INSTAGRAM GROWTH HACKING
DISCOVER THE SECRET INSTAGRAM FEATURE NO ONE’S USING THAT’S A GAME-CHANGER
The Ultimate Product Marketing Tool that utilizes Micro-Influencers
One topic I never see being discussed about Instagram marketing on Medium is Instagram's new(er) feature “Shopping from Creators”. It’s probably one of the biggest missed opportunities you don’t even know about. As such, I wanted to write an in-depth strategy guide on how I use this feature to get thousands of Micro-Influencers to post my “Shoppable Products” to their feed using this feature. Here’s the strategy guide below:
Growth Hacking Instagram Shopping from Creators
If you thought you knew everything there was to know about Instagram and Growth Hacking, think again. Instagram just changed the game for product marketers wanting to utilize Influencers in a much more impactful way. While most brands wanting to utilize this new feature will go after the Mega Influencers like the Kardashians, we growth hackers know there is a better and much cheaper way to leverage this new feature. Let’s dive in with a quick introduction and answer some questions that not even Instagram will disclose.
What is Instagram Shopping from Creators?
It’s basically a collaboration tool that Instagram Beta launched in 2019. It was only open to a few Influencers and larger brands. The first thing Instagram did was launch a new Account type called “Creator”. This gives Influencers access to new account features like the ability to post content from a desktop computer, better analytic insights, and direct messaging features with the ability to turn off messaging. The big new feature launched for Creators though was the ability to tag products from Brands that they wanted to Collaborate with.
For Instance, an Influencer could wear a brand’s apparel, tag the apparel with a Shoppable tag that their followers could click on, and use to purchase the apparel within the post without having to leave Instagram to complete the purchase. This is a game-changer for Brands as the old way of collaborating with Influencers required Influencers to include the brand's Instagram handle where customers then had to click on the brand's bio link, and then navigate to the product they saw in the Influencers post. This created a massive number of friction points in the customer's journey to purchase the apparel that they wanted.
The value proposition for Instagram as a platform launching this new feature is to minimize these friction points for consumers using Instagram so they have a better experience. Instagram also makes money from each sale through the required commerce account transaction fees associated with the Facebook store brands must have in order to create shoppable posts.
The “Shopping from Creators” Customer Experience
Customers will love interacting with their favorite Influencers because the experience is much more refined and easier. Influencers have a few options when collaborating with brands. The most impactful option is for the brand to offer the Influencer either free apparel to use in the post or provide high-quality product images that the Influencers can use for their post. Either way, the Influencer is able to tag products they love from the Brands catalog and post it to their feed.
GROWTH HACKING INSTAGRAM SHOPPING FROM CREATORS
This section is what you’ve been waiting for. You will discover the most effective and insane strategy for utilizing this new feature to its fullest potential. Now that Instagram Shopping from Creators is open to almost all brands and Influencers, it’s time to growth hack the crap out of it. As with all of my articles, I want you to understand the value this new feature truly offers and the scale to which you can utilize it with thousands of Influencers for a relatively small budget. Here’s what you’ll be able to do at the end of this article:
Find, Engage and Incentivize over 10,000 Instagram Creators (Influencers) to create “Shoppable Posts” for your products
Generate product sales from your creators who will then create a post with your product for greatly increased conversions
Use Gamification to minimize the number of Influencers you have to pay for creating these shoppable posts
Generate millions of high purchase intent consumer Impressions ranking these posts at the top of the Hashtag search results
Use contests to increase the number of product posts each creator generates over a 1–3 month campaign
How to Massively increase your Instagram Account Authority by incentivizing Influencer follows and post engagement
Incentivize Influencers to create product videos that you can add to your YouTube channel and drive more product discovery opportunities and monetization opportunities
Let’s Dive In!
The first thing we need to do is find Influencers who have “Creator” accounts and are also genuinely interested in your product niche. This can be accomplished using the steps below:
Step One: Facebook/Instagram Ads
The first step is to run Facebook and Instagram Ads to find Influencers who would be open to collaborating with you. This is a highly complicated process that is addressed in a guide that I wrote a few months ago. Don’t worry it’s free. Just DM me and I’ll email it to you. The basic concept is that you target Models on Instagram who are also interested in (Insert your niche here). Your ads should mention a “Spokesperson Search” with a lead form that Influencers can fill out automatically using Facebook Graph data that auto-populates the fields. This allows you to sign up Influencers for about .30 to .50 cents apiece.
Step Two: Set up Contest Software
The next step would be to set up a contest page where people enter the spokesperson contest by adding a profile picture and linking their social media accounts. If the Influencer has more than 500 Followers, they are eligible to switch their Instagram account to a “Creator” account. You will probably need to send them instructions on switching their account over.
Step Three: Add Influencers to your Instagram Business Account as Collaborators
Once the Influencers who all signed up have their accounts switched to a “Creator” account on Instagram, you will have to add them to your list of collaborators in your Instagram business account manager. You will have to add them manually which can take a while if you have thousands of Influencers you are engaging with.
Step Four: Run your campaign
Once all of your Influencers are added to your list, you can start running your campaign. Offering Influencers a $2,500 to $10,000 contract for being your spokesperson will allow you to engage thousands of Influencers without having to pay each one of them. Paying 10,000 Influencers each would cost you a fortune. Using Gamification and offering a contract to the Influencer who generates the most product sales will give you a few huge advantages listed below:
- Lowers your overall campaign cost
- Generates months of engagement from your Influencers who will keep posting multiple products on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis to generate more sales in order to win the contract and prize money
- Generates lots of ancillary benefits like new followers as Influencers can earn points by following you on social media and engaging with all of your social media posts
Maximizing your Campaigns Success
There are some things that you can do to greatly increase your campaign’s success. These are listed below with quick explanations on how to implement them.
Offer Influencers discounts on products
This has a two-edged advantage. First, Influencers can purchase your product generating revenue for your brand that can offset the cost of your campaign. Second, Influencers will be able to use your products in their post which makes their post more authentic and allows the consumer to see your product being enjoyed by people they follow. This will drastically increase conversions.
To implement this step, simply create a coupon code and send the Influencer a link to your Facebook store where they can purchase your product. Make sure the products are bought on Facebook so they have a corresponding product tag the Influencer can use when creating a shoppable post on your behalf.
Research and Utilize Hashtags on your Influencers product posts
Hashtags are a great way of finding High Purchase Intent consumers and offering them products that they can buy within the post. This will drastically increase conversion rates and generate sales beyond the Influencer's follower reach. Shopping from Creators' posts shows up at the top of the Hashtag search results because this feature is being promoted by Instagram. This means your post will outrank other posts and generate tens of thousands of impressions an hour by high purchase intent consumers.
For instance, the Hashtag “#YogaPants” generates over 250K impressions per hour, and that’s just one Hashtag. Each post should use at least 15 hashtags. This means one post can reach millions of consumers an hour. When you quantify that over 10,000 Influencer posts all using different combinations of Hashtags, your product’s visibility will be insane.
To utilize this strategy, you will need to do a lot of keyword research to find hashtags that have high purchase intent or be directly relatable to your product's niche.
Require Influencers to Follow your Social Media Accounts
This should be the first step when engaging with your Influencers. By announcing the winner of the contest via Instagram or Facebook, you can incentivize Influencers to follow you so they can be notified when the winner is announced. Once the Influencer follows you, offer them the ability to earn more points by liking, commenting on, and saving your existing and new social media posts. This increases the authority of your account by having a higher follower-to-engagement ratio.
Each time you post content to your feed after the campaign is over, it will rank better in the Hashtag search results because your account is more authoritative. This has huge benefits long term as it allows you to generate more product sales and increases the number of new followers acquired each time your post is more visible in the Hashtag search results.
Incentivize Influencers to Create Product Related Videos
Another great way to increase the value you get from utilizing Influencers is the ability to generate high-quality product-related videos. Influencers who purchased your products should be asked to create the following types of videos in order to earn even more points.
Product Unboxing Videos — These are great at increasing a consumer’s desire to buy your product and experience the joy they see your Influencers have when opening your products for the first time.
Product Review Videos — Review videos are amazing sales opportunities. Customers get to see your product being used by a real person where they can better assess what the product actually looks like and what their Influencer has to say about it.
Product Niche Videos — Another great option is to have Influencers create videos about your product's niche. If you had a Yoga Apparel brand, you could have Yoga Influencers create videos about different Yoga poses. These videos would include a segment that you create and edit into the video that talks about your products and links to them in the description.
Once you have videos submitted by Influencers, you should upload them to your brand's YouTube channel. These videos will drive new subscribers and get ranked on highly targeted keywords in YouTube search results that will attract high purchase intent consumers. These videos will drive continuous sales long after your campaign is over. They will also generate hundreds of new backlinks and help you monetize your channel once you hit 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of videos watched on your channel.
CONCLUSION
As you can see, using the Shopping from Creators feature on Instagram can be a game-changer for your brand. The ability to engage thousands of Instagram Influencers to create and post shoppable products to their feeds is awesome. When utilized correctly, the ancillary benefits of running a campaign like this can provide long-term value and a steady drip of new sales at lower and lower costs.
