The sales process is no longer as linear as it was years ago, but the Instagram eCommerce sales funnel to help reach the right audience remains the same. The process is never linear and consumers take several detours between phases because of touchpoints and product content that influence preferences and buying decisions.
What is a Sales Funnel?
A sales funnel is the journey that every consumer takes when purchasing an item. It shows the phases they go through when buying a product online or offline. Besides, it helps marketers convert prospects into buyers by understanding customer preferences and trends.
An e-commerce sales funnel gives marketers an idea of what buyers are interested in and this can make the selling process simpler. You implement better ways of selling, which can give you an edge over new competitors who are yet to learn about user preference to use the sales funnel to their advantage.
Over the years, social media platforms have become popular for building close relationships with customers to know what sells better and the changes they want to see in their future buying experiences. Among these platforms, Instagram is one of the most profitable ventures to sell products.
With 1.386 billion daily active users Instagram, among all the social media platforms, is a powerful tool for creating a high-converting e-commerce sales funnel. The app has a specific algorithm that allows potential buyers to see products they love.
With e-commerce coming into question, things have changed significantly, and the Instagram e-commerce sales funnel has become a little more elongated. The traditional sales funnel consists of four steps including awareness, interest, evaluation, and purchase.
The four-step sales funnel becomes a little longer in the case of social media marketing, and with Instagram, the case is no different.
The Instagram Sales Funnel
The Instagram sales funnel is a tad bit different from the traditional one and the additional steps ensure that consumers keep coming back for more with consistent purchases. Here are all the steps in the Instagram e-commerce sales funnel:
- Awareness: This is the stage at which the customers become aware of your brand through word-of-mouth, the Instagram algorithm, search engines, or other social media platforms.
- Interest: Consumers are interested in the products, and the content the seller generates, with catchy content and product displays, helps keep them hooked.
- Consideration: Product reviews help customers decide whether to purchase the product. To convert prospects to customers, Instagram highlights that showcase past consumer experiences are a good idea.
- Conversion or Action: After adding products to the cart, this is where customers decide to buy the products and complete the sales.
- Retention: After the first successful purchase, marketers build trust with their customers to make them return consistently to make further purchases.
- Referral or Advocacy: Use Instagram messages and other ways to communicate with your buyers to extend exciting offers to them for advocating your product.
For this funnel to be successful, there must be a solid understanding of the sales process and how each stage can be optimized for a larger buyer base. You need to know how to move the prospects through each phase to end up as a purchaser.
Some tricks and tips can help in creating an Instagram e-commerce sales funnel.
Tips to Set Up a Successful Instagram eCommerce Sales Funnel
Having a successful Instagram eCommerce sales funnel can generate high conversions and lead to an increased amount of sales. Here are a few ways to set up your Instagram sales funnel and optimize different phases of the sales funnel.
1. Awareness Stage: Enhance Awareness with Hashtags and Reels
Hashtags are one of the best organic growth and discovery tactics for brands. They are the best way to enter a customer’s for you page and search engine searches to meet the eyes of potential buyers or even casual scrollers. Combine brand-specific, location-specific, and trending hashtags and use them to grow your brand’s name by ranking on Instagram.
If you are selling a particular product, use relevant hashtags so that people know the purpose of your brand and how it can solve their issues. Longer hashtags are usually better than the shorter ones and using at least one hashtag can increase engagement rates by 29%.
Another great new way to use hashtags is with reels. Reels are the new Instagram buzzword and brands are capitalizing on them for revenue by creating different forms of short-form videos that potential customers can access with the help of hashtags.
An added advantage of making reels on Instagram is the ability to search them with the help of trending audio. Platforms like Predis.AI help churn out unique video content every day by scheduling them beforehand for a seamless video marketing process.
Experimenting with different forms and changing content repeatedly keeps customers hooked and helps them transition from one Instagram e-commerce sales funnel phase to another.
2. Interest Stage: Create Educational Tutorials and How-to Videos
When a potential customer opens an Instagram account upon discovering it, the content needs to be catchy to keep them scrolling through the account. With mindless Instagram scrolling on the increase, if a viewer does not find something helpful or new from your account, they will scroll away and move on to something more eye-catching.
Tutorials, how-to videos, and similar videos help the audience by adding value to their mindless scrolling. They understand your expertise better which builds the brand image as that of a reliable one with knowledge of their field. These videos educate users with content that they can scroll away after 90 seconds and continue their social media experience seamlessly.
Post consistently, and if required, automate your educational Instagram posts to save time and produce bulk posts for future use. Use clear visuals and add a detailed description for people who want to access the information repeatedly, as is the case with recipes and processes that require people to follow several steps.
Use proper lighting and clear captions in the videos so people can understand things clearly. Moreover, use vertical videos as they are the most common video dimension on Instagram. Use this video format to hop onto trends and use those trends with your educational videos.
These trends can entertain your audience while educating them for a fun learning process. If you offer educational or informative services like online classes or workshops, link them in the description box of videos so people can access them easily. These videos can keep the audience interested, and they remember your brand and consider investing in it.
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3. Consideration Stage: Use of Stories to Keep the Audience Hooked
Around 500 million Instagram users access Instagram stories every day. It only makes sense that companies are integrating it to keep their business pages active. Staying in the users’ minds is essential for successful brand engagement and growth.
Prospects will only consider investing in a brand if it looks responsive to them. Active pages are attractive because they show the efforts of the brands in creating a reliable reputation among customers.
Brands can also customize stories for a better shopping experience for their customers by including links to products and websites. This allows people to buy the product they are viewing immediately and make a decision faster.
You can use different content types for Instagram Stories to make them fun and memorable. Share content from other brands to build a connection with other brands and also give your audience something new to see. Share news about new campaigns and use timers to create anticipation for product launches and other events.
Use them to share product reviews and positive customer experiences to build brand reputation. Use story highlights so new scrollers can access these reviews and look at the strong base that your brand has created for itself. You can also keep the important links and deals in the highlights for easy access.
4. Conversion Stage: Use Instagram Shopping
Once users are on Instagram, they hardly want to leave the app to check products they would like to buy. Most people end up saving posts that they never come back to check. Instagram Shopping allows users to access products on the platform itself so that they get quick access and previews.
You can close sales with different Instagram Shopping tools, such as a shop tab for the business account, a shopping category for quick view and selection, and shoppable feed posts. You can now also create branded stickers for your stories to customize them and allow your users to use them in the future.
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5. Retention and Referral Stage: Reward Customers with Exciting Offers
To increase sales consistently, depending on new customers who discover your account cannot be enough. Retaining previous customers is just as important as it helps to gain new ones. New customers are always looking for customer reviews and past product experience.
Customer experience is premium in keeping consumers hooked. 39.1% of the users believe that good customer service is key in making consumers return. Keep checking messages on Instagram and respond to comment sections on the posts. Keep solving their problems so that they know that your brand is valuable to them.
Invest in customer rewards in the form of discounts and offers for loyal customers. You can notify them about some product launches beforehand as a members-only benefit. Special giveaways are a good way of leveraging new product sales and awareness.
Create newsletters and special weekly emails with small blogs or listicles of topics related to the brand. Use these emails to let users know about workshops and classes so that they can subscribe easily. These practices will build a sense of community among existing customers and keep your brand in their minds for future purchases.
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Bottom Line
Setting up a successful Instagram e-commerce sales funnel requires research to understand the shortcomings of your brand and make a deeper connection with the audience. Understanding user preferences can help significantly attract more prospects and convert them into buyers.
Understanding and utilizing the app trends in tandem with user trends can maximize sales by driving more traffic. Experiment with different trends, and if a type of content does not work for your brand, change it. Trial and error is the best way to understand what needs to change in your funnel and at which stage.
Use unique content to define your brand and represent your brand’s solutions with new ideas. Use Predis.AI today to generate content that converts and leads you to create a successful sales funnel for Instagram.
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