How to Skyrocket Your Online Sales this Festive Season?

The festive season is all set to arrive with a plethora of opportunities for online stores. Online stores have already decorated their websites with Diwali aesthetics, appealing advertisements, and lucrative discounts. Customers are eagerly waiting for more exciting offers and deals to buy their favorite products while the brands are all geared up to grab this opportunity and grow their online sales as much as possible.

To help you make the most out of this festive season, we have curated 8 e-commerce festive tips. 

Tips to Boost Online Sales

Provide a Smooth Mobile E-commerce Experience

Smartphones and tablets are used extensively by customers to shop during the festive season. A study conducted by an e-consultancy reveals that 62% of brands with mobile-first website design experience an increase in sales as compared to brands with desktop-only website designs. To increase sales through mobile e-commerce ensure your website is visible and accessible through any mobile device. Work on a high-speed and seamless mobile e-commerce experience for your customers.

Prepare Your Own Festive Theme

Just like you decorate your home during the different festivals, the festive season brings an opportunity for you to revamp your online store. An appealing web page appearance during this time of the year can leverage your brand impression and online sales to a great extent. 

While figuring out ideas to design your online store, picking up a theme can do amazeballs. You can create a powerful festive vibe and make your customers feel that this time for shopping is special. Select suitable layouts, customize your logo, design attractive banners, add visuals and videos to make your online store appear more appealing and engaging.  

Quick Tip – If you are looking for a brandstore partner then you can get your hands on Kartify. It is optimized for all business types and comes with 60+ integrations. With fully customizable UI/UX, it offers an exceptional e-commerce experience. 

Promote Your Offers and Deals on Social Media

Social media is the most successful connectivity tool between you and your customers. Engage with your target audience in creative ways on social media platforms at this time of the year to drive conversions. Make attractive posts, promote your products and your festive offers, play quizzes, post daily stories, and much more. Use insights from your industry and competitor analysis to gain more perspectives to create content. Social media shares will also influence the search engine ranking of your content.

ANS Commerce offers in-house tools for testing and tracking marketing campaign performance. To learn more about the same, request your free DEMO today!

Focus on Customer Service 

Customer service is very significant when it comes to online shopping. The festive season is a great time to increase conversions as well as make loyal long-term customers. Since a lot of products are being purchased, handling the customer service becomes even more important. It is also the time of the year when your customers are going to spread the word about your brand to their friends and family as everyone will be talking about the festive season sale. Efficient and timely delivery of products makes your customer feel happy and valued. 

Adopt the Gift Card Approach 

Curate exciting and attractive gift cards for your customers with creative offers. It is an excellent way to hold potential customers. Your customers can share these cards with their friends and family members too. Since gift cards are usually an impulse purchase, make sure they are highly visible. 

Display Top-selling Products on Your Landing Page

Your top-selling products have the best potential of being sold during the festive season as they are the ones that are most frequently bought by your customers throughout the year. Display these products effectively on your landing page to give a reminder to your existing customers. Adding spotlight to the best products also leads to the formation of a good impression on your new customers. You can generate content around these products and make their access easy for visitors to increase customer engagement. 

Create Engaging Offers for New Customers

You can engage and retain new customers for a long period of time by specifically crafting valuable rewards and offers for them. You can provide them with free shipping, discounts, cashback, and many more offers on their first purchase. Referral bonuses or early access to an upcoming sale are some of the other lucrative benefits you can provide them.  

Offer Free Shipping and Smooth Returns 

Shipping cost is one of the reasons for card abandonment by the majority of customers. During the festive season when your customers are looking to save every penny on their purchase, providing free shipping is an excellent marketing strategy.

Apart from shipping, providing a hassle-free return process to your customers provides them with a smooth experience. Especially during the festive season, you need to be prepared for a lot of return orders. Therefore formulating a smooth return management process is going to be beneficial for you as well as your customer. 

ANS Commerce has been integrated with diverse logistic players. It ensures timely delivery of products with optimized costs for both domestic and international deliveries. To know more, you can request your free DEMO now! 

How Can We Help You This Festive Season? 

The festive season brings with it plenty of opportunities and challenges. From brandstore to order fulfillment, brands have a multitude of tasks to handle. 

Being the only full-stack e-commerce enabler in India, ANS Commerce provides brands with all e-commerce solutions. Having an experienced team and currently working with 100+ brands, we ensure expertise in each of our offerings. At this time of the year, when there are so many tasks for you to manage, we are here to handle everything e-commerce for you. Meanwhile, you can focus on your core product and offerings. 

Nature Inspired Lessons for Building a Brand

Our earth is 4.5 billion years old is filled with an abundance of experiences. These experiences have in-store in them useful learnings for all of us. 

Are you starting a new business? Or are you already part of a business journey? Or are you interested in learning about entrepreneurship and branding? Mother Nature has take-aways for all of you to perceive your business in a way that provides you the best possible growth. 

The invention of submarines was inspired by whales, airplanes were inspired by birds, while termites provided inspiration for creating a ventilation system. 

When you look at the nature around you, you will observe a myriad of beautiful shapes, colors, and patterns. Their aesthetics is such that it makes us feel good when we are surrounded by them. Further, if we dig deeper to understand how they work, we learn a plethora of things about how they interact with their surroundings. These learnings from their beauty and function have served as an inspiration to many architects, designers, and engineers around the world to create buildings, products, processes, and much more. But can nature inspire entrepreneurs too? How could a squirrel making its house inspire a business plan? 

Lessons Inspired By Nature for Building a Brand  

Camouflaging into the Surroundings Will Not Make You Visible 

In nature, animals often camouflage in their surroundings to protect themselves from their predators. There is a huge diversity that shows this trait, like turtles, chameleons, snakes, moths, owls, and much more. When an animal is camouflaged, its color and texture merge with its surroundings such that it is difficult to spot it out. 

Create a Business Idea that Stands Out 

Unlike these animals, we want our business idea to be spotted out easily. If we keep repeating what others are doing, or have a new idea but are not able to put it across distinctively, our business will camouflage in the market and won’t be able to grow. To get spotted and valued in the market by our potential customers, we need to develop an idea that either solves a new need or an existing need of our customers differently and efficiently.

Proper market research helps you understand customer behavior and needs in a particular market. It will help you learn what is existing in the market and what can be added. By the end of the research, you will be able to measure the potential and scope of your business idea. 

Quick Tip – You can design a survey form for your market research. Design questions that would lead you to gain insights into how your customers will interact with your business idea. 

SWOT Analysis can serve as a useful tool when performing market research. It helps you analyze and develop a clear understanding of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of your business. 

To read further about how to conduct a SWOT Analysis you can read this article. 

Mutualism is a Decision of Surviving Together

There exist beautiful mutual relationships in nature where two organisms depend on each other for their needs. These associations are peaceful and exist for a long time. There is a diversity of mutual relationships found in nature. One such example is that of Oxpeckers and grazing animals. Oxpeckers feed on ticks, flies, and other insects present on the body of these animals while the animal allows it to interact with its body and live on it. The bird gets food while the animal gets rid of ticks or insects. 

Create a Relationship with Your Customers that is Valuable to Them 

Adopting mutualism in your business strategy is equivalent to investing at a potential point that gives benefits for the long term. When you form products or services that offer real value to your customers, they in return form a relationship with your business where they can make a consistent worthwhile investment. This win-win situation for your business and your clients is the beauty of a mutual relationship. 

Quick Tip – Seek genuine reviews from your customers to improve your business and sync it with their needs from time to time. You can design your own process of taking customer reviews. 

Right Habitat Promotes Best Natural Growth

Koalas live only on Eucalyptus trees as they feed on their leaves. These marsupials are only found in areas that have these trees in good numbers and density. Eucalyptus provides Koalas with the perfect environment for their growth which they cannot find elsewhere. There are many organisms in nature that are like Koalas and which grow to their full potential only in certain habitats. The right habitat provides the right environment and food for their growth.

Reaching Right Audience Promotes Best Business Growth

This phenomenon of growth applies to business as well. Each and every business idea is meant for a particular audience segment in the market. Understanding and defining the target audience clearly and figuring out ways to reach them is the pathway to grow your business effectively. 

Once you define your target audience, you can develop their persona map which will help you define their demographics, needs, interests, motivations, and pain points. Persona mapping can help you design suitable marketing strategies to apply to your business. 

Further, analyzing your audience engagement helps you understand who is viewing your website and how they navigate it. You can know about their interaction with your social media content through different parameters.

Quick Tip – You can use tools like Hubspot, Hotjar, Google Analytics, and Facebook Insights to get extensive information about your user responses.

Nature Provides Abundance Of Aesthetic Inspirations

Mother Nature provides beautiful colour pallets, patterns, and designs that are visually appealing and attractive. You would see nature’s creations with vibrant colours juxtaposed with subtle ones that make them look alluring. It offers a wide range of earthy colours too which feel soothing to the eyes. It has gradients and different colour combinations that are visually harmonious and soothing to the eyes.

Choose Your Branding Colors and Aesthetics Wisely 

There is ample inspiration that we can get from nature’s colour palette. We can use these colour combinations in our website design. There are many elements that we may wish to highlight on our website where we can use vibrant colours. Depending upon our brand language and style, we can pick up colour and design elements from nature. 

You can know more about how to choose your brand colours by reading this article. 

Quick Tip – Define your brand core values and vision before choosing aesthetic inspiration from nature as it will help you know your needs which would further guide you in selecting appropriate visual elements. 

Nature has a Steady Pace 

From the birth of a baby to the growth of a tree, nature has its own pace. The life cycles in nature are inherently consistent and patient. Undoubtedly, nature accomplishes an efficient functional and aesthetic formation as a result of its consistency and pace.  

Accomplish Your Targets with Patience and Consistency 

In a similar manner, accomplishing a business target in a stepwise process holds certain significance. Following a process-oriented approach might require a lot of patience and effort but it is rewarding in the long term. Just like nature, the business also requires small consistent steps and long-term planning in order to accomplish a strong presence in the market. A well-established business leads to earning greater profits. 

Nature Keeps Evolving

The environment in nature keeps on changing, the situations around life are never constant. Sometimes, when these situations become unfavorable for the survival of a living being, it needs to adapt according to the circumstances in order to continue its life. This gives rise to the need for evolution. In nature, a plethora of organisms evolve in different ways to suit the needs of the environment. One such example is that of a group of lizards that lived in the base of a tree trunk. Gradually as their native place was invaded by brown lizards, they started shifting to the treetop. In order to survive on the treetop, they grew extra sticky feet over the years. 

Understand the Changing Market Trends and Evolve Your Business Accordingly 

These lizards just like other organisms in Nature set examples for us that there is always a way out to evolve and survive. Just like these lizards, your business also needs to evolve according to the changing scenarios of the market in order to survive and grow better. We need to keep a check on each and every aspect of our business and make sure it is doing better in regard to the current market scenario. 

Our target market comprises our potential customers who live in a world that is constantly changing. Understanding this change and how it is affecting our customers from time to time helps us modify our business strategies accordingly. Staying updated with the digital trends help in drawing out the best ways of marketing your offerings which leads to effective customer engagement. 

Opening a new brand or running an existing business is a complex process that requires thought processes and decision-making at different levels. In such a case, nature is present to provide a framework of perceptions that can ease out the complexity by showing clear ways of going about building a strong brand. 

By understanding how nature works and aligning our business strategies with its learnings, we can make a difference. 

How Can ANS Commerce Assist You? 

At ANS Commerce, we take care of everything e-commerce for your brand while you focus on your brand core values and product. We offer brand store tech, performance marketing, marketplace management, and e-commerce warehousing & fulfillment. 

To connect with our team of professionals, you can request your free DEMO today. 

How Porter’s Five Forces helps in E-commerce Business Analysis?

Porter’s Five Forces

Porter’s Five Forces analysis is a framework for assessing the level of competition within a certain industry. This model is useful for evaluating an industry’s weaknesses and strengths by identifying and analyzing five competitive forces that shape every industry.

According to this framework, competitiveness does not come solely from competitors. Instead, the state of competition in a given industry is determined by five fundamental forces:

  1. Competitive rivalry
  2. Threat of new entrants
  3. Bargaining power of customer
  4. Bargaining power of supplier
  5. Threat of substitute products

Understanding Porter’s Five Forces and how they apply to a particular industry can help a brand adjust its business strategy accordingly. For example, you could take full advantage of a strong market position or strengthen a weak one, all while avoiding future mistakes.

SWOT Analysis Vs. Porter’s Five Forces

Both Porter’s five forces and SWOT analysis are analytical techniques used by brands to make strategic business decisions. 

Although both of these models define a brand’s position in the market, the key difference is that the five forces model focuses on external factors, whereas SWOT analysis is more focused on the internal conditions of the organization.

Quick Tip – When taken in conjunction with a SWOT analysis, Porter’s Five Forces can help you understand where your brand or business fits into the industry landscape.  

To read further about how to conduct a SWOT Analysis you can read this article. 

Understanding Porter’s Five Forces

Competitive Rivalry

The number of competitors and their ability to undercut a brand comes under the first of the five forces. Higher the competition in an industry, the lesser the power of the brand. If a brand’s competition offers better deals or lower product prices, suppliers and buyers seek them out.

Conversely, when the competition is low in an industry, a brand has more power to charge higher prices and set the terms of deals to increase sales and profits.

For example, In the e-commerce industry, competition among major players is very high, as there is no switching cost for customers. The players are constantly competing on the basis of price and factors that influence buyers’ choices such as quick delivery, discounts, and offers, variety, customer service, and much more. 

The Threat of New Entrants

It is not only existing rivals that pose a threat to firms in an industry; the possibility of new entries in the industry also affects competition. The less time and money a brand’s competitor takes to enter the market and become viable, the more vulnerable an established brand’s position becomes. 

The severity of this threat is determined by the entry barriers into a particular industry. The greater these barriers to entry, the lower the threat for existing players.

For example, The threat of new entrants in the e-commerce industry is high, as there is very little cost involved in setting up an e-commerce website.

Bargaining Power of Customers

The ability of customers to drive prices down or their level of bargaining power is one of the five forces. Customers have a lot of power when there aren’t many of them and they have a multitude of choices to buy from. Moreover, switching from one company to another should be easy for them.

However, buying power is low when customers purchase products in small amounts, act independently and when the seller’s product is very different from its competitors.

For example, the Bargaining power of customers is very high as there are many players in the market with similar products and there is no switching cost. Buyers prefer the brand that offers the best price among other factors such as product quality and delivery time.

Bargaining Power of Suppliers

This force examines how much power and control a brand’s supplier has over the ability to raise prices or lower the quality of purchased goods or services, which in turn would lower an industry’s profitability potential.

The important factors that determine supplier power are the availability of substitute suppliers and the concentration of suppliers. When a company has a large number of suppliers, it is in a better position.

For example, the bargaining power of suppliers is low as there are many suppliers in the market, and therefore the e-commerce brands have the power to choose their suppliers.

The Threat of Substitute Products or Services

The Threat of Substitutes formulates the fifth and final force. This force investigates how easy it is for customers to switch from a brand’s product or service to another. 

It looks at the number of competitors, how their prices and quality compare to the business under consideration, and how much profit those competitors make, in order to see if they can cut costs even further. Switching costs, both immediate and long-term, as well as consumers’ willingness to change, inform the threat of substitutes.

For example, the threat of substitutes is very high as there are a lot of sellers with similar products and services, and there is no switching cost for customers.

It is not mandatory for e-commerce brands to conduct a Porter Five Forces analysis, but it is clear that it aids in the future of the business. It will point your business team in the right direction by minimizing threats and weaknesses while maximizing strengths.

How Can ANS Commerce Help You?

When it comes to running an e-commerce business, there are multiple obstacles to overcome. At ANS Commerce, we provide full-stack e-commerce solutions to our clients so that they can focus on their brand and product rather than worrying about the challenges in the industry.

To connect with our team of professionals, you can request your free DEMO today. 

Key Takeaways

  • Porter’s Five Forces is a framework for analyzing the competitive environment of a brand in a specific industry
  • A brand’s profitability is influenced by the number and power of its competitive rivals, potential new market entrants, suppliers, customers, and substitute products
  • To gain a competitive advantage, a Five Forces analysis can be used to guide business strategy

How to Use Rhetorics to Boost Your Brand Voice?

Rhetorics in Marketing 

Rhetorics is the art of effective speaking and writing. This art can be leveraged in building your brand content in a manner that communicates your message to your audience effectively. In simple words, applying certain elements of rhetoric can boost your brand voice. 

The art of effective communication is not just used in particular circumstances but is embedded in human thought and expression. We are using it all the time, consciously or subconsciously. It is not just about how to persuade a person but about understanding how human language and communication work. Hence, in marketing, Rhetorics refers to understanding your brand and its goals and further communicating it with the help of certain elements.   

Elements of Rhetorics

Pathos: Evoking Emotions in Your Content

Emotion stimulates our mind 3000 times faster than rational thought.

Businesses are not B2B or B2C, they are human to human, that is H2H and human beings are driven by emotions. A piece of information can easily slip from your mind, but an emotional story is hard to forget. By creating a pleasant emotional response, your content becomes instantly memorable and is remembered for a long time. The experience you provide induces gratifying feelings in the person and they automatically start associating their feelings with your content. For forming more such associations you can follow a variety of ways. 

Include Your Customer Value Propositions

People always look for relatable content. Tell your audience how your products or services inculcate your customer’s values and personality.  

Adapt to Your Audience’s Culture

Understand your audience’s existing knowledge and habits of thinking and use them as a resource tank for your communication.

Use Spellbinding Words

Choice of words plays a crucial role in brand content. Trigger your audience’s imagination by using evocative words to communicate your message. 

Narrate a Story

No one wants to hear monotonous information. If content cannot hook a viewer’s attention then it lacks enticement. By forming and narrating stories you can make your content interesting and memorable. 

Use Music and Imagery

Music and visuals are the best resources that you can avail of to add life to your content. Use powerful images and suitable music to get your audience gripped.  

Quick Tip – You can use versatile emotional graphs to create stories that affect the audience. When you introduce a situation with a negative emotion followed by a solution that induces a positive emotion, the story becomes impactful. 

Kairos: Finding the Right Moment in Time

Time evokes opportunity, and that’s extremely compelling.

Time acts as a tool that collects your audience’s attention to specific topics more than others. When you curate these topics in your content, you automatically catch your audience’s attention. The ever-evolving market comprises changing needs, trends, and desires. Understanding them, from time to time can give you the right pick-ups for your marketing content.

Create a Sense of Urgency

Marketers create a sense of urgency in various ways which impact their audience to give more significance to their information as it is time-bound. Limited offer sales, call to action, and buy now, are some examples of this strategy. 

Adopt the Latest Technology

The people you target to appeal to are visiting a plethora of websites and social media channels every day. They are well aware of ‘what’s new’ and what gives them a better experience. 

Include SEO Researched Key-words 

A keyword that is trending this month will be replaced by another keyword a few months down the line. That is why good SEO research assists in driving traffic to your content. 

Empathize with Your Buyer’s Journey 

Guide your buyers along the purchase journey. Be aware of what their thoughts and responses are likely to be at each stage and interact with them accordingly. 

Telos: Defining Your Purpose

Brand’s purpose is your brand’s superpower.

The purpose of a brand is the impact that you wish to have on your customers and society as a whole on a long-term basis. It is beyond profit-earning which is basic to each and every brand. Building a brand culture, brand purpose gives rise to emotional touchpoints with which you connect with your customers. 

Brand purpose helps you set a target point. Once you are aware of that point, you can ideate a number of ways to reach there. This paves the way for creativity in your brand content that revolves around a particular brand purpose. Through your content you can teach your users, you can make them laugh, you can make them curious, or even narrate a story. Perhaps, everything that you decide to do becomes meaningful once it aligns with the purpose of your brand. 

Some key advantages to having a brand purpose are –

  • Your brand purpose benefits not just your customer but society as a whole
  • It can help you build a strong emotional relationship with your customer
  • A unique purpose can distinguish your brand from that of your competitors 
Quick Tip – To define your brand purpose, make your brand core values and mission statement explicit. To gain clarity on your brand voice – document a description of your audience, the way they speak, and your ideal relationship with them. 

Ethos: Leveraging Your Credibility

A brand is simply trust.

Choices are highly influenced by trust and this is especially true for a long-term relationship. With so many options in hand and a bunch of insecurities, a person would select a brand that wins its trust easily and profoundly. A brand with a good reputation and word of mouth definitely has a higher likelihood of being trusted. 

Ways of developing credibility for your brand – 

Keep Things Consistent

Whether it is your brand website, product advertisements, or social media content. Consistency in tone can uplift your brand image. 

Add a Spotlight to Your Achievements

No matter how big or small an achievement is, you can showcase them all from earning your first customer to achieving milestones. Each and every achievement counts. 

Use Testimonials

Collect your client’s testimonials from online reviews, social media, and surveys and use them to boost your business’s credibility.

Publish Thought Leadership Content

Publishing, perspective, and advice from your company’s leaders on current trends and news will showcase your brand’s expertise and experience. 

Collaborate

You can collaborate with influencers and content creators that match your brand values. It adds a human touch to your content and can increase engagement. 

Logos: Curating Your Content with Logic

Information dressed with facts and figures is highly convincing, credible, and emotionally reassuring.

When you explain your information logically to your audience, supported by facts and statistics, they are compelled to trust you. That is when they build credibility and find meaning by associating themselves with the information provided. It helps them make an informed decision, as well as explain their decision-making basis to anyone they may communicate with. 

The logic-driven approach is particularly useful in the B2B sphere where a company has to make the best use of its resources and money. In order to curate logical content, the following points can be kept in mind-

Check Your Content’s Authenticity

Make sure the content contains correct factual information and is technically sound. You can add the sources of the information to validate your research and argument. 

Do Good Research

Good research always raises the bar of your communication. Before forming a piece of content, research it. Also, check what your competitors are doing to make your content different and valuable. 

Verify Content’s Utility

Keep yourself at the user’s perspective and check the utility of the content. Is it actually delivering the intended message or is it losing the game?

Use Objective Tools

Include objective tools such as graphs, statistics, and numbers to prove arguments. These tools are easy to understand and read. These can be used in a number of creative ways to communicate your desired information.  

With the help of these elements of Rhetorics, you can make your brand voice impactful and authentic. Well-strategized content is a long-term investment that results in a well-established brand identity. Such an accomplishment is possible by understanding the utility of Rhetorics in marketing. 

How Can ANS Commerce Assist You? 

Building a brand requires working on multiple aspects altogether. While you focus on your core offerings and products, we are here to handle everything e-commerce for your brand. Our team of experts is approachable to give you expert guidance and support. From brandstore tech and performance marketing to marketplace management and warehousing, we got it all covered for your brand.

To connect with our team, you can request your free DEMO today. 

How to Make Money on Instagram?

We all know the power of Instagram these days, figuratively speaking, over 4.2 billion ‘likes’ happen on Instagram every day. The world is simply- ‘excessively engaged’ here.

Started as a minimal ‘photo-sharing app’, Instagram has now extended to become a ‘product sharing platform’. This transition has given rise to multiple business opportunities. The interesting part of the story is that this opportunity to earn monetary value is not just for business owners or brands, but extends to each and every user on Instagram. 

Watching a plethora of users making money on Instagram, have you ever wondered if you could do it too? What is required to make money on this platform? How do people go about it? How much money can be made? If these are the questions that pop up in your mind then simply keep the reading going on. 

Who Can Make Money on Instagram? 

The answer is anyone with a decent amount of followers. It is generally believed that the tool to earn money on Instagram is an ‘enormous number of followers’. If you have the same belief, then you may unlearn it, because while an enormous following is a robust asset to making money on this platform, there are other assets that are imbued with the potential to do the same. 

What Do You Need to Make Money on Instagram?

Audience Engagement

When we want to showcase a product or service in our posts or stories, we need people to actually engage with it, because a better engagement rate increases the chances for conversion of your audience to potential buyers.  

Connect with Products 

Are you interested in beauty and fashion? Or are you a food lover? There can be ample niches, but are you interested in any niche that can connect you to its products? If yes, you can definitely enter into the world of the Instagram business. 

Good Research Skills 

If you can figure out brands that have the monetary potential for you, you can reach out to them either on Instagram or on their website. Good research can take you to the right places meant for you. 

Creativity

Getting engagement on a few posts doesn’t make your online presence stable. A stable presence develops with a creative effort to surprise and enrich your audience with something valuable or entertaining for them. 

Presenting content in new ways If you have realized by now that you have the potential to make money using this platform, you must have already started thinking about how to go about it. To answer this question, we will talk about some business models that are being adapted to earn monetary value on Instagram. 

Business Models to Make Money on Instagram

Sponsored Posts 

If you are an active user on Instagram, you would not have missed out on the term – Influencer because they are absolutely trending. An influencer is a person who creates content and shares opinions that the audience respects and trusts. They create trends and are the ones that the audience looks up to. The power that an influencer has on social media is precisely what brands are looking for these days. They serve as a bridge between the brand’s products and the audience. Brands need them to ‘spread the word’ and in return give them monetary value and other benefits such as gift vouchers, products, discounts, and much more. 

What do you need to become an influencer? The simple answer is an engaged audience that listens and trusts you. Even if you start small, you can grow higher from time to time. What is more important, is clarity of thought. Do you know about your audience? What is it that they admire about you? Is there anything that you can connect with a product?  When you know your audience, you know the touchpoints where you can add further value. It is effective when you aim for a niche of your personality that matches the interest of your audience. Once you are able to figure that out, you can start looking for brands working around that particular niche. 

Reach Out on Social Media Platforms 

Brands themselves reach out to influencers who have a strong online presence. On the other hand, if you are an aspiring influencer, just starting with your journey, you can reach out to brands in a number of ways.

One way is to reach out to them directly on Instagram, you can message them directly on their page and put your word for collaboration forward to them. You can also mail them or contact them on their official website. 

Reach Out on Influencer Marketplace

The other way is by registering yourself at the influencer marketplace. There are many platforms for different niches that can connect you to the marketer that can be the best for you. Some influencer marketplaces that are doing good in India are – 

  • With over 26k influencers, Plixxo allows bloggers, YouTubers, celebrities, Instagram Influencers to sign-up on the platform for accessing pain campaigns.
  • Influencer.in helps brands get the right influencers for them through their influencer discovery feature. 
  • Qoruz helps you analyse influencers data in a detailed manner. It provides paid vs organic campaign analytics data and direct influencer contact information.  
  • Winkl allows influencers to create their own media kit to showcase their work to their peers, receive feedback, and connect with brands to work for brand collaborations. 

When you are conversing with different marketers, do mention your strengths that they can count on. Apart from the number of followers, give them insights about their engagement on your content. It is a good idea to be transparent about your post being sponsored by brands and business owners by putting a hashtag or simply mentioning it in the caption. 

Quick Tip – You can share your follower engagement statistics from the Instagram analytics report if you have a business account. This will help you objectify your potential and negotiate for a worthful value while making a deal with brands and businesses.  

Sell Brand Products

While sponsored posts are about brand awareness, affiliate marketing is about selling brand products. When you become an affiliate, you step into the actual business of a brand by making real sales. This can be done through trackable links and promo codes. Trackable links track the number of clicks that are converted into actual sales. Hence, they help to measure the number of sales that happened through you. Instagram allows you to put one link on your bio, which is why every time you post, you have to mention visiting your bio. On the other hand, promo codes can directly be added to the captions and stories. 

Another way is to explore Affiliate platforms. It is an online marketplace where sellers can list all their products. It acts as a connector between affiliates and sellers. 

Sell Your Own Products

If you want to become an entrepreneur then Instagram can do wonders for you. Do you manufacture your own products? Are you into dropshipping? or Do you have a DIY product range to launch? If you want to sell your own products then Instagram can serve as a boon for you. 

The perks of selling your own products on Instagram are your audience’s trust is stronger as they know distinctly that what you are selling is an extension of your personality. Another perk is that you will make more money out of your business rather than collecting a part of the profit from other business owners. 

You can sell the following products and services-

  • Print service
  • Digital service
  • Digital products
  • Tangible products  
Quick Tip – At ANS Commerce, we manage Instagram performance marketing for leading e-commerce brands, request your free DEMO today!

Sell Licenses of Your Photographs


If you are good at photography and desire to pursue it professionally then Instagram is the right platform for you. This photo-sharing app is a wonderful opportunity to showcase your photographs and build the interest of your audience. Once your audience gets engaged in your photographs, you can also step forward to sell them.

Your photographs can be licensed, printed, and sold in a variety of ways. They are printed on T-shirts, mugs, and a variety of other tangible products. You can print them on your products and sell them or contact certain business channels that let you print them on their products.  Another idea is to list your photographs in a number of marketplaces where publishers can license them. 

You can choose any business model that best suits you to earn monetary value on Instagram. It is also possible to adapt several models simultaneously. No matter which path you choose, the most crucial element to Instagram’s business is creating engagement-centric content that excites your audience and makes them invest in the value you provide them. 

How to Choose a Name for your Brand Store?

The name of your brand is a powerful asset to your business. It is an opportunity for your brand to be memorable and remembered. Within a fraction of seconds, it can convey the idea of your brand or engage your audience to learn more about your brand. Hence, investing in a structured thought process to come up with a powerful name for your brand can be rewarding forever. 

“Your brand name is more than just a word, it is a frequency that is going to resonate in the world of your target audience”

When deciding a name, you can literally get a plethora of thoughts buzzing around your head like bumblebees. While it is a great idea to hear all your thoughts, it can be helpful if you absorb certain knowledge coming from the experiences of the world around you and structure your thought process accordingly. Learning about certain points to consider while making your decision, figuring out a strategy that fits your brand goal, and finally going through certain examples of our partner brands and knowing their brand name story. 

Points to consider when choosing a brand name

Keep it simple

A simple name is always easy to remember. One that is easy to pronounce, concise, and pleasant to hear, is never forgotten. Take examples of the songs you like to hear, have you ever had to put a lot of effort to understand or learn them? Your mind learned them without so much conscious effort because they appealed to you, were catchy, and melodious. The same psychology can be applied while figuring out a name. A short and simple one-word or sequencing of two rhyming words or alliterative short words can help you come up with something pleasant and interesting. 

Consider your future vision

You might turn up with a certain name but if you haven’t considered the aspect of your future vision then you need to give it strong consideration. A cross-check about whether the name of your brand aligns with your long-term futuristic goals will help you get re-assured if the name will always work for your business. You can start your business small but ultimately you would want to grow your business. You might be selling certain products initially but in the future, you might incorporate other products too. Hence, keeping the aspects of the future of your business in mind will help you come up with a future inclusive name.

Pick up relatable words 

Aligning the objectives of your brand with its name allows your audience to understand your work by using logic. For example, if you sell home decor lights then keeping a name like – Bright Addition is more logical than keeping the name Pink Valley. A relatable name helps the audience to make more sense of the product range and brand objectives. It helps them make better associations between your brand name and their needs from your brand which ultimately makes your brand memorable for them.

A meaningful name builds strong brand connectivity

Find out a meaningful name, one that reflects your niche, brand identity, and type of products you will sell. This will help you make better brand connectivity. 

Quick Tip – Make sure before deciding your brand name, you have a clear idea of your brand identity, its core values, value propositions, ideas, kind of products, and future vision, as it will help you align your brand aspects with the name of your brand. This will allow you to formulate an all-inclusive brand name. 

Ensure domain name is available 

When you decide on a name, you would also be finding a domain name for your online business. While searching for domain names, you need to check for a name that has not been taken prior. You need to check this for your website as well as social media handles as you will prefer to keep a constant name to maintain consistency.

Quick Tip – .com is one of the most popular top-level domains, hence it is challenging to find the same. But don’t fret if .com is unavailable as a domain for your brand, going with snazzy domains that are unique can also rank well on Google if the website is of good quality and offers a good user experience. 

Strategy to finalize a brand name 

Determine what you want to accomplish

Visualizing an outcome before working for it is the best way to approach a plan. How do you want your brand name to interact with your audience’s mind is the foremost question that you need to ponder over. Do you want to create a visually appealing experience or a pleasant sound? Do you want the audience to decode a message immediately as they hear your brand name or do you want to make them more curious to find out more about your brand? You need to sketch a clear picture of the experience you want to create for your audience. 

Your brand name can create a buzz. But how do you want to do it? 

Types of brand names –

  • Founder/ Inventor’s name 

If you want to use a person’s name as your brand name then it can be a good idea. But make sure the name is not very challenging to pronounce or else it will be difficult to remember. 

  • Describe an image

The hack to creating images is using words that the audience is easily familiar with. For example – Burger King. We all are familiar with burgers as well as kings. Even though we might or might not imagine a king eating a burger but we will somewhere visit the memory associations of our brain that will produce images of burger and king and ultimately we will remember the brand name. On the other hand, we are also familiar with Enterprise solutions but none of them form an image in our minds because our brain memory doesn’t have strong associations with these words. Hence, if you are looking for a similar experience then brainstorm words that align with your brand goals as well as simple memory associations of your audience. 

  • Describe an experience

If you want to describe an experience. For example – An adventure sports brand was named ‘Energy Flow’. When a person comes across this name, it automatically feels a rush of adrenaline or an image of similar associations related to ‘energy’ and ‘flow’ in the mind. These verbs help build an experience in the minds of the audience and such experiences are hard to forget. 

  • A meaningful name 

If you want your audience to connect with your brand value propositions through the name of your brand in one click then work out a meaningful name for your brand. 

Quick Tip – Brainstorming words that connect with your brand’s value propositions can help you come closer to your objective of forming a meaningful name for your brand. 
  • A name which is not an existing word 

You can also formulate a name that is not an existing word at all. It allows you to be unique and stand out from your competitors. 

Evaluate your names objectively

You can evaluate your brand name’s effectiveness by considering the following points  

  • Check the originality of your brand name
    It is crucial to check whether your name is original, that is, it has not already been picked up by any other business. Choosing a name that infringes on any other company’s trademark can lead to complications and you would ultimately have to change your name. 
  • Envision your marketing strategies beforehand
    Planning strategies that you will apply to market your business and its products to your target audience will help you in your brand name decision-making. Visioning your promotion strategies will help you understand how you can integrate your brand name into your marketing plan beforehand. 
  • Ask yourself
    Self-satisfaction is the primary objective of the evaluation. If you are unsatisfied with the name of your own brand, you won’t be able to feel connected to your goals. If you are satisfied with the name then go to the next step of evaluation and ask your friends and family about the same. 
  • Ask your friends and family
    It can be a good idea to take feedback from your friends and family as they can serve as a sample to verify your choice for your larger target audience. 

Examples of our partner brands who chose their brand names wisely

Xante

Being a wholesome nutrition brand the name Xante stands for excellent health. The letter ‘X’ in Xante is derived from eXcellent, which further combines with the French word ‘Sante’ which means health. You can learn more about Xante at https://www.xante.in/ 

Akiva

Akiva is a meaningful brand name, it means ‘To protect or shelter’ in the Hebrew language. 

True to its mission of providing health care, the brand name connects with its mission and vision. Being a simple and unique name, it is hard to forget. To shop with Akiva, you can visit https://akivasuperfoods.com/

Curio Cottage


The brand started its journey by selling Curios and Jewellery in a cottage, hence the name. It’s a simple and straightforward name that is true to the brand’s value propositions and reflects the roots of its journey. You can check their jewellery collection at https://www.curiocottage.in/

Remember, the name of your brand is not just the title of your brand story but also a significant element of your long-term brand experience. It is an asset for your promotion strategies and an element you will always be playing creatively with. An efficient thought process aligned with your brand value propositions and differentiation touchpoints can make your brand stand out in the marketplace. 

We have curated a #brandlogoseries where we have showcased the thought process of logos of different brand partners and how every logo speaks a story! To check out the logos, their visual details, and the stories behind them, visit our Instagram Page.

How to Create Your Brand Color Palette?


The colours of your brand form the first impression of your brand in the minds of your customers. In less than a fraction of a second, they communicate your brand’s idea to the viewers. Being a strong medium of visual communication they have the power to –

  • Make your customers feel and behave in a particular way by evoking certain emotions 
  • Direct your customers to take a particular action
  • Grab the attention of your customers to a particular element
  • Enhance your brand’s awareness and make it memorable 
  • Make your website elements better visible and readable

According to scientific research, a person starts to form an impression in less than one-tenth of a second. 

By choosing the right colours you can form a suitable colour palette that will help you in forming effective branding and marketing strategies that make a difference. Before you select the colours for your brand, you must be able to identify your brand with its values and mission statements. A simple process when followed in a step-by-step manner can make the whole idea of colour selection easy and effective.

Define your Brand’s Identity

Before deciding the colours for your brand colour pallet, it’s important to know what your brand stands for and what makes your brand stand out from its competitors. 

Write down your brand’s value propositions and mission statements in an authentic, clear, and precise manner. Highlight the main words which will help you condense down to certain strong words that define your brand in the best possible manner.

Quick Tip – Brainstorming followed by mind-mapping of the strong words of your brand can help you expand and then contract the necessary terminologies into categories. 

Understand the Psychology of Brand Colors

By now we have realized how color is a powerful asset to our branding and marketing business. Now, we need to understand how the psychology of colours works in order to gain the necessary knowledge to apply to selecting our brand’s colours. 

Each and every colour holds certain meanings and evokes certain emotions. Red stimulates passion and vibrance while yellow is more cheerful, friendly, and warm. Although our interpretation of colours is subjective and can vary from person to person, there are certain generalizations that can help us make better decisions. 

Apart from understanding the meanings that single colour holds, we need to learn how to interpret colour combinations and how they are being used by different brands today. Colour theory gives us useful insights to strengthen our understanding of colours. 

Colour Theory and Types of Colors to Use for Your Brand  

  • Primary colours – The primary colours of your brand are the colours that define the major characteristics of your brand. The colours that fall under this category are – red, blue, and yellow. 
  • Secondary colours – These colours are created using primary colours. They complement your primary colours. Secondary colours can be used in multiple ways along with primary colors. The colours that fall under this category are – purple, green, and orange. 

Choosing Color Combinations 

  • Using contrasting colours – These are the colours that are located opposite to each other on the colour wheel. To create a contrast, one can also pick colours apart from these that juxtapose well with each other. Choosing contrasting colours can create a lively, quirky, and funky essence. It can also be used to highlight certain elements of the brand. 
  • Using analogous colours – These colours are the ones that are located adjacent to your primary colour. This colour palette can create visually appealing designs. 
  • Using monochromatic colours – These colours are shades and tints of primary colours. Using different lighter and darker shades of the same colour together can build a unified and soothing colour palette for your brand. 

Align your Brand’s Identity with the Right Colors and Color Combinations

Finally, you can align the words and ideas that define your brand’s identity with the colours and colour combinations that convey the same message. Pick up certain colours that strongly support your brand’s identity and colour combinations that justify your brand’s idea. Try different colour combinations and see which one best suits your idea. You can use certain tools to check your colour selection.

Now that you know how to pick up colours for your brand, you can start creating one. Do not forget to follow the process. The brand colour palette is an essential part of brand marketing and business strategy, which is why you need to select your colours thoughtfully. Once chosen, you can add the main colours to your brand’s logo and can use the entire colour palette to design the various tools of your brand marketing. 

The logo is a strong visual representation of your brand. It narrates the story of your brand in just a glimpse. With appropriate colours and a clear story, you can make a difference. Check out the brand logo story of our partner brands on our Instagram account.

Buy Now Pay Later Revolution: Why E-businesses Should Adopt It?

For modern shopaholics, nothing is as exciting as the idea of buying now and paying later. Fortunately for them, this fantasy is now a reality. 

Buy now, pay later (BNPL) has gained huge popularity over the last few years. 

With the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, the ensuing lockdown, and the financial ramifications it has had for consumers and businesses alike, BNPL is likely to become an important part of the e-commerce domain. It enables customers to buy a product or service without worrying about the purchase price.

With the ability to encourage impulse buying and drive additional sales, it’s no surprise that BNPL is the next big payment trend in the online retail world.

What is Buy Now, Pay Later?

The idea behind buy now, pay later is quite simple. Shoppers buy something online and, instead of paying the total amount upfront, pay in instalments over some time. BNPL also makes it possible for businesses to move goods quickly out of inventory. 

Companies can offer their financing, or go through a third party such as Simpl or LazyPay. 

How does Buy Now, Pay Later work?

At checkout, shoppers have the option to receive their product right away and pay the amount in full either after a set period or in smaller instalments over time. They usually have to make 3-4 equally spaced payments, also, there are no extra fees or interest charges, provided they pay on time. 

The businesses have to pay the service provider a certain percentage of the amount as commission plus a fixed fee for every transaction.

The majority of the BNPL service providers do a soft credit check to avoid giving money to people who have shown general disregard for repayment obligations, but this isn’t universal. 

Social e-commerce drives further adoption of Buy Now, Pay Later

A change driver that is closely tied to the BNPL boom, is the rise of social e-commerce. It enables users to shop directly from social media apps by bringing social media and e-commerce together. Buy Now, Pay Later assists in fast-tracking the purchase decision by providing shoppers with the option to pay later, leading to more impulse buying. 

Whether or not they are active in the social e-commerce domain, brands with an online store need to optimize their checkout experience to remain competitive. 

Now that you know what Buy Now, Pay Later is, let’s see how implementing it can benefit your e-commerce business.

Why should businesses offer Buy Now, Pay Later? 

Convert more visitors

For businesses, there’s nothing more frustrating than seeing visitors spending a lot of time on their website, browsing products, adding them to the cart, only to abandon them. 

While there are multiple reasons for a customer to abandon their cart, affordability always comes on top. 

BNPL enables customers to purchase goods even during a tight financial situation. Suppose, you are selling a certain product for two thousand rupees. If you let the buyer pay in two or more instalments, you will sell twice as many products. 

Quick Tip –  By offering BNPL and making the purchase more economical, you can reach a wider audience, including the younger generation. At ANS Commerce, our in-house tech Kartify is a feature-rich platform and comes with an integrated payment gateway. Request your free DEMO now. 

Looking for a logistics partner for your FMCG goods? Read on to find out how we safely store and ship perishable goods. 

Increase your average order value

The Average Order Value (AOV) is the amount a customer pays when they make a purchase. Many e-commerce businesses have witnessed more than a 100% increase in AOV after adopting the BNPL payment system on their website. 

Smaller, spread-out payments increase the customers’ purchasing power, driving sales for businesses. People prefer BNPL to avoid the exorbitant interest rates of credit cards. 

The Buy Now, Pay Later system is also quite helpful for brands selling high-value goods like jewellery and electronics. It enables consumers to purchase these expensive items without worrying about the payment. Therefore, making it easier for brands to drive order conversion. 

Offer better customer experience

A hassle-free custom experience builds loyalty and encourages repeat purchases. 

For a customer, more ways to shop, pay, and products to choose from, are all positive factors. Offering customers the option to shop and pay the way they want leads to an increase in loyalty and sales. 

Which payment method you choose to provide on your checkout page is up to you. Although millennials are more likely to prefer mobile wallet/UPI, the more choices offered, the better. 

BNPL is just one more option the customers would like to see on the checkout page. Adopting this growing trend can provide them with a seamless shopping experience leading to repeat business. 

Data safety is of utmost importance when it comes to online shopping. Read this article to learn how you can avoid a data breach. 

Drawbacks of adopting Buy Now, Pay Later?

There are always certain drawbacks associated with every financing option, BNPL is no exception. 

  • BNPL third-party service providers usually charge 2-6% of the purchase amount, which is higher than the traditional payment methods. However, for brands, it can still be profitable because BNPL assists in driving more conversions 
  • One of the biggest cons of offering the Buy Now, Pay Later option is that it invites several administrative problems. Also, there’s a risk of loss of revenue if the customer doesn’t pay the amount, or stops paying after a few installments. However, BNPL service provided by third parties is a great way to avoid such situations. Once a customer buys through the third-party gateway, the seller is paid in full within a few business days. The payment partner services the loan and takes on the risk, from chargebacks to fraud
  • BNPL also involves integration challenges, incorporating it requires some serious workaround on your checkout page. It needs special tools and technology, which adds up to your business expense thus lowering your profit margin. To avoid this, brands should choose a feature-rich platform that is integration-ready

How can ANS Commerce assist you?

Our in-house, fully customizable, integration-ready proprietary brand store platform, Kartify comes with a payment gateway that is safe and secure. We do not store user financial details and conduct regular security audits for more safety.

BNPL is the latest wave within the fintech industry to further disrupt the traditional banking and business landscape. With the long-term financial impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, especially among the younger generation, BNPL services will likely witness accelerated adoption in the future. Kartify offers an option to enable BNPL for our partner brands. We advise you to jump on this trend with our assistance so that you can drive more sales, safely. Request your free DEMO now!

Facebook Ad Targeting Tips to Drive Conversions for Your Business

More than a billion people log onto Facebook every day, making it an excellent and cost-effective tool for marketing your offerings to a huge audience. The platform’s advanced targeting system helps businesses cut through the noise and find their ideal customers. 

An effective Facebook ad targeting strategy increases conversions while lowering the cost per conversion, the ultimate measure of an ad’s value. 

Email marketing is another powerful tool to reach target audiences. Read this article to understand how you can optimize your order confirmation email for driving sales

Facebook Ad Campaign Goals

A powerful message helps in creating a strong connection with your audience and demonstrates how your product/service can solve their problems and make their life more comfortable. 

For instance, if you are creating an ad campaign to market sports shoes, you should mention  –

  1. How comfortable they are
  2. How they can help buyers in achieving their fitness goals

The social media giant offers brands an opportunity to test a wide variety of targeting features to find the most effective and pocket-friendly way to reach customers and drive sales. 

The targeting options are broadly classified into two categories:

Cold Traffic 

People who are not aware of your business or product and have never visited your website are known as cold traffic. 

Facebook enables you to target audience based on the following criteria:

  • Interests and Brands 

Age, events, businesses that the users follow (for instance, target users who follow businesses similar to yours)

  • Life Events and Profile Status 

Event management companies can target people who recently got engaged or have children 

  • Age and Gender 

Brands dealing in women clothing or makeup should target female Facebook users

  • Location 

Businesses can target a whole nation or just their locality

  • Lookalike Audiences 

You can request Facebook to display the ads to users who are similar to the audience set you have provided. 

Retargeted Traffic 

Users who visited your website or somehow came in contact with your brand are called retargeted traffic. It includes – 

  • Website visitors 

people who visited specific pages of your website, product, or checkout page

  • Engagement 

Users who engaged with the brand’s organic posts or ads

  • Custom List 

Businesses can upload a custom list on Facebook like a list of people who signed up for their newsletter

  • Facebook video viewers

Users who viewed the brand’s video posts 

  • Facebook page likes

Users who liked the business’s Facebook page

Businesses can display such users’ ads to remind them of the products they have visited or left in their carts. 

Now that you understand a bit about Facebook ads, let’s dive into high-converting Facebook ad-targeting strategies that can propel your business to the top. 

4 High-converting Facebook Ad Targeting Strategies 

Target your competitor’s customers

Facebook Audience Insights offers a treasure trove of valuable information that can help businesses understand their audience. They can leverage this data to learn how to target potential customers. 

Brands can also use Facebook insights to find and target their competitor’s customers. Just go to the Create Audience tab and type the name of your competitor’s Facebook Pages in the interest box. Check out the demographics information to see if you can gain any more insights that will assist you in reaching your target audience. Now, create new audiences based on this data and save it for the future.

Quick Tips – You can further target this audience to make sure you get the best fit for your specific business and campaign goal. If you find this to be too technical, reach out to us. We offer performance marketing services and take care of all your promotional needs. Request your free DEMO today!

Leverage life event targeting 

Some businesses and campaigns are designed to sell products/services to people experiencing certain life events. For example, wedding photographers will target recently engaged couples or their family members. Packers and movers want to reach people who have just purchased a new house or are moving to a new city. 

Facebook has every conceivable life event targeting option since users tend to post these on their timelines. 

The life events parameters are unique, brands can choose to target people at specific intervals of time. For instance, a jewellery brand that wants to reach people celebrating their 1st wedding anniversary can target audience members who were newlyweds 1 year ago. 

Expand to lookalike audiences

Facebook’s Lookalike Audiences enable businesses to create target lists of potential customers who share similar interests with their existing customers. 

If the Facebook insights inform you that your existing customers are new dog parents who live in Delhi NCR, you should target other dog parents in the same location.

The platform’s tools are quite sophisticated in their audience matching. Brands don’t even have to know what data points they have to match, Facebook will figure it out for them. 

Quick Tip – Lookalike audience is an excellent way to target and reach new customers. The trick is to choose the right source, the two key criteria are – audience size and quality. 

Get super granular with layered targeting 

The best thing about advertising on Facebook is that it enables businesses to layer targeting options, gradually making their audience more and more specific. 

Brands can use combinations of behaviours, demographics, and locations for a more targeted approach. Suppose, a moving company is offering a flat 20% discount to senior citizens. It can target people who recently purchased a house, layered with an age range of 60 years or older and their service area location. 

This Facebook targeting strategy is best suited for promotions designed to target a specific audience or niche. Coupled with a strong landing page, this strategy can provide you with excellent results. 

Facebook advertising is inexpensive and offers a more focused targeting strategy. If executed correctly. It can provide a huge ROI by pulling users from the conversion funnel. 

Now that you know how to effectively target audiences on Facebook the next obvious step is to target them through Google ads. Read this article to learn how to create a successful Google Ad campaign. 

Why ANS Commerce?

When planning your Facebook ad targeting strategy, don’t just pick one of the above-mentioned tips. Implement each of them and see how they might fit into your target market segments. If you feel overwhelmed with all this information, get in touch with us. At ANS Commerce, we take care of everything e-commerce leaving you free to focus on your core business operations. We offer custom performance marketing services, our in-house platform LimeReach is designed to track customer data and enables businesses to make data-backed decisions. 

Still, confused? Request your free DEMO today!

Instagram SEO: 4 Ways to Enhance Your Brand’s Reach

Instagram has established itself as one of the biggest social media platforms with more than one billion active users. For businesses, it can be a powerful marketing tool to reach new prospects and gain more customers. The best way to do that is by increasing your followers, the more people you reach, the higher your chances of driving sales. However, Instagram has become quite saturated, and marketing on the platform is very competitive. Getting noticed amidst millions of other accounts is certainly difficult if you’re a relatively new or small business. 

So, the question is, how can you effectively promote your brand on Instagram? 

The answer is easy, Instagram SEO!

Instagram recently made a significant update to its search functionality, instead of only being able to search profiles, hashtags, and locations, users can now search general keywords and it will show all posts that include those words.

It means with this change in Instagram algorithm, brands need to incorporate Instagram SEO into their marketing strategy.

Email marketing is another effective way to reach target customers and increase sales, read this article to learn how to optimize your order confirmation emails to drive more conversions

Instagram SEO Algorithm 

Google has its algorithm to decide which page will rank on top of its result page. Following the same principle, the Instagram algorithm determines which post (photos and videos) will rank on top of users’ feeds, in Instagram Search, and on the Explore page.

Just like with traditional SEO, the higher a brand’s Instagram post ranks, the more organic reach it will generate. Now, the question is, how does the platform’s algorithm work, and what factors influence the ranking?

  • Instagram does not favour videos over images or vice versa. For instance, if the user engages with more videos regularly, then he’ll receive more video recommendations
  • The main factor in determining a page’s Instagram ranking is user engagement. The platform uses AI and machine learning to monitor user engagement data in real time and is constantly updating 
  • The type of Instagram account, Personal, Business, or Creator, does not influence the algorithm
  • The platform is actively monitoring for bought likes and fake followers and can ban your account if it suspects you of indulging in such fraudulent activities
  • How fast the audience engages with your posts does not influence your ranking on Instagram

Now that you have a basic understanding of Instagram SEO and algorithm, here are a few powerful Instagram SEO tips to help you navigate the social landscape. 

4 Instagram SEO Tips to Increase Brand’s Discoverability 

Instagram SEO Tip #1: Optimize Your Profile for Search

As part of the Explore page, Instagram Search is the directory where users can find any account on the platform. 

Similar to Google, users can use the search bar on top of the Explore page to find and discover accounts, hashtags, and locations. The search result is based on a variety of factors such as people the searchers follow, who they’re connected to, and what type of content they interact with on the platform. However, the results are also based on keywords now. 

When a user searches for something by typing in a keyword on Instagram (such as a leather handbag), the platform sorts through millions of accounts to find the most relevant result for what they’re looking for – accounts that have those keywords. Therefore, to rank for specific keywords brands need to optimize their profile for such terms. 

For instance, to rank for the term handbag, incorporate that keyword into your name and username since both are searchable on Instagram.

Quick Tip – If you don’t want to use the keyword in your username, place it in the name field of your Instagram bio. It’s fully customizable and separate from your username. Change the name to something that highlights what your business is about. It is an excellent way to boost your visibility on Instagram. 

Instagram SEO Tip #2: Use Instagram Alt Text

Alt-text is a relatively new feature on Instagram that enables users to write captions for their images. It was designed to assist visually impaired users to enjoy their Instagram experience, but it can also be used by brands to rank higher. The platform automatically generates the alt text for the images if you don’t add one. However, It’s better to do it yourself to make sure it matches what’s actually in the photo. It helps your post rank higher in the search results, resulting in more engagement. 

Instagram SEO Tip #3: Treat Hashtags Like Keywords

Adding relevant hashtags to your posts and stories is one of the best ways to get discovered by the target audiences on Instagram. This can easily translate into more engagement, followers, and customers for your business. 

If you add a hashtag to your post, that post will be displayed on the corresponding hashtag’s results page. Since they’re used to discover new content, using relevant hashtags can put your post/account in front of the target audience, even if they are not following you on Instagram. 

Hashtags offer plenty of benefits apart from improving your discoverability. They can help you in community-building, sourcing user-generated content, running social media campaigns, researching target audiences, and more. Therefore, it’s important to have a clear and well-developed hashtag strategy. Without one, you would be missing out on opportunities to optimize your Instagram account and drive more engagement and followers. 

Quick Tip – Instagram hashtag strategy doesn’t have to be too complex. Just test and track your efforts so that you can find out what’s working and what isn’t. At ANS Commerce, we have in-house tools for testing and tracking marketing campaign performance, request your free DEMO today!

Instagram SEO Tip #4: Optimize Your Page for Engagement 

As mentioned above, engagement influences the Instagram algorithm, and to improve engagement, brands need to improve three main aspects of their posts:

Attractiveness


In this highly competitive Instagram environment, it is important to create and post content that your target audience would find valuable. Publish carefully curated and enticing photos/videos with attractive captions. Also, if the engagement on one of your posts is high, it will be beneficial for your future posts. 

Check out this post to learn about the trending Instagram themes and incorporate them to increase your audience engagement!

Timing 

Instagram doesn’t display the content chronologically on its Explore page, however, newer posts are more likely to appear first in the user’s feed. Therefore, spotting the right time to post your photos/videos is very important to increase your engagement. Simply check Instagram Insights and find out when your followers are the most active. You can also use various Instagram analytical tools for this purpose, but you’d need to research your target audience first. 

Relationships 

Instagram algorithms also take into account the depth of the engagement, if someone likes or comments on your posts often, it will recommend more of your post to that user. Therefore, knowing your target audience and posting content that will resonate with them is very important. Conduct intensive market research and define your target audience, and develop your content based on those insights. 

Why Choose ANS Commerce?

Planning and executing Instagram marketing campaigns can be quite overwhelming if you don’t possess the necessary skills and tools. At ANS Commerce, we offer our clients custom performance marketing solutions, from checking brand logos and guidelines for creatives to collecting actionable insights with our in-house tools, we have everything you need to reach and convert your target audience. Request your free DEMO today!

Instagram SEO is a cost-effective, high-impact strategy that can assist brands in reaching their target audience and driving conversions and sales. It may not be as effective as paid advertising, but the potential ROI is staggering. For brands committed to using social media for marketing purposes, Instagram SEO is an effective tool.