10 Jun How To Sell Products On Social Media
Read time: 6 minutes
Ecommerce is no longer limited to selling products from your website. In recent years, social media platforms including Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest have introduced tools to help businesses sell products on social media. If you want to make your products more readily available to your customers, selling directly from your social media pages is the way to go. In this post, we discuss how to sell products on social media.
How to sell products on social media
Facebook may be a great platform for connecting with audiences, but its capabilities now go beyond creating a community around your brand. With the increase in popularity of buying and selling online, Facebook have introduced various tools that have changed the game for ecommerce businesses.
Facebook Shops
Facebook has recently introduced a new feature which allows businesses to sell products directly from Facebook and Instagram. With Facebook Shops, you can connect your ecommerce provider (WooCommerce, Wix or another Facebook Partner brand) and load your products onto Facebook and Instagram. Your customers can then visit your social media pages and shop from your Facebook Shops tab, rather than having to visit your website to shop your product range.
Facebook Ads and Boosts
With Facebook ads, you can target a specific audience with direct links to your website so your audience can purchase your products. There are various types of Facebook ads, some of which allow you to advertise multiple products at once and add unique links to each product. Facebook ‘Boosts’ allow you to turn a post on your Facebook page into an advertisement. Boosting your post gives you the opportunity to add a button which links to your website so your customers can easily shop if they’re interested in the product in your ad.
Nowadays, the ability to sell on Instagram goes beyond including a link to your website in your page bio. As the platform has proven a useful tool for brands to market their products with the ability to showcase them in action with images and videos, Instagram has now made it possible for users to shop as they scroll.
The Product Tag and Shop Tab
If you’re posting images of your products on Instagram, you should absolutely be using the product tag feature. Instagram gives ecommerce stores the ability to tag a product in a photo with a direct purchase link. This is a fantastic feature as it creates the potential for customers to skip the stage of the buying process where they assess similar products available from other businesses. The goal for brands is to capture the audience’s attention with an attractive image of a product and instantaneously make a sale via a product tag on the image.
Tagging products on posts will also add your posts to the ‘Shop’ tab on the Instagram Explore page. Here, users can open the tab and see products for sale that are recommended for them based on other accounts they engage with on the app. To start tagging products on your Instagram posts, you first need to be approved as a shopping account. Follow these steps to get your brand’s IG account set up for Instagram Shopping.
Instagram Stories Swipe Up
If you have over 10,000 followers on your Instagram account, you can use the ‘Swipe Up’ feature on Instagram Stories. When you post a photo or video to your Instagram Story, you can add a link which viewers can swipe up to visit. This Swipe Up feature can be used to link audiences directly to your website where they can purchase your products.
Instagram Ads
With Facebook Ads Manager, you can set up ads for Instagram. Instagram ads are great if you want to target a specific audience and direct them to your website to purchase a product. These ads can appear in the Instagram feed as sponsored posts with a link button that directs customers to your website. With Facebook Ads Manager, you can also create ads for Instagram Stories where customers can swipe up to purchase the product you’re advertising.
Many of Pinterest’s users are on the platform because they are looking to be inspired. It makes sense then to introduce a feature that allows users to purchase products they see in inspiration photos. This makes it easy for Pinterest users to shop as they are browsing. Pinners can purchase as they see products, rather than have to leave the platform to search for products on Google.
Pinterest Lens
Lens is a feature on Pinterest that allows Pinners to take a photo of something and then use that photo to search for related ideas and inspiration. With this tool, Pinners can then shop for similar items (to what appears in their image) straight from the app. For businesses, this means that if you are advertising products on Pinterest, that users can now be exposed to your ads through image search rather than keyword search. When your product image comes up in the Lens search results, Pinners can click on the relevant link and purchase the item from your website.
Social media has revolutionised the way we can sell products to our audience. Their tools are cost effective and make it possible to be specific when targeting your audience. We highly recommend selling via social media to any ecommerce based business.
Want to learn more about how to sell products on social media? We can help. With over 11 years experience in digital marketing, Redsteps can offer you expert advice around selling on social media. Send us an email or Facebook message today and our team of social media experts will guide you through the process.