Running a business isn’t just about taking people’s orders and sending out services or products to their homes. As you run a business, you need to ensure that everyone is satisfied with your product because an increase in customer engagement equates to an increase in sales. This proves that as you go along with your business, you need to look after your marketing, customer satisfaction, products, services, and brand visibility.
With modern technology today, most businesses use social media to reach their target market. One of the most popular platforms that companies use is Instagram because you’ll only need infographics to inform your customers about any updates regarding your brand. Apart from posts, stories are also becoming all the rage as you can post as much as you’d like without spamming your followers’ IG feeds.
If you’re planning to take a leap in your marketing efforts through Instagram stories, here’s a list of viable ways to maximize its advantages for your business:
1. Discount Announcements
If your business is having any special discount sale. Using Instagram stories will help build excitement when you advertise and mention the details about the upcoming sale. That’ll give them enough time to gather enough funds, especially if they plan to purchase plenty of stuff from your business. Moreover, they’ll also be ecstatic regarding the big savings you’re offering your customers, thus it would be inevitable for them to share this information.
When creating a discount announcement, you could create a story about how much percentage your customers could save on that day. If you have competitors who are also holding a big sale, you can use an IG story viewer to take a peek at their promos. To hype your discount campaign, you could display some best-selling products and indicate their original and discounted price, doing this can stimulate their interest and make them more eager to buy from the sale.
2. Hold Polls
Apart from increasing customer engagement, you can hold polls on your IG stories to know which product your customer would prefer in your business. This will help your customers be engaged and comfortable in sharing their opinions with regard to the improvement and development of your products and services. Moreover, you can also hold polls to know which type of feature your customers would prefer in your next product line.
When holding polls, you can immediately determine your customers’ preferences, especially the products that pique their interests and the factors that made them decide to add them to their carts. Incorporating polls in your IG stories can also serve as a short promotional campaign for your business, as people enjoy engaging with their favorite brands.
3. Communicate With Audiences
Communicating with your customers will help increase customer satisfaction. The more that your customers feel that you’re a brand they can talk to, the more comfortable they’ll be with your company. This allows customers to keep their minds at ease because they know that you’ll provide good after-sales customer service.
To communicate with your audiences through IG stories, you can ask a question on your post and allow everyone to answer. As your customers type in their answers, you can share them on your stories and include your reply. This’ll be a great way to communicate with your audiences and allow everyone to see your quick responses. Additionally, you can even filter out which questions you’re going to answer to be posted to the public.
4. Boost Events
If you have any upcoming events for your business, using IG stories will help promote them to your audiences. This’ll remind them about your special day, giving them the chance to clear their calendars and work on their schedules. As you boost events in your IG stories, you don’t have to flood your customer’s timelines with your post as they have the full power to view your posts or not.
There are plenty of ways you can boost events on your IG story. You can begin by posting snippets about the event, what they can expect and what they should wait for. You can create a countdown timer to increase the hype, giving people enough time to prepare for the event. It’ll be a short yet exciting post that will excite your audience about your event.
5. Show Behind The Scenes
Sometimes, customers would like to glimpse what the business is like behind the product you provide. To allow your customers to see what your business looks like during the day, you could show some short behind-the-scenes previews of your business production. It could be in your garage or your factory, as you show people how it’s done.
There are plenty of behind-the-scenes scenarios that you could show to your customers. It could be the production of the products or even the packaging process. You could even create short footage about packaging a certain customer’s order. Apart from subtly promoting your products, you could also highlight the cleanliness of your business as you show your sanitation routine before and after production and packaging.
6. Promote Products
Whether you have a new product or you’d like to empty your inventory, using IG stories would be a great way to promote your products. Most people viewing your IG stories are probably interested in your product and frequently seeing it through your stories might eventually make them decide to purchase it. That said, you should try to promote as many products as possible frequently.
With your IG stories, you could announce some new products for your customers or promote any best-sellers you have in your market. You can even display various ways to style and use your product, allowing people to see its full potential and stimulate their minds to make a purchase.
7. Share Customer Feedback
If you’re still a small business and just starting, showing people customer feedback will help them feel at ease purchasing from your store, as real and satisfied customers have already availed themselves of your products or services. With that being said, posting as much customer feedback as possible will help increase your business’ credibility.
Whenever you receive feedback from your customer, you should first ask for their permission before you post them on your IG stories. Some people aren’t comfortable letting people know about their names and opinions on public pages. Therefore, as a form of respect for their personal preferences, they’ll surely appreciate your gesture to inform them first.
The Verdict
Social media has dramatically influenced the business world nowadays. With IG stories, you can now promote your business and allow more people to be aware of your products, events, and discount campaigns in a very engaging manner. As you interact with your customers, you can increase your customer engagement and brand visibility, which will result in successful business growth in the long run.
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