Instagram is a new trend these days. It’s a big burning topic right now. And after all, when you come to advertising through Instagram, it’s a real big fat topic to discuss.
Having more than a billion active monthly users, Instagram is the leading photographic content social network that offers a great opportunity for digital marketers to get knocked into their target audience.
It has changed the way we see the world and it's on the verge of changing how we go about advertising our business through visual content.
If you have already exhausted his/her Instagram influencer marketing opportunities or simply want to try a new marketing channel, but don’t really know where and when to start, here is a quick guide to Advertising on Instagram.
Why Advertise on Instagram?
Both Instagram and Ecommerce go hand in hand as the audience they attract are short attention span audience and moreover, the demand for these technology-based marketing is rising at an alarming rate. Most eCommerce websites rely heavily on high-quality product images to convert visitors into customers.
Instagram advertising lets you control where the ads appear and who are the ones viewing them. But as compared to the paid partnerships, your ads are published from your own account. One only has to decide how much they want to spend on ads, where to send people who click them, and who should be the people to reach.
The benefits of using Instagram for ads of your business include:
- Easy to use platform
- Scalable pricing
- Robust reporting so you are constantly improving.
One of the most prominent merits of advertising on Instagram is the opportunity to reach thousands of engaged users without interrupting their browsing experience. Instagram ads look almost the same as the posts on Instagram by the users.
Types Of Ads on Instagram
- Video Ads
- Photo Ads
- Carousel Ads
- Stories Ads
- Collection Ads
1. Video Ads
The videos to be posted on this platform could be only 60 seconds long, with the footage shot in landscape or square format. This gives you much more freedom to introduce and promote your business than the earlier set 15-second limit.
2. Photo ads
A photo mainly contains a single image in square or landscape format. These are the easiest to create in terms of visual assets, as one just needs one or any number of images.
3. Carousel Ads
These include two to ten images and/or videos that people can see through swiping through.
4. Stories Ads
Instagram stories work like Snapchat. In that they allow businesses to share self-constructing visual or graphic content. One can always advertise them on Insta Stories using video or images.
5. Collection Ads
Collection advertisements work like video ads, looking like a video on a user’s feed. However, they’re created using a series of still images that play like a video slideshow. One can add audio and text to your Instagram collection ads.
How to Advertise Your Business on Instagram
For setting up Instagram Ad Campaigns, one will need to have a business Facebook page, and all the budgeting, scheduling and creating is done through the Facebook Ads Manager. There’s not any separate Instagram Manager, so one doesn’t need to create a new ad account. If you’ve run Facebook ads in the past, you are pretty much up to the speed of the market.
Let’s have a glance at it step by step:
Before beginning, we need to keep some things to keep in mind…
- Brand and Product: What Instagram does is, it works for many separate brands and products that can apprehend the browser’s eye – brand awareness movements don’t profit fantastic results.
- Visuals: As we have mentioned earlier, high quality visuals will be the driving factor behind the ad’s success. Make sure one has some eye-popping stuff to show before one begins advertising on Instagram.
- Facebook Page: Funnily enough, to run ads on Instagram, you need to set up a Facebook Business Page. Can’t escape this one.
- Landing Page: Where is all the traffic going to be driven? Have a landing page complete to get the best out of that call-to-action key. Your homepage works too if it’s optimized for changes.
1. Selecting the Right Tool
There are some different Facebook Tools one could use to set up Instagram ads (Ads Manager, Power Editor, Facebook marketing API). But for some simple motives, we’ll go with Ads Manager, which is the most prevalent one and should easily meet your needs. The first step is to simply make a new ad campaign.
2. Choosing the Objective
When one clicks to create a new ad, one should land on the page to Create New Campaign.
But with any other advertising campaign, determining what one wants to achieve is crucial and hard.
Although one may be tempted to jump straight to lead the generation, keep in mind that the process of setting such ads is a bit longer and more complicated.
- Reach
- Traffic
- Brand Awareness
- App Installs
- Engagement
- Video Views
- Conversions
- Lead Generation
- Messages
- Store Traffic
- Catalogue Sales
But all I’m gonna do is to stick to my own advice and select “Traffic”. After selecting the objective, you should be automatically promoted to give the campaign a name. but be sure to include such attributes as dates, offer and content to make it easier to identify the campaigns in the future.
3. Choosing Your Audience
If one is starting to learn how to advertise on Instagram, choosing the right audience might be complicated. As you know practice is the best teacher, so you need not worry about this part too much. The most important one should keep in mind is what kind of audience would mostly be in sync with the objective one has selected in the previous step.
If you go with the traffic, use the standard buyer personas to define the audience. Alternatively, one can create a Custom Audience to show the ad to a particular group of people.
4. Selecting The Placement
The upcoming step in this whole process is the place where you get to choose the ads that will be previewed. All you need to do is uncheck all the boxes except “Instagram” and scroll down.
5. Setting up the Budget and Schedule
Coming to this part, it’s pretty straightforward and could be easily done. What is the amount you want to spend on the ad campaign? There are two options available: Daily Budget And Lifetime Budget.
A Daily Budget can be said as the average you will spend every day of the advertising period. A lifetime budget is a total that you’ll spend over the period your ad is set to run.
Next, define the list by selecting one of the two options. Unless one has a very clear idea on which days and hours your ad will perform the best, go with the “Run my advertisement set continuously starting today” option.
6. Choosing The Right Time
We are finally reaching the most exciting part of the campaign! It’s time to choose the most suitable format for your ad.
The objective one set for this ad operation should be the main aspect defining the format of the ad.
7. Setting Your Facebook Page And Links
So, we are near the end. And here all the fun begins. Connect the Facebook Page and Instagram account. If your business doesn’t have an Instagram account yet, one still can still run the ads on Instagram as Facebook will be used to present your brand within your ad.
Then just follow the steps and enter your ad’s content.
- Text: Keep the copy sharp and brief. 125 is the suggested limit – to see anything after the 125 characters, users will need to increase the ad by clicking “More”.
- Website URL: This is the URL of a page where you are driving all the traffic. Make sure your URL is properly tagged with unique UTM parameters to be able track how the ad is performing.
- Call To Action (CTA): Your CTA should be directly linked to the content one is offering. If the target is to get people to visit your website, then “Learn More” is perhaps the most apt option. If you are advertising a specific product, it’s worth testing something a bit more aggressive – like “Shop Now”.
8. Tracking Your Performance
Oh, Shoot! Nothing is done until it’s done, and I assured to illustrate to you how to promote it on Instagram.
Once the ad is up and running, remember to keep an eye on all the metrics and track its performance. You can go back in and tweak the ad, too – change the image if it’s underperforming, try a new copy or a different call to action.
To see the full dashboard with data on reach, the total amount spent and cost per click go to your Ads Manager. In the upper right-hand corner, you'll see a button that says “ Column Performance”. Still, a drop-down menu with an expansive list of options will open, If you click on it. You can customize your report to get sapience into everything from the number of click-throughs to runner likes.
Summary: How to Advertise on Instagram in 2022
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of how to advertise on Instagram. Let's take some time to understand the options available to you and build your campaigns.
In summary, here are the steps to creating your first Instagram ad:
- Open Facebook Ads Manager
- Choose Your Objective
- Select Your Target Audience
- Choose “Instagram” as the placement
- Set up your budget and Schedule
- Choose an Ad Format
- Publish The Ad
- Track Your Performance