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I used Instagram for Business and Doubled my Sales in One Month

  • Jeremy PageJeremy Page

instagram-for-businessIf you’re participating in the Great Online Marketing Scavenger Hunt – you know that one of the challenges is to snap a photo with Instagram – but a few people have been wondering – why Instagram? It’s a good question, and as luck would have it – we’ve got this awesome guest post about how one Internet Marketer used Instagram to double their online sales – and how you can get a little of the Instagram mojo working in your own business! (The Scavenger Hunt is over – but you can check out the results right here!)

You’re probably heard of Instagram – a photo taking and sharing application most often (it seems) used by the young and affluent to take pictures of their food and outfits with old-timey filters.

But I’d like to tell you that the service is NOT just for tech hipsters. Turns out you can turn a pretty impressive profit using tactful Instagram for your business and really thrive in the 15-30 year-old retail space.

And with every marketer and their dog raving about Pinterest for their eCommerce strategy, I have seen three times the results using Instagram for my retail business.

At a high level, Instagram works by allowing users to take and upload pictures, and then “tag” them so that other users can find and interact with them. Pretty simple right?

There are plenty of different ways to use Instagram to get clients, increase traffic and increase sales – but I’m going to focus on one or two particular techniques that made the most difference for me in my business.

Sound interesting? Listen up…

Part One: Instagram Outreach Made Simple & Effective

The first thing to do when you sign up for Instagram is to choose a username and picture that will represent your business well. It sounds obvious, but this is the only thing people will associate you with when you first get started – getting traffic back to your main blog or website isn’t something that will happen right away – so you need to choose a name and image that are highly reflective of what you’re doing, and will appeal to the people you want to connect with.

Then get started on building a following by interacting with other users through liking, sharing and commenting on their photos. Search for people who are in industries related to yours, who will have overlapping target customers.

Let show you how that might work:

I have a simple website that sells a t-shirt and hoodie referencing a very niche hip-hop artist, J Cole. I get a lot of traffic based on specific searches through Google and other search engines from that term- so I will search for it in Instagram with the hashtag #jcole to immediately connect with people who are interested in this artist.

If you have more of an audience based business, use a hashtag of a term that will mean a lot to your readers, is an issue they talk about frequently, or concerns a problem they need to have solved. For “hashtag inspiration,” check out Top-Hashtag.com – it has a pretty comprehensive (and searchable!) list of hashtags that you can browse to find relevant ones.

Now, you find images tagged with your keyword by going to the ‘Explore’ tab inside the Instagram app on your iPhone and search for #YOURKEYWORD.

PIC 1

This is what a results page will look like when you search for a hashtag – you can go through each picture to follow the original poster, and make interesting comments.

There are thousands of people that have posted pictures on Instagram that have included my hashtag – and you will likely find the same thing.

Go through the pictures one by one, and “follow” the person who posted it, and make a funny, insightful or otherwise meaningful comment on each picture. This increases the chance of getting a follow-back substantially.

Next, go through the pictures again and follow every person who “liked” it. This is a hugely important and powerful step! That person was interested enough in your topic to interact with a photo about it – that means they will be very likely to interact with photos that you post!

Now – a note about my particular hashtag. Some people will say: “Jeremy, why don’t you just go straight to J Cole’s instagram (which has over 100K followers) and start following all of them?”

Simple: If I am going to take time to follow and engage with people, I only want to concentrate on users who liked or commented on something related to J Cole. I have found that those are the most probable buyers. There will be a lot of casual (or worse, inactive) people that followed his main account. Those aren’t buyers. For you – this means not worrying about following the biggest authorities in your niche, or the most popular products, but rather the people who engaged with them. 

Now, after I have followed about 1,000 users, (I said this was effective, remember – not super-speedy!) I cut back on the following and do more commenting. This keeps your follower/following ratio more balanced, and gives your profile more authority. (We all have seen that Twitter account with 7k followers but following 25k accounts – they instantly lose credibility.)

To keep your ratio balanced comment, rather than follow if you’re following more than you are being followed. Remember – as with any social media platform engagement and credibility are highly important.

This sounds like a long, drawn-out process, I know – but keep in mind that these are simple things you can do while you are waiting in the grocery line or pumping gas. It doesn’t take much brainpower, but with time, will deliver results.

Part Two: Your Instagram Content

This part might shock you.

I spend about 5 minutes a week putting up content on Instagram.

That’s right. 5 minutes.

I post about 4-5 times a week on my account and it takes about a minute each time to choose and upload a picture.

First, do the same type explore search that I explained before. Then, choose a recent picture that is either funny, amusing or sexy, and comment on the photo: “Great picture – mind if I repost it for my followers?” Nine times out of ten, the user will say: “Sure thing!” and then you take a screenshot of the image and upload it to your account (with a link back to the original user in the description). Finally, using hashtags to accompany the picture, which makes it easily searchable.

Simple. It takes about a minute and a half all together.

You will be tempted to just blast pictures of your products on Instagram. Don’t do this. Never blatantly throw your product on your Instagram account – this is about building relationships.

PIC 2

Notice the number of relevant hashtags – this is what will make your content searchable.

The best case scenario is when you can find, and get permission to use a photo of someone using your product or doing something directly related to your service. When you post these images, people will often ask: “Where can I get this?” or “How do I do this?” Then link to your product and service pages for all you’re worth! This is really your end goal.

How does one inadvertently sell their product? Sell the lifestyle and benefits associated with it.

To reiterate: you want to be posting content that is associated with what you are selling more often than you post pictures of what you are actually selling. For example, I will repost a picture of a woman wearing the apparel I sell, but say something like “Shout out to the Dreamville girls out there”, instead of the shameless plug: “Dreamville Hoodie is on sale now till Friday”.

(It would shock you how often young people post pictures of things they buy – it’s unreal.)

This is called attraction marketing. You aren’t blatantly selling anything. But you are still inadvertently – and hypnotically – selling them 24/7 through the content.

Additional resources:

Instagram Marketing: Examining the Numbers

Now let’s look at the data. I am results driven, and hate to spend time on endeavours that don’t pay off!

So let’s look at some of my results:

1740 followers in just a few months of casual reaching out on my part. And these aren’t random followers – these are real people who are incredibly interested in what I’m selling.

My latest uploads are averaging 250-275 likes per photo. Folks, that is one ‘like’ per 4 or 5 followers. I have yet to see this ratio of engagement on any other platform – and it translates into sales!

My sales nearly doubled from November to December in 2012. $1150 to $2100, or about a 46% increase, and all of this from using the principles of attraction marketing and engagement to get my product in front of the right people, in an environment they like at the right time.

Not too shabby for a free platform.

So take advantage of Instagram for your business while it’s still a marketing dark horse. It’s primarily a social platform – and I’m not saying we should try to turn it into an “all sales, all the time” kind of venue – you can find people who are interested in what they’re doing, build a relationship through sharing content that matters to you, and turn that into a profitable and pleasant transaction.

As the great Bill Walton recently said while commentating a basketball game:

“The fate of the known world is in the balance here…who wants it?”

I ask the same question…Who will capitalize on Instagram this year?

Who wants it?

35 thoughts on I used Instagram for Business and Doubled my Sales in One Month

Jean Givan

Excellent/relevant article. I can see why you’re successful, especially when I see your responses.

Jane Frankland

What a great article on Instagram. I have an account but really I’m just using this for personal reasons, as it’s fun. Now I’ll think about using it for business. Will be sharing & testing.

C. Lee Reed

I have tried to sign up on my PC, don’t use smart phone, and it tells me they aren’t registering at this time. Any other suggestions?

Tara looking for leads

I just really really wish that I could access instagram online. I know it’s part of the “coolness” of the platform, but it’s so difficult and I don’t want to have to buy an ipad just to use instagram.

Ann Marie Thomas

This post certainly made Instagram more appealing, but I am trying to attract readers for my book (s). I don’t see how I can apply your very good advice when I’m not selling a product. But I do need all the help I can get.

COLmitchellPAPERartist

Ann Marie, you should check out Cynthia Morris http://www.originalimpulse.com/
Not use if she uses instagram, but she does use visuals to promote her book. She has shots of her book in all sorts of settings.
Maybe she will inspire you. (Even if its not for Instagram)
🙂
COLmitchellPAPERartist

TwickZwick

Interesting – but I’m still trying to wrap my head around how Instagram can help someone who is not selling a product, but a service. Unless I’m posting pics of the things that inspire my writing, there’s not much attraction there – no physical merchandise. Ideas? Thoughts? Direction? Does it still make sense to use Instagram?

Great Online Marketing Scavenger Hunt – General #1: Comment on a Firepole Marketing Blog Post

Elizabeth Saunders

Nice, actionable post – I tried to sign up for Instagram right away. But…I guess you have to have a smart phone?

Jeremy, what did you mean by “really thrive in the 15-30 year-old retail space”? Is that an age demographic?

Lynn U. Berman

Just signed up for instragram! Your post definitely resonated and am hoping it can help us raise awareness about individuals with developmental disabilities.

Firepole Marketing Great Scavenger Hunt General 1 – Comment on FPM Blog Post 03-03-2013

#FPMScavHunt

Jeremy Page

Awesome

stan

Can I use Instragram without an iphone?

COLmitchellPAPERartist

Did this post ever take me on a journey! I had to check out google analytics to see how people are trying to find me/possible connections to search terms, discovered I needed to update meta tags on my website, then headed to iphone to change my photo image so that it related to my work, back to website to figure out that yes indeed you meant screen shot/reshare to be done via computer. I have just started using Instagram as I find it the easiest way to informally share work in progress in the studio. I am using it to post to my FB biz page, as sharing directly to FB from iphone is cumbersome in comparison. Your post is very timely, and I so appreciate this direction on using Instagram properly for business. Thank you! – Col

Jeremy Page

Your welcome!

Michele B.

I’ve been reluctant to add Instagram to my social media marketing mix for a couple of reasons: 1) Instagram seems better suited to those offering products rather than services and 2) Everything takes “only a minute” in social media but when you have to maintain so many accounts the time adds up. Has anyone commenting here found an effective way to manage all of the social media relationship building?

Jeremy Page

Definitely a better fit with a product, but there are a lot of services that would do well with it.

Amandah

Unfortunately, I can’t use Instagram because I don’t have an iPhone, Android, etc. Hopefully, they’ll make an app for BlackBerry. Then again, my sister has an iPad, maybe I can borrow it and download the app. Hmm…

Kat

I just spend an hour browsing Instagram. And it just doesn’t make sense. My target group are coaches who are building their own business. I looked for #marketing #coachingbusiness #businesssuccess #smallbusiness #life coaching #businesscoaching and none of the people who showed up seemed to be relevant at all to what I am doing. My impression: It is much more for products than for intangibles, much more for consumers than for B2B. Am I doing something wrong? Do I have a knot in my brain?

Jeremy Page

If I was a successful business coach, I would sell my lifestyle on IG. Post pictures of my travels, projects, etc and that would intrigue people to inquire about my profession.

Kat

Yes, I get it! Instagram is much less specific in terms of conveying a business message when you don’t have a tangible product. I can post happy seminar participants, …
Thanks!
What gets tricky is to find people who match my target audience… we’ll see…

Ben Aitken (NTF)

Superb post! Time to get looking into the world of Instagram and finding how best to work it for my website. I’ll be honest I did just think it was for people posting of what they are having for lunch! Time to think again….

It is coming up to the peak time in my line of work (UK Horseracing) and there is sure to be (literally!) thousands of race-goers posting on Instagram.

Cheers – Ben (NTF)

Jeremy Page

Ben – horseracing would be a supurb niche on IG, get after it bro!

Kaelin

This is such a helpful post! I have to admit I’ve been struggling to wrap my brain around Instagram, and this gives me all kinds of insights. Thank you Jeremy for your post!

Instagram definitely just hit the top of my project list this week!

Jeremy Page

Thank you very much, Kaelin. Get started on it — Instagram is a big opportunity this year.

Kelly Marshall

Great article on Instagram, I had never heard of it. I’ve tucked it away for further reference and will be using Instagram from now on.

Mike Kawula

Extremely actionable steps and great post. Project for this week, thanks!

Edward

I have a new respect for what Instagram can be and do for a business with a product or service that targets the 15-30 market. Using the law of give more to get more is a great strategy on all fronts and platforms. Thanks for sharing.

Mirel

Wow, just yesterday I was trying to set up an account, and now here you are with ideas of how to use it. Sounds doable to me, thank you for sharing!

Arla DeField - SayingNoWithoutFeelingGuilty.com

I appreciate a this well thought out way to use Instagram for business. I have heard from marketing friends, “Oh, you have to use this (fill in the blank, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or whatever). It is challenging to see what the benefits are, how to create engagement and return on time investment sometimes.

Jeremy Page

Arla – I specifically designed the post so people can get a good return on their time investment.

Kathleen

How timely of you to post this. I recently joined Instagram and have been trying to figure out how to use it to promote my blogs/businesses and not just post cute photos of my kids. This makes perfect sense!

Jeremy Page

Get after it, Kathleen! Let us know how it goes.

Jennifer Cunningham

That’s a great idea to use instagram to build followers. The pictures will also give another way to post.

Jeremy Page

Jennifer, thanks for commenting. The pictures are a great way to show off any business…

Comments are closed.