Nowadays, Instagram marketing is essential to eCommerce businesses. Instagram shopping lets business profiles tag products directly in their posts so that customers and users can easily discover and engage with those products.

For businesses, Instagram shopping posts and ads effectively showcase the catalog and drive sales. It opens up lots of opportunities to promote products from brands you partner with for creators and influencers.

So, it’s time to optimize your Instagram profile for online marketing.

From creating an Instagram Shop to tagging products in your posts, you’ll be converting followers into customers in no time.

What Is Instagram Advertising?

It is a method of paying to post sponsored content to reach a wide and more targeted audience. For many reasons, Instagram advertising is often useful for increasing brand exposure, moving current leads down the funnel, website traffic, and generating new leads.

60% of users on Instagram discover new products, and 75% take action after being influenced by a post.
Just like Facebook ads, using some money behind a post will lead to more exposure for your brand, as well as more control over who can see your posts.

What is an Instagram Shop?

Instagram Shop is the latest feature developed for online sellers to create a beautiful online storefront that integrates a product catalog with your Instagram business profile. The customers or viewers can easily look at the products and even buy them through the shop now feature.

The Instagram Shopping feature has also made the marketing simple: businesses can promote products directly to shoppers via ads, posts, stories, the explore tab, and a special shop tab on the profile.

When the user wants to shop for your product, they can tap on the product tag or the product sticker in a story.
All you need to do is to add the following points on your product page:

  • Name of your product
  • Product image, description, and price
  • Link to view that product on your website

How to enable Shopping on Instagram?

Before you start:

  • Install or Update the latest version of the Instagram app.
  • You must have a business profile.
  • You must be a Page admin or Business Manager account.
  • Have a product catalog within Business Manager or a shop on Facebook.

You can only tag products on Instagram photos if they come from eligible shops and are an actual e-commerce business. With this, Instagram limits the ability to add links to Instagram posts manually.

It makes the platform highly trustworthy and makes sure the customers actually see tagged products and ultimately buy them from relevant sellers.

You can activate the Instagram shopping feature if you fulfill all the requirements by following the steps:

  • Go to your Instagram profile
  • Tap the ‘Get Started’ at the top of your profile
  • If you don’t find that, then tap the settings icon
  • Tap Products
  • Next
  • Choose a product catalog to connect to the profile
  • Done

Now you can tag products with links to Instagram posts.

How much do Instagram ads cost?

There’s not a specific answer to that. Many factors affect the cost of your Instagram ads, including:

  • ad placement
  • targeting
  • ad format
  • time of year

A better way, decide how much you want to spend or how much you’re willing to spend per result. You can do Instagram advertising with any budget.

You can also control the Instagram ads charge by setting a daily budget, a bid strategy, and a campaign spending limit.

Set up Instagram Shopping

Here are quick steps of how to set up an Instagram Shop so you can get started.

Step 1 – Eligibility

Instagram asks that you fulfill these three requirements to qualify for the feature:

  • Your businesses are in a market and are supported.
  • You sell primarily physical goods.
  • Your business complies with Instagram’s Commerce Policies and Merchant Agreement.

Step 2 – Convert your Instagram account to a business one:

After getting the business account, you will be able to add the right information like your opening hours, the address of your business, the phone number, and your website link.

Step 3 – Connect the Facebook page

  • In your business profile.
  • Select “Edit Profile”
  • In the “Public Business Information” section, click on the “Page” option.
  • Select the Facebook page that you would like to connect the profile with.
  • You can also create a Facebook page if you don’t have one.
  • You only need a Facebook Page.

Step 4 – Upload the product catalog

You can use:

  1. Catalog Manager
  2. E-commerce platform partner

Step 5 – Go through the Instagram Account Review

After all the above steps, you can submit your account for review. This process could take a few days to complete, so have patience.

Step 6 – Turn on the Shopping

Once your business account is approved, you can turn on the shopping feature. If you do not see Shopping in the settings yet, it means that either your page is still under review or that it has not been approved.

Step 7 – Start the tagging

You can add tags to highlight your product once you have enabled Shopping.

Product Tags in Posts:

Start by uploading a photo to tag products in an Instagram post and follow the instructions before posting:

Tap “Add photo.”
Add a caption
Tap on “Tag products.”
Tap on the photo.
Search for a product.
Select product.
Done & Share

Shopping Sticker in Instagram Stories:

Choose an image for your Story.
Click on the sticker icon in the top right corner.
Select the product sticker.
From your catalog, select the product that you want to highlight.
Move the product sticker where you want to highlight it.
Edit the sticker.
Share your Story

How to manage tags in Instagram posts?

After you start tagging products in your Instagram posts, Learn options to manage your products.
The steps are mentioned below how to edit and delete tagged products in an Instagram post:

  • Go to the posts you want to edit or delete
  • Click on the three dots at the top right
  • Click Edit
  • Drag the tags to move where you want
  • Or delete the tags if your want
  • Done

Remember:

If you delete or unpublish a product you’ve connected to your Instagram from the catalog, then all product tags on the Instagram posts will get removed.

Moreover, you can change the catalog in Shopping from the settings, and by doing this, the previous product tags will not get altered.

Some tricks to generate better sales:
Now you know how to set up Instagram Shopping Ads and other features. Here is a quick list of things you can do to make sure you get those sales.

  • Use high-quality product photos.
  • Focus more on the customer’s convenience and feature your products to them.
  • Look for the user-generated content, like if customers are posting about your products on social platforms, use those posts in your strategy.

How To Know When You’ve Been Approved for Instagram Shopping?

After reconnecting your Instagram account, the waiting time begins to get approved. It can take a few hours to a few days and weeks for Instagram to approve and review your account for product tagging.

If you haven’t heard back from Instagram in weeks, then reach out to Facebook and see the issue yourself.

Sometimes users still see the Not Approved screen when they go to apply for Shopping. In this case, contact Facebook for assistance. In some cases, Instagram doesn’t update properly and will stay on that screen even after completing all of the appropriate steps you need to take to get approved.

Final Words:

Now you’ve seen with this article that setting up Instagram Shopping Ads and Posts and super easy and is great for your marketing growth. Follow the steps and tips to make the most of your Instagram Shop to increase online sales and gain more engagement.

If you’re looking to increase and improve your eCommerce sales, incorporating this Instagram Shop feature is a must.