Facebook Audience Network: Shoppable Posts

Shoppable posts explains the direction that Instagram is taking in the future with their platform. Understanding this feature (concept) will allow you to position yourself and your business both now and in the future. It will help you focus on the quality of your offering while spreading yourself across the market without having to write a clever headline and gamble on thousands in advertising.

There is a disclaimer here that I do not work for Facebook or Instagram, please take some of this information as speculative. To help you understand my position, I am an ex-hacker/social engineering expert who has focused on reverse engineering the business models of Facebook, Google, Amazon, Tesla and other major companies. My opinions and information are built on core knowledge and information and for niche information sources, is completely factual.

The understanding for what is available should be broken down into what is available for you right now along with a play on where we see the future technology and business structure headed.

Shoppable posts can right now be implemented for your brand through your basic Instagram feed posts. To do so you need to have an active Facebook catalog with your products added to it and a business account on Instagram. You can then link your catalog to Instagram and once you’re approved you can tag your products right inside your posts.

Leveraging Influencer Marketing to bring niche refined audiences to your page will allow you to build your brands awareness. Tagging your products is simple, getting targeted traffic to your product is the hard part. Instagram now allows people to share posts from other accounts to their stories, this means that you can now leverage an influencer story post to get direct traffic to your shoppable post. Click the link above to see more information on influencer marketing.

Be aware that product restrictions are in place on both platforms, so you may want to double check and make sure that your product is allowed to be posted. Since there is often investments which follow new businesses online, I recommend checking up on what they do not allow just to feel sure about your offerings future using these methods.

Make sure that you’re showing off your product properly with high quality images. We see too often that brands leverage these new features in ways which we would never shop for things ourselves (would you really buy a lotion from a company that has a picture in a non labeled bottle with the background looking like your garage? Ps… I am a garage coder at the source but when it comes to selling product we need to dress it up a bit).

Lastly, for now you cannot run direct promotions on shoppable posts. Do not be fooled though, you can leverage posts or story promotions that send your prospect to your page. If you solve one of their needs, you shouldn’t worry about them missing your page, they’ll find their way through all that you have to offer and probably give your brand a quick google search before they buy!

Shoppable posts allow you to turn your Instagram page into a second website where your followers can be your best customers. Leverage the most used social media platform the right way and get started today while the opportunity is still fresh.

Now lets look at some deeper information. What we are anticipating being able to leverage in the coming years once Instragram continues to build more and more sophisticated advertising tools for your business to take advantage of.

One thing that is definitely coming is the ability to partner with Influencers to embed your shoppable posts directly into their feed. There’s no better way to drive sales than to embed your products right in the posts of your reputable partners. Of course, there will be a more in-depth review process behind this to make sure that every deal is above board to keep the general community safe from manipulation and receiving advertising that is unethical or against the laws in a certain country.

You could then retarget those who liked your influencers post and run a professional retargeting ad giving the person who engaged a call-to-action deal that they won’t want to pass up.

Now you have a higher level of trust between your business and your prospective customer by leveraging the relationship which was created between the influencer and that very same customer. This will help you increase your conversion rates and create a deep community behind your offering.

These features will create transparency in the market. Small businesses do not shift from small business to corporate business owners. Although you may have a better chance once consumers and businesses adopt these methods of buying and selling, you will still need to fight and raise the required capital to generate lucrative opportunities for your business.

I believe that influencers and businesses prosper long term by keeping their business equity based or exchange based in order to grow each others reach at an accelerated rate while both receiving a trial run offer to test their new business or creative segment.

Cost of implementation will be much higher than your average ad-spot based on the direct results and data which you can pull, even on a failed advertising campaign. Supply and demand is also a large factor. Although there are many niches, understanding the saturation of a competitors solution in your target niche will be crucial as most of these deals will be locked under contract.

The best way to break away from a bidding war is to create niche products that really speak to the final consumer. No, do not just create fun packaging and expect it to work for your market. This might excite your market short term, but implementing at a deeper level when the platforms are still young is a piece of strategy which I would suggest to most brands in one of my strategy sessions. This way, you won’t be vulnerable when there are spikes in attention to the any of these new marketing features and the bigger money comes into play.