Every online seller would love to sell on Instagram and one UK retailer, Public Desire, is leading the way. When you’re posting images of Beyonce wearing your shoes you know you’ve made it and the resultant press driving traffic to your webshop is the nirvana of social media selling.
This is an end game however, where do you start? We spoke to Tayyab Akhlaq of Public Desire at this year’s Lengow Day to find out more.
Tayyab tells how the mistake is to try and sell on Instagram – the strategy is to understand your audience and to engage on them on the topics that they are interested in. It’s all to do with becoming an aspirational brand and talking to your followers about the places they should go, the restaurants they should eat in, the gigs they would love to snag tickets for as well as which of your products they should be buying.
One of the interesting aspects of our talk with Tayyab is the use of language – Tayyab freely admits to not understanding some of the slang that Public Desire’s followers are immersed in but that’s why he’s had to learn. I’m struggling to interpret his Beyonce post on Instagram which is sprinkled with emoji but emoji, smilies and memes are the language of Instagram so if you want to learn how to sell on Instagram you’re going to have to get familiar with them.
For a couple of decades, marketplaces have been the go to place for online retailers, but there’s a change coming and that will be social media selling. Marketplace democratised retail and enabled anyone and everyone to become an online seller with minimal resources and yet compete with the largest commerce companies in the world.
Shopping however is an inherently social activity which is why you’ll see packed high streets despite the convenience of online shopping. The online equivalent is social shopping and getting to grips with how to sell on Instagram is not the future, as Tayyab and Public Desire have shown it’s already happening.
