Are you really serious about Instagram marketing? 🤔
Do you want to utilise the platform to generate more interest and sales for your products? 💰
If yes, that’s great. You’ll learn exactly that in this article. ✅
Go ahead, bookmark this page, add it to your Pocket or do whatever you want so you can navigate back here easily. We’ll also be updating the article with any future updates Instagram release for this feature.
Table of Contents:
- Setting up your Instagram account
- Instagram Shop Eligibility and Approval
- Tag Products on Instagram
- Instagram Shop Insights
- Best Practices
Setting up your Instagram account
Before you get started with product tagging on Instagram, there are a few requirements. The first one being your Instagram account must be a Business Profile that’s associated with the appropriate Facebook Page. If you’ve not switched your account over to a business profile, follow the below steps.
Step 1: Open your Instagram app, head on over to your profile and click the burger menu icon.
Step 2: Click on “Settings” at the bottom.
Step 3: Scroll down the menu to the “Switch to Business Profile” option.
Step 4: Follow Instagram’s guide on connecting your Instagram account to your Facebook page.
Once you’ve done that, you’re ready to continue with setting up Instagram product tagging, making your Instagram shoppable.
As a quick recap you should have ticked off the following;
☑ Latest Version of Instagram
☑ Instagram Business Profile
☑ Admin on the Facebook Page
Moving on, you’ll now to need to make sure your store is eligible for the tagging products on Instagram.
Instagram Shop Eligibility and Approval
In order for your business to be approved for Instagram product tagging, you need to ensure the above is completed along with the following;
- Have a product catalog associated with a shop on your Facebook Page.
- You must sell eligible physical goods. Instagram will not allow services.
If you meet the above criteria, that’s great news. Your account will be reviewed automatically by Instagram. They’ll send you a sticky notification shortly that will inform you your account is ready for product tagging, making your Instagram shoppable.
From my experience, this shouldn’t take longer than 2 days. Usually, happens very quickly.
📌 Quick Note: If you’re using Shopify or BigCommerce, your store can easily be set-up for Facebook and Instagram product tagging. Follow their documents for a super simple set-up.
Tag Products on Instagram
Now for the fun part, Instagram product tagging! It’s very easy to get started. Once you’ve had the approval notification follow the steps below.
Step 1: Open up Instagram and head over to your profile. Click the hamburger menu icon.
Step 2: Click on “Settings” at the bottom.
Step 3: Scroll down to the “Business settings” section. Click on “Shopping”.
Step 4: Choose the correct product source. For example, if you’re using Shopify it should look something like “Products for your-shopify-name.myshopify.com”
Congrats! You’ve now enabled product tagging so your Instagram account is shoppable. Now, the next part is actually tagging your products in the photos.
That’s easy.
Go through the usual process of posting an image, when you get to the screen for writing a caption, tagging people and adding a location, you’ll be able to tag products.
Underneath the “Tag people” option, you should see “Tag Products”. Click that and then you’ll be able to tap a specific place on the image like you would when tagging people.
Once tapped, you’ll see a screen pop-up allowing you to browse for products or search for them directly. Select the desired product/s and then continue with finishing your Instagram post. Once it’s published, users will be able to click on the product tagged in the photo and then checkout via Instagram. It’s very easy!
Instagram Shop Insights
Ah, insights! Of course, us marketers that utilise this feature want to see our hard work paying off. Thankfully, Instagram made this easy for us. The shoppable feature comes equipped with metrics. Posts tagged with products collect data such as the engagement, clicks, impressions, reach, likes etc. To check your Instagram shop insights, you’ll need to open each product tagged post and click on “View Insights”.
Best Practices
Tip #1: Utilise User-Generated Content
User-generated content is known to be one of the best types of content that increases engagement and awareness, it’s also very good social proof. Resharing content that your customers have uploaded featuring your products is very simple to do.
First of all, we’d suggest asking them via a message or comment if it would be possible to re-share their picture. This is recommended as you’ll be covered and have permission from them. After all, they’ll most likely say yes – most if not everyone likes to be featured on a brand’s page in a positive way!
Once you’ve downloaded the image and ready to share it, tag your product in the post and write a catchy call-to-action. Don’t forget to mention the product tag in the caption – this will help drive more clicks and potentially sales.
Tip #2: Clear Catchy CTA
Along with having an eye-catching photo, you need to create a clear striking caption with a solid call to action that persuades the user to perform an action. Your end goal is to get a sale from the tagged product. In order to do that, you’ll need to give them instructions otherwise they may just like and potentially leave a comment if that.
Giving your audience instructions will increase the chances of them performing an action. For example, on a few of my Instagram posts, I ask questions or get other people to tag their friends. This works. For a brand, asking questions or telling the audience to do something will encourage them. For your tagged product posts, you should tell them to click the tag to find out more about the product and purchase the item if they’re interested.
Tip #3: Vary Your Posts
Whilst tagging products on Instagram photos is a great idea, don’t overdo it. If you’re tagging every single post with a product, your feed will just like too salesy and spammy with products being tagged every single time. Don’t forget to drop a few value-added content pieces. I’d say every 2-3 posts share an image with your tagged product. People don’t come to Instagram to be sold to – remember that.
Tip #4: Multiple Product Variations
If you’re like me where you’ve got a few different product variations such as the colour of the products or the sizes, consider adding those in the image too. For example, the baby octopus dog toy at Pally Paws is available in Blue, Purple and Pink. If your image is showcasing just the pink one, you might consider adding the blue and purple tags in the image too – showing the product is available in those other colours. This could increase the chances of a sale as you’re offering more options.
However, with that said, don’t go crazy. Tagging 2-3 products per one single image is a good amount. For multi-image posts, 10-15 product tags is a good amount.
Having trouble?
Not everything goes to plan, and sometimes that’s the same with tagging products on Instagram. You might run into a few issues.
If you’re struggling to tag products on your posts, that could be due to two things.
1 – You haven’t got the latest Instagram iOS or Android version.
2 – Your shop catalog needs to be properly associated with the Instagram account you connected via the Facebook Page. Depending on your e-commerce software, some offer a quick application to set-up the shop for you, such as Shopify and BigCommerce.
If Facebook rejected your product/s, they probably didn’t comply with Facebook’s commerce policies. If you believe the product should be approved and was mistakenly rejected, it is possible to appeal the decision.
For any other additional help, I’d recommend browsing the Instagram Help Center.
