How to Promote Your Ecommerce Store with Instagram Videos

If you are looking for new channels to promote your eCommerce store, you should give Instagram videos a shot. There are over a billion users on the network and many of them visit it to look for products to buy. It is a great place to reach your audience. 

If you have the choice between posting videos and images on Instagram, you should publish more videos, as they drive more engagement than images. And you can also include more information in your videos. You can use this opportunity to write a better sales message. 

Creating videos for any network, not just Instagram, can seem like a complicated process. Therefore, to simplify things for you, I have written my top guide for promoting your eCommerce store with Instagram videos below:

1. Set up a proper account with Instagram video highlights 

Instagram gives you some options to set up a good profile. You can write a nice bio, add a good profile image, and create a special URL with several tools.

But these options heavily limit what you can include in your profile. This is why you should take advantage of highlights. Highlights are those round icons that appear at the bottom of the bio. If you click on them a story appears.

Highlights are actually stories that were unarchived and had an icon placed over them. They can either be videos or images. I recommend that you create more video highlights as you can include more content.

If it is an image you can just add some text over it that explains a bit. But with a video, you can add more content and a voice-over that explains things in detail. 

In your Instagram video highlights, you can share product catalogs and link to products. This can help drive traffic and sales. So, set up a really good Instagram account with a profile picture, bio, link, and highlights. 

2. Create different types of Instagram videos

Highlights are only one type of video you can create on Instagram. There are countless other types of videos you can create on this network.

They include live videos, IGTV videos, regular stories, in-feed videos, and reels. I recommend that you create all kinds of videos. This is because different users will prefer viewing different types of videos. Creating a variety will help you reach a larger audience. 

You should also be creating different types of video content. This includes top of the funnel videos (TOFU), middle of the funnel videos (MOFU), and bottom of the funnel videos (BOFU). 

The top of the funnel videos should consist of educative videos where you focus on educating your audience and not selling anything. In the middle of funnel content, you sell very subtly with case studies and tutorials and at the bottom of the funnel content, you focus on just selling.

Using all three will help you run an Instagram video marketing strategy that nurtures your audience and sells. 

3. Keep the videos short 

We are repeatedly told that providing more is the best way. So, we constantly want to write longer blog posts and create longer videos. Though, the former works, the latter doesn’t especially on Instagram. Studies show that fewer people watch longer videos. As the length of the videos increases the attention spans drop off.

So, instead of creating longer videos create short videos that get to the point quickly. If you have video content already planned, make sure you use good video editing software to reduce the video length and schedule them again. 

4. Tag products in your Instagram videos

Instagram lets you tag products in your videos. This is something all eCommerce businesses should take advantage of as you can’t share links in the description like you can on other social networks.

Most accounts ask you to click on the link in the bio. This can be a few extra steps for some people and they won’t go ahead with it. This is why you should take the tag products route offered by some eCommerce platforms if possible. This will make finding the product from the post more straightforward and will lead to more conversions. 

5. Add thumbnails

Most people will watch the video automatically play in the Instagram feed, but not everyone. As Instagram lets them turn off autoplay while on data. This is why to get these people to view your videos too, you should add thumbnails.

An attractive thumbnail in the feed will stand out and get people to click on the play button. They are very easy to create too as all you require is a good background remover and an image editor. 

The background remover can be used to take a still from the video and the image editor lets you add text and other overlays over it. This can be used to persuade people to click on the play button. 

You can also hire a graphic designer on a site like Fiverr to quickly create one for you if you don’t want to do it by yourself. 

6. Use influencer marketing

Another great technique for promoting your eCommerce store on Instagram is influencer marketing. Most people when working with influencers just get them to create images.

But now that you know that videos do better, I recommend that you get the influencer to create video content promoting your product. If they have trouble creating original video content, you can help them out. 

7. Optimize Instagram videos for mobile

Most of Instagram’s users are mobile users as they can only take advantage of the full features on the app. This is why you should make sure that your videos are optimized for mobile.

So, before you publish your video, watch it on your mobile phone and your tablet to see if it plays well and is audible. If it isn’t, make changes and test it out again. 

This extra precaution will improve your reach drastically. 

8. Use Instagram video ads

31 percent of people who watch Instagram video ads go ahead and make a purchase. So, if you aren’t already using this technique, you should start now. Ads can help you reach your audience instantly and drive sales quickly. 

Conclusion

These are the different ways to promote your eCommerce store with an Instagram video. Begin implementing them today to generate more engagement, traffic, and sales.