most effective methods to offset the increased expenses required to develop a successful Instagram presence. Instagram, perhaps more than any other social network, is the ideal platform for promoting user-generated content (UGC). Instagram is the ideal medium for developing genuine interactions with real people, whether you're hosting a photo contest or encouraging the use of a branded hashtag.
Allow your fans to promote your message, share your material, use your hashtags, and act as brand champions.
✽ Too Promotional
Is there anything more unpleasant than corporations only publishing promotional content on their social media channels? Buy this, save a lot of money, and get free shipping!
Overly promotional posts come across as selfish, lazy, and potentially nasty depending on the context. While there is a time and place for promotion, brands that succeed on Instagram are those that convey powerful and meaningful messages, visually present their culture, share great photographs and videos, and engage with their audience.
Furthermore, it's no secret that Instagram is controlled by Facebook. If you recall, Facebook announced a News Feed upgrade in November 2014, announcing significant losses in organic reach for promotional posts.
Pro-tip: Don't be so gaudy on Instagram.
✽ Getting Hung Up On Production Quality
Because major businesses may publish high-resolution photographs and videos on Instagram, smaller brands may believe that you need a sophisticated camera or a studio to succeed. According to HubSpot's Social Media Manager Kelly Hendrickson, this is far from the case:
"Quality extends beyond the video equipment used to film or the design software used to produce. Quality is about delivering value "Hendrickson elaborates.
When you do not focus on providing content that your audience appreciates or values, they are less likely to like, share, or continue to follow you.
Consider how Instagram works for a moment. Users often browse through a single column of photographs, quickly skimming captions and glancing at photos, only slowing down and pausing when something catches their eye or piques their curiosity.
Other times, they're searching for material using hashtags, fast scrolling through Instagram Stories, or scrolling through a 3-column search grid until a photo or video catches their eye.
The more emphasis you place on the quality and worth of the content you post on Instagram, the more likely users will slow down, stop, and engage with your account and content.
✽ Hashtag Overload
Hashtags, as on other social networks, play a significant part in the discovery process on Instagram. While lesser-known brands or those with a small number of followers might utilise popular but relevant hashtags to optimise their posts, adding too many can make your brand appear spammy, desperate, or out of touch.
While a previous study suggested that marketers should utilise 11 or more of Instagram's 30 hashtags for each post, Sprout Social now believes that less is more. Using two to five relevant hashtags in a post can result in more engagements than using ten or more, according to the social media software business.
In terms of relevancy, firms should avoid overusing hashtags in an attempt to gain attention. On a network predicated on authenticity and quality, this is a surefire way to lose credibility and appear lazy.
Closing Words
Instagram has evolved from a social network renowned for selfies and food photos to a platform that marketers are using to communicate meaningful messages, tell stories, and engage with consumers on a human-to-human level in recent years.
As the network expands, we'll continue to hear about, read about, talk about, and experience directly the possibility Instagram brings to companies and marketers.
Brands that get the most out of the network are those that consistently post high-quality content with a purpose. Even brands that aren't perceived to be visually appealing are taking advantage of the network and achieving results.
The Instagram community is truly interested in engaging with these firms; in fact, they've shown a want to learn more about brands and goods after being inspired by what they're posting. However, don’t go overboard with all the posts and sticking to the average 1-2 times and no more than 3-5 times per day will be a good starting point. As with all things we write about, get out there and start doing it, and don’t forget to A/B test!
More articles please read Digital Marketing Channels: What Are They + How To Use Them + Bonus Tips
