Since last November, Instagram has been testing a new option called ‘Shopping Tags,’ a tool that gives Instagram marketers a new way to showcase their brand through shoppable organic posts.
Pretty cool right? Shopping Tags enable brands to augment their photos with product information and links to buy the items on their sites. Users will see “Tap to view products” notification in the bottom left of the image, revealing tags overlaid on the post and product information.
Now, it’s being made available for more businesses.
As explained by Instagram:
“Based on encouraging early results, we’re rolling out these shopping features to thousands of businesses that sell apparel, jewelry or beauty products in the coming weeks. Instagrammers in the US will soon be able to shop and browse products from these businesses from posts in feed, on profile and in explore.”
In addition, Instagram is also introducing a self-serve tool to make putting a product up for sale as easy as tagging a friend and can be done directly from your iOS mobile phone.
Brands that want to utilize this functionality will need to first, apply and upload their product catalog through Facebook Business Manager. Instagram also notes that businesses will soon be able to access insights around metrics, like how many people tapped to see more product details or clicked on “shop now.”
With 80% of (600 million) people on Instagram following a business account, Shopping Tags has the potential to become a huge game changer for marketers.
