Instagram Shopping & Small Businesses! Part One

Online shopping has seen an incredible rise over the last few years, throughout the pandemic, and it is still finding new markets every day to flourish and grow. In this two-part blog, we are going to be talking about shopping on Instagram and the many benefits it can offer you as a small business owner! 

Hello, Summerville! Spring has never looked more beautiful on you! It's been amazing to see our little town come to life and open its doors as the flowers and trees are blooming like crazy. It's been our pleasure to get back to spending time with our community and enjoying our favorite spots around town! Today we are celebrating you, Summerville, and you, reader, who we are so glad found us today! If you've found yourself here on the Creative Consulting blog, it's most likely that you are here to learn more about the media marketing world, a little bit more about your business, or how to improve your growing small business every day! You've come to the right place! Here you will learn, read, and enjoy all of this and more! 

We are here to help you add a website and branding design, SEO, social media management, marketing analysis and consulting to your company, your workflow, and your everyday life. We offer each of these services to our clients and we also talk about them right here on this blog. Welcome! Enjoy everything you see and find here! If you have any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to reach out or comment below. We want to hear from you! Today we are going to be continuing with more new and exciting things happening out there in the business world to help you grow and maybe even learn something new and exciting today! Today we are going to be talking about Instagram shopping! 

What Is Instagram Shopping? 
Online shopping has defined the last decade on the internet. With the boom of Amazon and how easy it is, and getting exactly what you want and when you want it without having to leave your house has become the new normal. Online shopping has solidified itself as the most common way to get all of your shopping done, no matter what you're shopping for. With Instagram shopping, it's taking the whole idea of online shopping, and its ease to a whole new level with an additional boost. Instagram users have turned to the app to discover more about the products they love and to discover more new and exciting items that they didn't know existed. When they saw something in the past that caught their eye or interested them, they would go to every link to find out more about the product and how to buy it. It's been a series of clicks, traveling to an app or website outside of Instagram, and digging through the said website until they find exactly what they're looking for. All up until now. With Instagram shopping, all of these extra steps have been eliminated and shopping overall for businesses of all sizes has just gotten easier. There are multiple new resources that Instagram has implemented and is now offering to both retailers and consumers alike, you just have to know how to become eligible, how to use these resources, and how to enjoy them. 

Overall, Instagram shopping, in its own words is "a set of features across Instagram that lets people shop your photos and videos no matter where they are in the app". It's taking window shopping to the next level and putting it right into your hands. Not only that, but Instagram created and designed each of these new features so they match and reflect how Instagram users already use the app. In no time at all, these new features will feel very natural as you scroll through Instagram. Here's every step that you need to know, all from Instagram itself. 

• Shops - overall a shop on Instagram is an app online storefront that allows business owners to customize as they wish. This allows consumers to show their products right from their profile pages. 
• Product tags - have you been scrolling through our Instagram feed and you pass a branded photo that catches your eye and all of a sudden clickable boxes appear that allow you to see more information about the product and to view more products from that particular company? That is a product tag! These tags let businesses highlight products in their stories and on their feed that allow people to learn about them faster and connect with them quicker to the products they want to know more about. U.S businesses have the opportunity to highlight even more products in post captions and in their bios with Product Mentions if they are using the checkout option on the app. 
• Instagram shop - in the search area, Instagram now allows you to search for shops. Suggestions will be made based on your likes within the app or you can directly search for a product or company within this new option. Once you've found a product within the shop, you can purchase it right there within the app. This search option allows people to discover products and brands across all of Instagram. 
• Collections - business owners now have the option to optimize within their shop to curate their products into groups and themes for ease of organization and to help their customers. 
• Product Detail Page - within the app itself, these pages created by shop owners give in-depth and detailed descriptions about a product. They put in all media when the product is tagged across Instagram allowing the user to see the product in different ways. 
• Ads With Product Tags - take your advertising to the next level, You will be catching your target audience's eye with the ad and allowing them to click on it and buy a product right away. This eliminates any second-guessing about whether or not they want the product and the time they could take themselves out of buying something. These tags can drive users to a website or take them directly to checkout in the app. 
• Shopping from Creators - this takes influencers to the next level. Love a look or a set of products that a creator has shared on their feed? With this addition, it allows users to shop that exactly look or items without having to leave Instagram and search for each product. 
• Product Launches & Live Shopping - These new features allow you to announce, count down, and release your products with and directly to interested buyers right in the app.

How To Become Eligible for Instagram Shopping
All these perks sound incredible, right? It's because they are! Small business owners are you interested in adding these features to your professional Instagram page? Here is what you need to do to become eligible! This is a seven-step process, so make sure to read below and follow along before you get ready to go after your Instagram shop! 

• Eligibility - You have to be located in a supported market, you have to have an eligible product, you have to comply with Instagram's merchant agreement and consumer policies, and you must own a website where you sell your products from. 
• Your Instagram account must be a business account or creator account, so if it's not already, go through the steps to make the switch! 
• You need to connect your Instagram to your Facebook business page. 
• Next, you will need to upload a product catalog to your account. you can either do it yourself through the catalog manager or do it through one of Instagram's platform partners like Shopify. 
• Once you've connected to a product catalog and uploaded your products, you will need to submit your new account for review, which can take a few days. You will be notified if you're missing anything or if anything looks out of place. 
• Once you get the green light from Instagram that your account is good to go, you can go ahead and turn on your shopping features! 
• Finally, once you've made it this far, you are now able to use product tags, which will allow you to highlight products in your videos and photos in your feed and stories! You're ready to go and get to selling! This will take your products and business to the next level with ease and within an incredibly popular app. 

How excited are you about Instagram shopping? As we've been doing our research, the more we are exploring within the app ourselves and it's a fantastic addition to the platform overall, and we are excited to see where it goes next! Tune in next time for part two of our blog sharing more important and vital information about Instagram Shopping and its benefits for small business owners!