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The first question that pops up is “Why are we even creating a strategy to use Instagram stories for business?”
Well, it’s 500 million daily active users makes it the most preferred tool to promote products and the most highlighting part is that 62% of people say that they have become more interested in a brand after seeing it in their Instagram Story. So, why not!
Statistics say that 4 million brands use Instagram stories to advertise their products. Having known all the demographics that points towards the need for Instagram stories, let us understand how to use Instagram stories to promote your products.
What Are Instagram Stories?
A short snapshot on Instagram that disappears after 24 hours is an Instagram story. This very own feature of Instagram appears at the top of the home page and can be viewed in chronological order.
It has proved to be quite a beneficial feature for all the brands and marketers as it provides them with an option to expand the brand exposure to a large-scale audience. The exciting filters along with elements such as emojis, gifs, polls, music, etc. make it the perfect choice for the brands to promote their products.
Ways To Use Instagram Stories To Promote Products
1. Use Instagram Stories To Make Announcements Using Countdown Feature
Instagram stories are a great way to announce any updates related to brands such as offers, flash sales, new products, etc. Using the countdown feature, brands can generate curiosity in the minds of Instagram users about the new update, feature, or product. This is a brilliant opportunity to convey awareness about your brand and provoke desire in customers.
By tapping on the countdown sticker, the audience will have an option to turn on the reminder to get the notification when the countdown will be over. This countdown feature not only helps your brand promote the product before its launch but also creates a sense of urgency in the customers.
2. Create Highlights Of Your Instagram Stories
Instagram highlights are a perfect way to educate the customers about your brand during the promotion of your brand. At the time of promotion, there are many views on the profile and highlights are the main spot of your profile where the customers stay for a while.
It is important to create separate highlights for different aspects of promotion so that customers can easily get what they are seeking. Brands can display their information, customer feedback, their products, location, client diaries, etc. in the highlight section of their profile.
3. Use Polls To Understand The Interests Of Your Customers
Same as the voting procedure where we can choose what we are interested in, Instagram Polls allow the users to choose between two options the best-suited option for them.
This helps the brands to understand the preferences of their customers and Instagram followers in a better way. While promoting the products, brands can know the interest of their customers in the product and learn from the negative polls.
4. Communicate scarcity using Instagram Stories
People tend to buy products that are of the limited edition or the products in limited stock. They find the product more attractive in such situations and tend to buy products straight away.
Let the audience know the number of products left, or the number of hours left for the sale to end. This will help the brands to communicate the scarcity of the products and generate urgency in the minds of the people to buy the product. It will also display social proof of your product.
5. Encourage Engagement With Reaction Slider
A fun element of the Instagram stories, the reaction slider allows the users to respond to the content of the story. It helps the brand to boost engagement and know-how connecting the content is and how much does it engage the users.
This feature is mostly used by the brands to know how much people like the product, what are their reviews, ratings, and how well does it align with their needs. It is therefore an amazing tactic used by the brand to boost the engagement of their product promotion via Instagram stories.
6. Add Links To Your Shoppable Gallery
One of the most amazing ways to promote your products using Instagram stories is by adding links to your shoppable gallery on the story. This will help your brand promote the products in an exciting and exquisite way.
It increases the discoverability of the promoted products and offers the customers the option to shop directly the product by clicking on the link displayed in the Instagram story.
7. Embed Instagram Stories On Website
To promote the products to a large scale audience, it is better to display them on a website. How?
Simple, embed Instagram stories on websites using a social media aggregator tool and your job is done.
It will not only boost your website engagement but will also connect your professional audience with your social presence. It allows you to boost the promotion of your products beyond Instagram and will encourage the engagement of your audience to a great extent.
8. Go Live With Questionnaire Round On Instagram
To enhance the visibility of your promotion, go live with your audience and answer the questions of your audience.
To use this, apply the question sticker on your Instagram story and ask your audience to get their queries about the product answered. After 24 hours, go live on Instagram and tap on the questions icon on the screen. You will see all the questions. All you need to do is to reply to the queries.
This increases the interaction between your brand and the audience and will boost your audience engagement with the promoted product.
Final Words
To make your Instagram stories more interactive and engaging, here are some tips that can be followed
- Provide simple yet attractive content
- Keep up with the authenticity of the content
- Provide social proof of your brand
- Listen to what your audience wants
- Try to avoid getting too much self-promotional content
Following these tips, you can enhance the activity of your Instagram stories and use them to promote your products in an exquisite way.
