Advertise on Instagram: You Can Get Away with Anything

April 30, 2016

Remember a decade ago when you couldn’t trust anything you bought on Ebay? Almost every grandma in the country still won’t put her credit card into a website because of the bad reputation sites like Ebay (combined with mainstream news) gave e-commerce. You probably had a friend that bought a pocket bike or some other item on Ebay for $ 100 and was mailed nothing but a picture of it. Just when you thought customer service stories like these were a thing of the past, sellers are now using Instagram shoutouts to escape from the guards of customer reviews.

For a no-hassle couple hundred dollars, your brand can be shown in front of tens of thousands of young women, looking to enter their credit card in at the slightest opportunity on accounts like @sarcasm_only with over 8.4 million followers. Clothing brands and trendy phone case ads are continuously shown on women-oriented accounts like this, but only for a few hours, because the account will actually delete the photo after a 1-12 hour period, to keep their profile clean of ads.

Descriptions on Instagram cannot contain hyperlinks which makes selling via Instagram shoutouts more difficult. However, you can link to accounts, which have the link in their bio, which is why the username is often spammed in ads.

Buyers might feel that since this company has 20,000 likes on their ad, they must be trustworthy and someone must have reviewed their quality of service before allowing them to advertise on this account. However, that’s not true. Shoutouts on these big accounts generally do not go through any sort of quality assurance. The accounts are not affiliated with Instagram or the Instagram advertising platform. The only thing it takes to post a shoutout is a small sum of money to bribe these money-hungry account owners into posting your ad up for a few hours.

If you follow accounts similar to @sarcasm_only, you may notice that the ads shown are often of the same few sellers and brands. The same sellers and brands, continuously buy ads on these profiles, advertising to naive buyers that have no idea who they’re really purchasing from. Unlike Facebook where comments containing bad reviews are liked and featured at the top of the comments, comments on Instagram cannot be voted on, giving customers with bad experience no voice in helping others steer away.

After doing some basic research on Google, you’ll find a number of buyer horror stories such as the terrible reviews on another Instagram seller, Plumeria Swimwear. One buyer, Mercedes, said “I ordered two bathing suits about a week ago and have not received any confirmation of my order meanwhile my credit card has been charged.” Another buyer, Casie, said “I ordered my 3 X bikini which were all in stock and I waited for two months to have them sent to me.” Lastly, Marsha wrote a review stating “After a couple weeks of not hearing from this company I inquired myself if they even received my order, they said they did.”

Their abandoned Twitter account does not help their case towards customer service. They’ve had to ditch their Twitter profile and they continuously ignore Facebook posts on their wall, such as this wall post by Crystal Ber, 6 days ago. The Google Trends report shows the company has quickly spiked in popularity starting in just January 2014, which has overwhelmed them, and positioned their reputation as a house of cards.

With Victoria Secret in talks of ending their bikini line, this leaves massive opportunities on the table for swimwear companies like Plumeria Swimwear. However, poor reputation and unsatisfied customers catch up to every company, and these horror stories will start to pop up on all of their social media platforms. If every buyer would do a quick Google search about the companies they see featured on Instagram, or even 5 minutes of due diligence on social media, the sales numbers of these companies would crumble.

Advertising on Instagram is a gold rush for certain industries, and until buyers become more educated, it shows no sign of slowing down.

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