Instagram has emerged as a marketing powerhouse for brands over the past few years. Gen-Z and Millennials use Instagram more than any other generation, with 67% and 57% using Instagram multiple times per day respectively. This means that Instagram is an excellent way to promote your brand and your website to Gen-Z and Millennial audiences. Whether you are new to Instagram or looking for new ways to drive traffic to your website, sharing links on Instagram is the way to go. Contrary to popular belief, mentioning a link in your bio is not the only option.

Driving Traffic from Instagram

1. Add a Link in Your Instagram Bio

One of the most popular places to include a link – your Instagram bio is the primary place for you to organically drive traffic to your website. You can use tools such as Instagram Insights or Google Analytics to discover how often your link is being clicked and measure its effectiveness in driving traffic from Instagram to your target page. In addition to driving traffic, you want to find how many people are actually making purchases from your site in relation to how many people visit it. Choosing the link to include can be tricky as this is high-value digital real estate. Not adding your website link in your Instagram bio would result in missed opportunities for your brand. The link that you add in your bio should be a target page or the homepage of your website. Not only can you provide a link to drive traffic from Instagram, but you can also utilize valuable UGC on your website to increase your audience’s engagement once they have clicked on the link you provided. Pixlee can be used to integrate UGC into your brand’s website and increase engagement using authentic content. When adding a link to your Instagram bio, it’s important to recognize your brand’s goals for promoting that link and making sure those goals are attainable and measurable. If you want people to shop your product and visit your website from Instagram, the most effective method to turn your Instagram followers into customers is promoting the link in your bio. To further drive traffic to your website from the link in your bio, you can make a post with a call-to-action in your Instagram caption such as “Link in bio!”

2. Use Link Services

One of the biggest drawbacks of Instagram’s bio links section is that it only has space for one link. Using services such as Linktree can solve this issue. Linktree is a simple tool that stores and presents a number of links through your Instagram bio that you would not be able to showcase otherwise.

For a better understanding, here’s an example of how you can use Linktree to promote more than one link:

3. Swipe up Feature in Stories

If your Instagram account has over ten thousand followers, this is probably your best bet for driving traffic to a webpage. Simply upload a story using a swipe-up feature including the link to your target page. As your followers watch the story, those who are interested will be able to view your content in just one swipe — convenience 101.

Take Trupanion, for example. The pet insurance brand used UGC from their hashtag #withTrupanion social media contest to drive their target audience to their website by including a link in the swipe up feature on their story:  

4. Paid Advertisement

Another simple and effective way to promote your links on Instagram is by using paid advertisements. Much like Facebook and Google Ads, Instagram allows businesses and individuals to launch, manage and optimize ad campaigns promoting their brand. You can design and launch a link promotion campaign and in the post you create, you can include the link that you want to promote. This will save users from going through any extra steps to reach your website.

The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas uses UGC in its paid advertisements on Instagram, highlighting deals and promoting reservations:

5. Create Shoppable Posts

Instagram has gained popularity as a platform for brands looking to sell products. If you have a tangible product that you want to sell, you can create a shoppable post and add the store link. This is especially effective when you use shoppable UGC. If you share a link to a Pixlee gallery, you can make that content directly shoppable.  

While it's always beneficial to convert shoppers on Instagram to shoppers on your site, sometimes it can be easier to utilize Instagram's native shopping functionality. Here’s how you can create a shoppable post:

• Update your Instagram app if you haven’t already.
• Convert your Instagram to a Professional Account.
• Ensure that you are either an admin or at least a page manager of this business account.
• You should also have a product catalog associated with a page on Facebook.

Instagram will automatically start reviewing your profile to determine whether or not you are eligible for creating shoppable posts. If your account is eligible, you will receive a notification and the next step will be to enable product tagging through the following steps:

• Go to your profile.
• Click the “Get Started” alert at the top.
• Click Products > Continue.
• Now, select a product catalog to connect to your professional account.
• Click Done, and that’s it.

You have successfully enabled product tagging on your Instagram profile!With the right marketing and outreach ideas, Instagram is a great tool for generating qualified web traffic.

‍Vaibhav Kakkar is the Founder and CEO of Digital Web Solutions, a globally trusted agency with a full suite of digital marketing services and development solutions. Vaibhav believes in building system over services, and has helped scale up agencies from scratch to niche leaders with million-dollar turnovers.