Currently, Instagram has more than one billion active users around the world, being one of the best sales channels for any type of company. Thanks to Instagram Shopping Brands and companies have the possibility of using a company Instagram account as a virtual showcase to be able to expose the products and thus make the followers come to your online store. For this reason, Instagram has become one of the best options within a marketing strategy to improve online business.
Configure the shopping option on Instagram
For configure the shopping option on Instagram You must comply with a series of requirements, making sure that your company is located in one of the supported markets and countries, in which the function is active to be able to carry purchases on Instagram. For this you must meet the following requirements:
- The company must sell products and items physically and not services.
- The company must comply with trade policies.
- You must have an account linked between Instagram and Facebook.
- The Instagram account must be a business account.
On the other hand, you must bear in mind that it is necessary to integrate a product catalog on Facebook, which will be necessary to start using Instagram Shopping. For this, the social network gives you the option of creating your own catalog on your Facebook fanpage or company profile, which will serve as a virtual showcase.
You should also bear in mind that this catalog can be synchronized within Instagram in order to easily sell all your items thanks to the Instagram Shopping function.
Then you must go to Ad Manager to later click on Create catalog. Next you will have to select the type of catalog that corresponds to your business and the type of physical products that you sell. At this point, Facebook will request that you add Facebook products to the catalog.
You will then have two different options, on the one hand, being able to upload product information manually or by using the feed obtained from a URL. You also have the possibility to connect to an electronic trading platform.
Once you carry out this step, you will have to add the information that corresponds to your products with the catalog, for which you can add the products, each one of them manually, a data feed through a URL or by connecting through a Facebook pixel .
In the event that you use your catalog on a frequent basis, integration through a Faebook pixel or the feed may be an option that you take into account. In the event that you choose to use the data feed You must access the next screen, where you will find other fields to fill in.
Among these fields is the programming, which will indicate the period with which you want the products in your catalog to be updated, it is advisable to always have the catalog as updated as possible, which will prevent your customers from buying a product that is really out of stock and that, therefore, you cannot serve them, with the inconvenience that this entails. In this sense, you can choose how often you want your catalog to be updated, being able to choose per hour, per day or per week, even indicating the time at which you want the automatic upload schedule of the file to be carried out.
You should also look at the data feed URL, including the link to it, being a URL that can usually be obtained directly from the store itself and that usually have an rss, xml or other similar extensions.
You also have the possibility to add a username and password if you want to offer additional protection, and then choose the name of the data feed and add the default currency in which you want the articles to appear.
Having carried out all this process, you will be able to start uploading the articles to the catalog.
Register in the app
Once you have your entire Facebook catalog linked to the Instagram account, you must access the Instagram app and activate the purchase function, then click on Configuration of our profile, after development and finally Buy on Isntagram. You will then submit your account for the Instagram review process.
When your application has been approved, you will receive a notification from the platform. To finish you must return to the configuration of your profile and click on buy, to complete the configuration and be able to start tag products on Instagram.
Once you have everything configured you can start using Instagram Shopping in the different types of publications, which may be the following options:
Posts in the feed
In the feed you can label up to 5 products. Once you have configured your Instagram Shopping you will be able to tag your products in the photos of our publications, so each time you make a publication in your company or store account you will have shopping opportunities for your followers.
Posts in the shopping carousel
Another way to make your feed more attractive to users is to tag your products in a carousel post. In them you can tag up to 20 products in a single post, so it is a good way to be able to display a full range of products or create a complete showcase for the brand.
Every time you tag products in a post, it will appear in the profile's shopping feed. When followers click on the shopping bag icon on our profile, they will be directed to the tagged products. This will make it easier to make purchases from the application itself, so it is a great opportunity for all companies.
Instagram stories
Another option is to use Instagram Stories to be able to place tagged products for sale, although in this case you can only tag a particular product.