How To Use “Instagram Live” To Bring Sales To Your E-Commerce Store

Photo by Dominik Dancs on Unsplash

Instagram, the social media goliath now owned by Facebook released its live video feature in December of 2016 to its US users. Although it has several great uses for consumers, brands still seem to be trying to figure out the right way to use the feature or even if it’s worthwhile for them to bother. I’m here to tell you that if you sell your products online in 2021, yeah, it’s absolutely worthwhile, and here's why.

1. Placement! You know how every business at some point in their timeline has tried to make an effort towards ranking higher on google search results (SEO)? When you “Go Live” on Instagram, it puts your icon with a bold red “LIVE” ribbon around it, in front of everyone else's stories a the top of the Instagram feed. That means when your followers open the Instagram app, the very first thing they see, will be your live stream icon just begging them to check it out.
2. Notifications! Every time you go live on the Instagram app, your followers will be prompted with a notification stating that you are currently live! (as long as they haven’t disabled “live” notifications) That means that even if your followers aren’t using the Instagram app when you do go live, they will be informed of it anyway! So why does that matter?

3. Engaging With Your Fans! Going live on Instagram gives you a new way to engage with your followers, whether you’re using the feature to showcase a new product, talk about a new promotion, talk about certain things the brand stands behind, or just talking with followers and answering a few questions, you’re building a more personal relationship with them that will lead them to want to associate more with the brand.

4. Collaborate with other brands and celebrities! Instagram Live has a feature where you can invite a guest to join your live! So if you’re partnering with a celebrity or another brand, you can both go live together and reach both of your followings with the same notifications and placement features! That’s a lot of eyes discovering and remembering your brand.

5. Experiment with different content! Going live gives you an opportunity to try different content ideas out that you may not have been confident about posting to your permanent feed. Showing behind-the-scenes looks at the brand, Q&A’s with the people behind the brand, even just trying something fun/different like when Buzzfeed took to Facebook Live to see how many rubber bands they could stretch around a watermelon before it broke!

To best summarize why any of this matters to your e-commerce store it’s as simple as this: The more that these consumers see your brand, the more they’ll think about it, the more they think about it, the more will come to your website for something they need or want.

Hoping you find this content useful-

Best

Andrew Fein
Founder & Marketing Director
Saturn Agency