How to Sell on Instagram: Complete Guide for Creators and Businesses

How to Sell on Instagram: Complete Guide for Creators and Businesses

Everything you need to know about selling on Instagram – from various purchasing options to tips on how to best leverage your sales strategy on Instagram.

At least once a week I catch myself wanting to buy a new product I saw on Instagram. (Right now I’m craving a beautiful coffee mug set from Studio 13.)

Thanks to Instagram, these moments of “I need this” are now easy to act on – people see something they like and can buy it in just a few taps. What started as a simple photo-sharing app has evolved into a powerful social commerce platform where you can showcase your products, find new customers, and even sell directly.

With 130 million people tapping on Instagram shopping posts every month, it’s clear that casual browsing can easily turn into active shopping. This is a huge opportunity for businesses and creators who want to reach people where they already spend time – specifically, an average of 33 minutes a day on Instagram.

If you’re a business owner or creator who has products to sell, Instagram can help you get them in front of the right people.

In this guide, I’ll cover how to sell on Instagram – from setting up your shop to exploring various sales options and tips to help you grow.

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4 Approaches to Selling on Instagram

There is no single “right” way to sell on Instagram. What works best depends on whether you’re a business or creator, the types of products you’re selling, and where you want people to complete their purchase.

1. Use Shoppable Instagram Posts

On Instagram, you can sell products using a shop that’s located within the app, so people can easily browse and purchase your products while browsing.

Instagram Shop allows you to tag products in your posts and link them directly to your product catalog. This makes your posts shoppable – people discover your products while browsing, and when something catches their interest, they just need to tap an icon and they’ll see product details and prices.

These shoppable posts are recognizable by a small white shopping bag icon in the corner of the image. On your profile grid, it appears in the top right corner of the shoppable post thumbnail and in the bottom left corner when the post appears in people’s feeds.

Other than this icon, shoppable posts look the same as all the others.

Check it out

To sell products directly from the app, you need a shopping account on Instagram.

To be able to shop on Instagram, your business must:

• Be located in a supported market where Instagram shopping is available (which includes the USA, most of Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region).
• Use a business Instagram account.
• Keep your account on brand and feature products that people can buy on your website.
• Sell physical products that are not on Instagram’s prohibited items list.
• Comply with all policies of the platform owned by Meta.
• Display signs of trustworthiness. This includes things like an active website, consistent Instagram presence, and follower count.
• Share accurate product information and avoid anything misleading, such as incorrect prices and availability. You should also ensure that people can easily find your refund and return policies on your website, Facebook, or Instagram accounts.

If you have a creator account and want to sell physical products, you must first switch to a business account.

You can do this quickly: go to your profile in the Instagram app and tap the menu in the top right corner. From there, go to Creator Tools and Controls and scroll down to Switch Account Type. Tapping this option will show you the option to switch to an Instagram business profile.

If you have a personal profile, switch your profile to a business account following this guide.

If you want to sell digital products or don’t yet have your own website, you can still sell through Instagram without using Instagram Shopping – it will just look a bit different. I’ll show you how to do this later in this article.

For those using Instagram Shopping, the next step is to create a product catalog.

If you already have a shop catalog on Facebook, you can connect it to your Instagram account and save yourself time. Before you connect the catalog to Instagram, review it. Once you set it up, an Instagram shopping catalog will be automatically created and you won’t be able to change it later.

To add products manually, use the Commerce Manager tool and upload product photos and information to it. You can speed up the process by bulk uploading products using a spreadsheet or by using the Meta pixel, which imports products from your website.

Here is a helpful video that will walk you through setting up a catalog in the Commerce Manager app.

You can also use one of the certified third-party e-commerce platforms: Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Squarespace, Wix, Adobe Commerce, or OpenCart.

After setting up your catalog, you can create an Instagram post and add up to 20 products to a single photo or carousel. Just tap on the products in the photo and then tag the products from your catalog.

Instagram recommends tagging fewer than five products per image so people can focus on your best products. If you have more than five items to share, you can spread them across carousel slides.

You can also tag products in Instagram stories. To tag items, add a product sticker – you can use one sticker per story and tag up to five products in it.

With Instagram Reels, you have more flexibility and can add up to 30 product tags to a single video.

As of April 24, 2024, shops based in the USA on Instagram must set up Instagram Checkouts. This means customers will complete their purchases from your shop directly in the app. To use this feature, you will need a USA bank account and a business address.

If your shop is located outside the USA, your product tags will instead direct people to your website where they can check out.

Sell Through Comments and Direct Messages

If you’re interested in how to sell on Instagram without a website or online store, comments and direct messages (DM) offer a direct way to communicate with customers and complete a sale.

Start by sharing a product photo and use a caption to let people know what to comment to make a purchase – “Comment ‘SOLD [your size]’ to buy” or “Comment ‘I WANT THIS’ to buy”. Then follow up on each comment to agree on payment and shipping and answer any questions.

Tools like Manychat or Comment Sold can help you with this. You can set them up to automatically reply to comments and send purchase links via DM.

You can also invite buyers to message you on Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp and complete their purchase instead of using comments. Tools like Manychat can get involved and automate your responses there too, helping you take over some of the manual work needed to complete a sale.

If you’re just starting out or growing your business and still building your website or product catalog, comments and DMs are a great way to start selling on Instagram – even before your pages and catalog are launched.

5 ways to improve your Instagram sales strategy

When selling on Instagram, the moment your post catches a user’s attention is already a win. Here are some ideas to encourage customers to turn that first glance into a purchase.

1. Create a signature style for your photos and stick to it.

Think about the stores you like to shop at. Each one probably has its own unique atmosphere that makes it stand out right away. Great business profiles on Instagram can use a distinctive visual style that repeats that difference online.

The waekura jewelry brand uses cream, beige and brown tones in all of its posts. This creates a minimalist, aesthetic look that followers immediately recognize when the post appears in their feed.

2. Keep an eye on your metrics

Instagram’s analytics tools allow you to dive into individual posts and find out how your account is performing overall.

Using Instagram’s built-in analytics, Instagram Insights, you can track how far a post reaches, whether people find it on your profile or in their feed, and how they interact with it – liking, commenting, sharing, or saving.

Finding out which post styles and products get the most attention will help you improve your content strategy based on what your target audience responds to – both followers and potential customers who find your posts through the Instagram algorithm.

With this data, you can adjust your Instagram strategy so your posts reach more of the right people and lead to higher sales.

3. Leverage word-of-mouth marketing

When I’m looking for something new… well, actually anything, I usually ask my friends or family for suggestions before searching online. It turns out I’m not alone – 88% of people trust recommendations from people they know more than any other form of marketing.

On Instagram, this kind of word-of-mouth recommendation often manifests as someone tagging a friend in a comment, sharing your post in their stories or DM, or mentioning your product in their own content.

Take advantage of word-of-mouth marketing by sharing user-generated content. When a customer shares a post or story because they loved your soy candles or budget tracker, it’s personal support from their audience. By sharing these posts on your Instagram channel or stories, you show the customer you appreciate their love, and you show others how real people use your products.

You can also add friendly challenges to captions like “Tag someone who would love this!” to encourage people to spread the word. Every tag, share, or mention will introduce your product to potential customers directly from someone they already trust.

Another way to encourage people to share is through giveaways. You can ask them to tag their friends in the comments and get a chance to win a product. This simple action can trigger a chain reaction. A friend will get notified, decide to participate as well, and tag more friends to keep the action going.

When custom pin manufacturer WizardPins started on Instagram, they knew that achieving sales from a brand new account would be a challenge.

However, a series of pin giveaways on Instagram helped them attract more eyes to their pins – in 18 months, they went from 0 to 30,000 followers thanks to it, brought 100,000 visitors to their website, and turned pin winners into brand ambassadors.

These giveaways helped the company generate sales of $25,000, which reminds us that word-of-mouth marketing can lead to real sales.

4. Partner with Influencers

Generation Z is changing the way people discover new brands and products. In 2024, 69% of Gen Z shoppers said they discovered something new thanks to influencers on social media, compared to 45% a year earlier.

And when it comes to influencer marketing, Instagram is the platform that nine out of ten brands and 86% of creators planning to focus their efforts are targeting.

Not every influencer needs to have a huge number of followers to have an impact. Nano-influencers – those with 1,000 to 10,000 followers – actually achieve greater engagement than stars who can reach millions of people. Their audience is smaller, but more invested, so when they share a recommendation, it carries more weight and leads to greater interest in your product.

However, you don’t have to choose one at the expense of the other. Beauty and skincare brand Glossier uses a combination of nano-influencers and those with larger followings to share how real people use their products.

5. Don’t Always Be Selling

This advice might sound a bit contradictory. I just spent several thousand words sharing tips on how to sell on Instagram, and now I’m saying “don’t always be selling.” I promise it’s not.

People don’t go on social media to be sold to. They come to browse, see what their friends are doing, find a reel that makes them laugh, and share with friends something that resonates with them.

That’s why it helps to show up in a way that’s authentic, not transactional.

Reply to comments, even if they’re not about a purchase. Share behind-the-scenes content from your day. Add a poll to your stories, just to ask a fun question or get people talking.

These actions may not lead to immediate sales, but they do something equally valuable – they build trust with your followers, which is one of the three main reasons people decide to buy from a brand.

Selling on Instagram is Only Getting Bigger

Social commerce revenue continues to grow and is expected to keep growing. More and more people are buying directly through the apps they use, which is why Instagram is an even more valuable place for you to show up and reach your customers.