Let’s face it, in today’s day and age we use Instagram as our escape from reality. It’s rare we find conflict on the popular app. And we often see aesthetically pleasing images that relax us and give us a false sense of reality. But a new study from Bloomberg proves that Instagram has actually increased our desire for online shopping.
According to Bloomberg, 1 billion active users are using Instagram as a way to sell everything. Out of those users, 150 million interact with (approximately) 25 million business accounts that have a presence on the app.
What this means is that now more than ever we are aware of companies and brands. And are actively buying a larger variety of products from them.
Considering the fact that Facebook bought the popular photo sharing app in 2012 for $715 million. The sales companies have earned combined with other business’ sales exceeds that amount. While actually buying things on Instagram is low, mainly because you can’t actually purchase anything off of the app. Users more so use the app as a way to discover new products and purchase off the company’s actual website instead.
According to a 2017 report from ViSenze, 54% of online buyers make purchases that begin on social media (in terms of discovery). That includes platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
One of the biggest ways to get promotion for your company as a small business is to recruit social media influencers or users. By pushing your online presence you are expected to have a better chance at more people seeing it by word or mouth, or on your time feed, and from there knowledge of the company would spread.
Even department stores have their own accounts to promote individual products and showcase their fashionable pairings. Like home decor options and tips on what products compliment each other. It’s a different in your face kind of marketing. And additionally with the “tag user” feature you can see how the users wear their clothes or decorate their homes too, all to give you ideas.
In essence, Instagram also has a Pinterest effect. Which is where you see something so beautiful and aesthetically pleasing, you want to know how you can achieve that look. Only on Instagram, it tells you exactly what companies to invest in to achieve that look. And you can also thank the power of influencers for the same thing.
Companies know by using this app they are capitalizing their ability to promote unlike they ever could before. It’s proven to be a more successful approach because it’s not your typical “in-your-face” advertising that we are used to. We buy into it without even becoming annoyed by their persistent ads get distracted by the cleanliness of their posts.
Think about it, how many times have you been scrolling through your timeline and saw an adorable outfit or home decor piece and click on who is tagged on the photo to figure out where it’s from? Then once you trace back to the company you can get this item for… You find yourself creeping their account page to see if you like anything else. And next thing you know you’re on their website and placing your online purchase. It’s that common and simple to want to buy things now. And the information is so accessible.
I mean, did we really need this study to prove this to us? Not particularly, but it’s nice to know we actually can accuse the app for our bank accounts slowly dwindling.
So what do you think of this online shopping information?
Featured image via Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash
