Selling on Instagram: 7 Tips from Industry Experts
Does Instagram Influence Buyer Intent?
If you compare, how many times have you preferred buying from Instagram rather than trusting an unknown online source? It’s not like being on Instagram gives surety for a business to not be a scam but you would still rather go for an Instagram purchase over purchase from an unknown site almost every time.
That is because of the authority and visibility Instagram has garnered over the years. Moreover, Instagram Marketing Agencies have also seen a steady rise in clients and customers in recent years and the future looks even brighter. Due to the emphasis on visual communication by Instagram and the simple user interface, Instagram is on its way to becoming a fully featured E-commerce platform.
According to a survey, around 72 percent of Instagram's one billion users agreed that they have bought particular stuff after seeing it on Instagram. It has actually become a go-to app for browsing and researching products and services.
Instagram has been rolling out updates to make the purchase process easier for its users. They are working on launching an update that lets you make a purchase without even leaving the app but for now, you can feature your products on Instagram Shopping and the interested people can buy them off your website.
You just have to set a catalog up and then tag them accordingly. Setting up your catalog is the hard or tricky part; it gets easier from there. Tagging your products helps to drive engagement on related posts so that it reaches the right audience.
Instagram launched a new feature for its growing business and creator community in the US, to guide the new and upcoming businesses on how to set up a business account and to give them basic know-how of its procedures.
This blog focuses on some of the tips and tricks that are tested and proposed by industry experts and can be implemented to grow your business on Instagram.
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1. Switching from a Personal Account to a Business Account
Even if you are not planning to use Instagram Shopping to promote your product but are planning on promoting or marketing your goods or services that you provide, you have to make sure that you have switched to a business account.
Switching to a business account not only lets you use features like Instagram Shopping to promote your product but also gives you access to important information like performance insights, helps you run ads, and also lets you include your contact and call to action buttons in your bio.
How to Switch from a Personal to a Business Account?
Switching to an Instagram business account is very easy. You just have to enter the hamburger menu in the Instagram app. There you tap on settings. You will see an option of account setting there. Click on it and switch to a professional profile.
2. Setting up Instagram Shopping
If you are an illustrator or a designer who sells his products via the online store, you can promote your work in stories and posts once you have switched to a business account.
How to set up Instagram Shopping?
To set up Instagram Shopping, first of all, you have to create a product catalog in Facebook Catalogue Manager. Now you must be wondering what a Facebook Catalogue Manager is? It is basically a feature in the Business Manager of Facebook which manages ad accounts and pages for influencers and businesses.
After creating the catalog, you enable product tagging. This step gets easier if you have an online store with one of Facebook's e-commerce partners like Shopify or Big Commerce. You can still do it but it's going to take a lot more time and effort since you will have to enter all the product details manually.
However, according to a lot of business owners, it really gives it a boost, a different look. It shows the hard work of the creator when the description is put manually.
What does the product detail comprise of?
With each item, there is a product description, its price, a link to your website page where this product can be ordered along with at least one good picture. Although, experts recommend putting sufficient images to cover the product details from every angle and in different situations.
Then after doing all the work, you finally submit your account for review. The review can take a couple of days.
4. Boost Engagement for Greater Exposure
Once you have set up Instagram Shopping, you will want to make sure it has a wide range of reach and is being seen by potential customers. How are you going to do that, you might wonder? Your post’s reach can be increased by boosting engagement. Although Instagram is a visual platform, hashtags and mentions play a very important role in expanding the reach of a product. It helps in engaging the audience in your product by showing posts to users with hashtags and mentions of their interest.
What Type of Hashtags is the Best to Target the Right Audience?
It is best to use a combination of both general hashtags with high posting volume and more specific hashtags that have lower volume. The general hashtags provide a higher exposure whereas the more specific hashtags receive fewer searches but help to target the most appropriate audience that is more likely to make a purchase.
What’s New in 2021: Shoppable Checkout Has Arrived, Finally
In 2021, this blog wrote that Instagram was "testing the rollout" a feature that would let users shop without leaving the app.This feature is now fully live as of 2026. Instagram Reels are shoppable seamlessly. Creators and brands to tag products directly inside Reels, and even shoppers can complete checkout wholly within the app. Thus, for UAE e-commerce brands, this eliminates the single largest gap that was present in 2021: the fall off between “I saw it on Instagram” and “I bought it.” Product tagging is now available across Reels and Stories, not just static posts, plus there’s affiliate link support so creators who sell your products can be tracked and paid directly on the platform.
What this means practically: if your Instagram Shop catalogue hasn't been updated since this blog was first written, it's worth a fresh audit. Make sure every product is tagged not just in feed posts, but in your Reels content too. That's where the volume and the sales are happening in 2026.
To sum it all up, having good business traffic on Instagram isn't only about time and money. It depends on how you manage to convince the audience that you have the best product and services by reflecting it through your page or social media platform. Hopefully, these tips will help you get a better experience doing business on Instagram.
This is going to be all for today’s blog. Please feel free to leave your feedback or queries and I will get back to you as soon as possible. Don’t forget to share the blog with your friends so that they can benefit as well. Thank you!
About The Author: Lovetto Nazareth
Lovetto Nazareth is the Founder & CEO of Prism Digital, a Dubai-based digital marketing and advertising agency he started nearly two decades ago from a laptop and a vision, as he puts it, to one of the region's established full-service agencies spanning SEO, PPC, social media, web design, and PR.
Over more than 19 years in advertising and digital marketing, Lovetto has guided thousands of campaigns across the UAE and GCC, working across sectors from real estate to hospitality to fintech. He writes and speaks on digital transformation and marketing strategy, and has contributed opinion pieces to Campaign Middle East, one of the region's leading marketing trade publications.
He takes a data-first approach to growth testing, measuring, and iterating rather than relying on guesswork and outside of work he's an adventure sports enthusiast and a singer-songwriter.
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