Instagram Advertising Is A Great Way To Boost Your Popularity! Here’s How
Even though Instagram Ads are pretty much resembling what Facebook Ads are all about, they’re growing at an accelerated pace, and with their evolved role in the marketing world, brands are rushing to make them a number one priority as they offer an abundance of benefits.
In order to learn how to use Instagram Ads in a proper way you need to learn all about their quirks. In this post, we’ll discuss how you can use Instagram Ads, which type of Instagram Ads suit you the most, how to create them, and wen the best times to use Instagram Ads are.
Types of Instagram Ads
When Instagram launched Instagram Ads in late 2015, it gave marketers the opportunity to promote their business in front of a mammoth 1 billion + monthly audience. Users are allowed to create Instagram Ads through Power Editor, the Ads manager, and with the help of other third-party tools. Before you rush into it and start crafting your own Instagram ad campaign, let’s talk about the characteristics of the different types of Instagram Ads.
Instagram advertising: Photo Ads
Photos can be uploaded in landscape or square format. That’s the first information you need to learn about Instagram Photo Ads. Furthermore, Photo Ads allow users to convey a visual story through compelling images. For instance, brands use them to promote their best services or products, music artists use them to post their most appealing gig photos, travel photographers use Photo Ads to showcase their best shots to a larger audience etc. In fact, that’s exactly what Photo Ads do best – they allow you to present your content to a larger following that surpasses your own by far.
Naturally, you get to choose the specifics for your Photo Ad so that they align with your campaign objective:
- Age
- Location
- Gender
- Interests
- Behaviors
These are all elements that you are allowed to personally tailor so that the specifications of your Photo Ad can correspond with your campaign objective. Lastly, you can choose whether your Photo Ad to focus on awareness, consideration, or conversion.
Instagram advertising: Video Ads
Video Ads work in a way similar to photo Ads, with the main difference reflecting in the added power of sight, motion, and sound. Instagram allows users to sponsor videos up to 60-seconds in a landscape or square format. The same principles apply when it comes to setting up the video ad. As it was with Photo Ads, users have all the control necessary to set up the ad and align it with their campaign objectives.
Instagram advertising: Carousel Ads
Carousel Ads include the bonus functionality of adding more photos or videos in a single ad post. With carousel Ads, users can swipe to view more additional photos or videos in a single ad. This additional layer of depth allows advertisers to create a longer visual story with up to 10 images or videos.
Instagram advertising: Stories Ads
Instagram Stories presents a great opportunity for advertisers to tap in on a huge audience of over 400 million accounts. Given that Instagram Stories expire after 24-hours, they’re the ideal solution for those who want to share limited offers and promotions. Furthermore, out of the 400 million people that use Instagram Stories, one-third of the most-viewed Instagram Stories come from businesses, while one in five Instagram Stories receive a direct message from Story viewers.
Users can target their ads by:
- Reach
- Video views
- Traffic
- Conversions
- App installs
- Brand awareness
Users are also allowed to analyze the performance of their Instagram Stories ads in the insights section of their business profile on the Instagram app. Furthermore, users can check out more metrics within the Ads Manager and Power Editor.
Pro tip: With 60% of stories viewed with the sound on, you might want to make sure that your content sounds as good as it appears. So, whether you’d like to share a photo or a video in your Instagram Story, and spice it up with various filters, effects, and other engaging features, make sure it also sounds good.
Instagram advertising: Collection Ads
Instagram also allows users to create Collection Ads where they can emphasize product specifications. Through Collection Ads, users can easily discover and browse products and services in a visually appealing and engaging manner. Collection Ads on Instagram allow you to promote multiple products in feed and offer your customers a swift post-click experience to browse your products in a fullscreen Instant Experience called ‘Instant Storefront.’
Getting started with Instagram Ads
Before you start creating Ads on Instagram, you need to connect your account to a Facebook Business Page, which allows you to use the Facebook Ad Manager. The Ad Manager is responsible for creating Ads that run on both Facebook and Instagram. If you have a Facebook page, here’s how you can easily connect it to the Facebook Business manager:
- Visit business.facebook.com
- Click on the “Create Account” option
- Select an existing account or create a new one
- Fill out the rest of the required fields.
- Learn how to add people to Business Manager.
- Once this process is complete, you can link your Instagram account to your Business Manager profile.
That’s it! Not so complicated once you see it laid out, right? Like it or not, there is no shortcut around this as it is the formal way of getting started with Instagram Ads.
Two primary ways of creating Instagram Ads
The two main ways to create Instagram Ads in Facebook Ads Manager are
- Guided Creation: The guided creation method literally guides you through the process of creating your Instagram ad campaign with step-by-step instructions.
- Quick Creation: The quick creation method allows you to skip through the introductory part and get right into managing your Instagram ads.
This is all kind of like when you’re first playing a video game that requires you to go through the tutorial the first time you play it.
The formal process of creating your Instagram Ads
There are five crucial steps that encapsulate the formal process of Instagram advertising:
- Choose Your Objective: You will be offered multiple campaign objectives to choose from, and you have to think hard about this. You can choose whether you want to increase brand awareness, expand your reach, attract more traffic, receive more engagement, or get more conversions.
- Identify Your Audience: You also get to handle the demographics of your target audience. You will be able to choose their location, average age, interests, pattern behaviors. Once you’re done, you can click on Save Audience and keep the audience profile for future Instagram Ads.
- Select Your Ad Placements: Here you will be required to choose where you want your Ad to be shown on Instagram or Facebook. You can have your Ad appear both on Instagram and Facebook, but if you want to limit it just to Instagram you can change it on Edit Placements.
- Choose Your Budget & Schedule: This step requires you to determine the budget and the duration of the promotion. You will also be able to choose to run the ad continuously or at certain times of the day.
- Create Your Ads: This is the finishing step that requires you to choose the images or videos that you want to be included in your Instagram ad.
That’s it. After this process is finished, your Ad will be live and you will be able to track the performance of your Ad.
Creating your Instagram Ad strategy
When users choose to advertise their posts, they make sure to choose the very best content they want to promote and combine it with a well-crafted caption. Also, adding a few targeted hashtags won’t hurt. This is all part of a little thing called Ad strategy that may prove to be the hero of your ad campaign:
- Hashtag strategy: Hashtags can exponentially increase the visibility of your Instagram posts. In fact, they can boost an Instagram post by 12.6% on average. Adding proper hashtags to your ad strategy can largely improve the visibility of your Instagram ad campaign.
- Target audience: Knowing who you want to target is crucial when it comes to creating an Instagram ad. Analyze your targeted audience beyond finding their demographics and interests.
- Measure and compare results: Use Instagram analytic tools to measure the results of your Instagram ad. Set realistic goals and objectives for your Instagram ad and compare and analyze the results.
Lastly, research and analyze some of the most successful Instagram ad campaigns in your niche and learn which content works the best. Always make sure to focus on promoting only your best content.
When to create Instagram Ads?
It’s also important to think about when it would be a great time to create an Instagram Ad. You wouldn’t want to bore your target audience with pointless Instagram Ads. Treat Instagram Ads as limited chances to impress an audience wider than your organic one. You should consider creating Instagram Ads when you want to:
- Promote shoppable products
- Leverage great UGC
- Encourage more UGC
- Increase your brand’s visibility
You need to take into consideration a number of factors that can affect the results of your Instagram Ad, like timing, quality of the content, the content strategy, etc. All in all, advertising on Instagram is a process that requires you to carefully contemplate every step of the way.
Date: January 2, 2019 / Categories: Guide, Marketing, / Author: Rich Drees
