Grow Your Dropshipping Business Through Instagram | How To Use Instagram For Dropshipping

Dropshipping is a method for the retail of items in which the retailer does not keep stocks of products, but transfers the orders of their customers to a wholesaler, the manufacturer of the product or another retailer and the order is shipped directly to the customer from them. Dropshipping has many advantages over other business models. The most important of which is that it requires significantly less amount of money as you do not have to invest in large inventories. But to get your dropshipping business to run smoothly and grow bigger, you need to advertise and gain customers through any means possible. And currently, there is nothing better than social media for advertising. And the most popular social media platform in today's date is Instagram. So using Instagram for Dropshipping is a good idea.

Why To Use Instagram For Dropshipping?

As I already mentioned, Instagram is the most popular social media platform today. It has about 1 Billion active users per month. The majority of people on Instagram are of the age group of 25-34 years old. Instagram allows users to share photos and 1-minute videos and stories that last 24 hours with their users.  Users or businesses can also share IGTV videos that are long-length videos and also go live on their Instagram account for their followers. Paid advertisements are also available for your business on Instagram.
So, if used properly, Instagram can prove to be very valuable for your dropshipping business.

Also Read: Beginners Guide:How to Start Dropshipping Business in India

How To Use Instagram For Your Dropshipping Business

• The first thing you need to do is to create a business account on Instagram. Make full use of your bio, your username, and your profile picture to describe your business.
• Add your contact details like your email address so that people can contact you.
  Use your Bio to describe to your followers and potential customers about your business, the type of products or services that you offer, and other contact details such as your contact number or address of your shop (if any).
• After that, fill your account with posts describing your products, their price and shipment charges, and more.
• Always include relevant hashtags in your posts. Using relevant hashtags increases the traffic on your account and that in turn increases the number of customers. Also add suitable captions describing the product/s, the shipment details, the return policy, and the price of the product. Shipment details include shipment cost, countries or cities you ship to, etc.
• Use the search feature for finding your biggest competitor and keep an eye on them. Give offers and schemes so that more people are attracted to your account.
• Look out for relevant pages such as product reviewers and ask them for paid or unpaid shoutouts. Shoutouts on big accounts lead to an increase in your customers. Prepare a good post and caption for the shoutout and include hashtags and provide it to the account. Some accounts will accept paid promotions or shoutouts, others simply do a shoutout in return for a shoutout of their account on yours.
• Use advertisements by Instagram. Select the post/s that get the highest engagement and advertise them by clicking on the 'Promote' button under that post. Advertising on Instagram is a good way of attracting an audience. Your post will be visible to specific users. You can choose a specific age group or a specific gender and your sponsored posts will only appear to people in those categories. Make the post interesting, so that people view your profile and follow you.

Also Read: How To Use Instagram For Business

• Make full use of stories on Instagram. Share product links and details on stories. You also need to add relevant hashtags in stories.
  Upload the review or unboxing videos of your products. You can share 1 minute long videos as posts on Instagram. For longer videos, use the IGTV section.

• Message some of your customers to ask them about the quality and service and post its screenshots on your account's posts or stories. Make sure to keep them as highlights if you are posting them as stories because stories last for 24 hours only. This ensures new customers about your service and the quality of products and increases the chance of them ordering something from your store.
• Use Google Analytics and insights to know about the traffic on your account and the engagement of your posts. Google Analytics lets you know about the most engaging posts and types of customers you usually get. You can use this knowledge to attract more traffic to your account.
• The insights section will also show the amount of traffic generated on your account. The account insights will tell you the reach of your page, that is, the number of accounts that have seen any of your posts or stories in the past 7 days. It also tells you the interactions of your posts. Interaction simply means engagement activities such as a follow, like, or comment. It will also give you the information of your followers such as locations with the highest number of followers, the age range of your followers, and the percentage of male and female followers along with the growth of your account.

• Reply to each and every query or question by the customers. Ask them to DM (Direct Message) or email you any query and make sure to reply to each of them.

Also Read: Impact of Coronavirus outbreak on Dropshippers

Conclusion

This is the age of social media and therefore, if you want to expand your dropshipping business, you should use the power of social media. Using Instagram for dropshipping with the right strategies can help you expand your business and greatly increase the number of customers. Follow each and every one of the above steps and watch your business grow to new heights.