The Value of Instagram’s Swipeable Stories for Beverage Brands

71% of beverage brands employed the Instagram Stories feature during the month of August 2019; however, only 31% of them are adopting swipe-ups, limiting opportunities for consumer interactions. Successful swipe-ups can serve as a quick signal about the quality of the content in engaging consumers. More importantly, it can help drive them one step down the funnel or even all the way to purchase with the right landing page in play. 

Only 5% of the brands that used Instagram Stories drove consumers to e-tailer landing pages. However, 43% of swipeable Stories drove to the brand site, with 66% of those landing pages featuring guided selling such as recipe content and nutritional claims, product pages, and category pages. For example, Califia Farms—a beverage brand that sells milk, creamers, and coffee—provides a “swipe up for creamers” which leads users directly to a creamers category page with several flavors available for purchase. 

While sending consumers to brand sites could appear less appealing in contrast to sending them to an e-tailer site, the merit of this approach is that it allows brands to collect valuable first-party consumer data that can feed into targeting tactics. It also helps keep content navigation and the brand experience seamless. While Califia Farms gets it right, most brands don’t: In fact, nearly 25% of studied brands lead users to home pages—meaning consumers have to start all over on the path to purchase. 

Brands that are considering Stories as part of their Instagram playbook should integrate interactive elements like thoughtful swipe-up Stories, and coordinate with the right landing pages to influence the consumer journey stemming from these social media pages.