How to Use Instagram Stories to Promote Your Products
You already know a lot about Instagram Stories, but you may be struggling with how to use, Instagram Stories as a promotional tool.
That’s what we will be guiding you through today.
Let’s bring some strategy to your Instagram Story’s game and see how to use Instagram Stories to promote your products starting with these five tips.
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1. Countdown Feature on Instagram Stories
So my first tip is to use the Countdown Feature on Instagram Stories which you’ll find on the top right-hand side of the screen under the Stickers tab.
The Countdown feature can be used in two different ways:
You can either use it to count down to a special launch, whether that’s a promotion of a new product or maybe a special offer that you may have, Or you can use it while the launch is actually live, and count down the number of hours that are remaining.
This is really powerful because it allows your audience the choice to tap on the countdown itself and subscribe to know when the countdown has finished.
Not only is this brilliant because it notifies them, but it also creates a sense of urgency, which we marketers know is a super-powerful marketing tactic.
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2. Highlight section
Tip number two on How to Use Instagram Stories to Promote Your Products. You probably already using your highlight section but do you switch it up during your promotion?
Your highlight section on your page is prime real estate.,And especially over a promotion, you’re gonna be getting a ton of new views on your profile.
Consider using the highlight section to educate your customer about your promotion, share customer feedback, and drive sales.
And yes, those are separate highlights. I don’t want you putting all this into one highlight.
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It should feel really easy for them to just click on something, get a quick rehearse of exactly what they thought they were going to look at, and then move on to the next.
I want to share some highlight topic recommendations with you but keep in mind that these do vary depending on which industry you’re in, and what business you have.
The first example of a highlight, that every business should have is:
About Us section
This should tell you everything about who you are, what you do, who you serve, and how you serve.
The second one I highly recommend are:
Testimonials
Testimonials are a great way to have social proof and anyone visiting your profile will get an immediate impression of the type of work that you do.
The third one that I recommend is to have a:
Location highlight
If you have a physical location, this is so helpful, because people want to know how to find you and where you are, where to park, things of that nature.
If you have an online business, then even having something that shows them how they can work with you, where do they have to go online.
Making it clear and straightforward as to how they can get
what they’re looking for. Another great example is to have a:
Portfolio section
So whatever it is that you sell, having it there so that people can visually see exactly what it is they will get is always going to be helpful with sales.
Another thing that you can do with your highlights is to have a section specifically devoted to your:
IGTV channel
In case you didn’t know there is a way, regardless of how many followers you have to swipe up on your stories and let people go and watch your IGTV video.
Essentially what you’re going to do is to take those stories where you’re promoting people to swipe up to your IGTV channel and you’re gonna put them all into one highlight so that people can very quickly and easily just browse through your stories to see which IGTV video they’d like to go and see and they can swipe up to be taken directly to that video.
Last but not least having a highlight that talks all about your promotion and very clearly explains what the promotion is what they get, is there a discount, how long does it last.
The third tip is all about creating Social Proof using:
3. Instagram Stories
What I want you to do, is host a giveaway. Encourage your customers to post a testimonial to their Instagram Stories where they tag you and in return, they are entered into a one hundred dollar Amazon gift card.
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What this is going to result in is tons of your customers actually creating stories, where they are talking about why they love your product, and in return, you’re then able to repost those stories to your story which generates more excitement and more momentum during your promotion.
My fourth tip is for those viewers, who are:
4. Selling a limited number of your product or service
What I’m going to ask you to do is to go on Instagram Stories and essentially you’re going to post a grid from one to 20 if you’re selling 20 and let your audience know that every few hours you’re going be updating them letting them know how many have sold.
Let’s say that you sold 15 in the first hour you will mark out all 15 to signify to them that 15 have been sold.
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This creates a sense of urgency, it creates a sense of scarcity and it also creates a sense of social proof.,My fifth tip is to:
5. Go live during your promotion
I want you to use the Stickers feature on Instagram Stories which you can find on the top right-hand side of the screen.
Tap on Questions and what I want you to do is prompt your audience to ask you a question about your promotion. From there you’re going to leave it for up to 24 hours.
Then you will go live and when you do, on the bottom right-hand side of the screen you will see a little Questions box.
You tap on the Question box all of the questions your audience has asked you in that question sticker are going to populate the bottom of your screen.
You will select the question that you want to reply to, it’s then going to pup-up on all of your viewer’s Instagram live interface giving you the opportunity to answer everyone’s question so that they are then closer to the sale.
If you wait for more than 24 hours and then go live to try and answer those questions they will not be available for you.
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Bonus: common business mistakes
The next step I wanna share with you, are the common business mistakes.
The first one is a lack of context. I hate looking at a business’s Instagram story and they’re sharing something that clearly means something to them but they give zero context.
And it’s like, “What am I looking at? I have no idea.” So try to remember that your audience is not watching everything that you do.
They don’t always know who you are, they may have followed you on a whim one day. You wanna make sure that you’re bringing them along, telling a story, and keeping
everything in context.
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The second common mistake that I see businesses making is that they are not personal enough. They’re keeping everything so formal.
We definitely do want to let people into who we are what we do as a team, as a business, and you know those Corky little personal details are often what makes people want to keep following along with the story.
So do not shy away from those more personal shares.
The third common mistake businesses make in their stories is that they are too self-promotional.
You want to have content in there that’s valuable that people are actually walking away with feelings like, “Wow, I learned something.”, Or this was beneficial, or educational, funny, inspiring.
Do not always be promoting all of the great things that have happened or testimonials.
Switch it up, a good ratio is like 80 to 20.,80% high-value content, and 20% promotional because trust me the last thing that you want to do is train your audience to swipe every single time they see your stories.
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The fourth mistake businesses are making on Instagram Stories is that they are not putting themselves in the shoes of their audience.
They are not thinking about how their viewers are consuming their content. Are your viewers listening silently? If they are, then you should consider captioning.
Lots of people are just tapping though they’re not really looking at what’s happening.
So how do you create something that’s visually appealing that’s going to get people to stop and actually want to consume the content?
Is it possible for you to maybe even mix up the content that you’re creating whether it’s images and videos and just trying to make it as varied as possible to increase the likelihood that your audience is actually going to engage with your content?
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And the last mistake I see businesses making is that they are not listening to what their audience wants.
You need to learn how to navigate your insights and get feedback from your customers so that you know exactly what it is that they’re looking for.
Have fun and good luck with your endeavors. Check out this amazing Instagram automation software.
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