A Short Guide To Advertising on Instagram

Instagram ads are various stories or posts that a business makes use of and pays to various user’s Instagram feeds. It is like a regular Instagram post but recognized with a ‘sponsored’ label. Advertise on Instagram to get more conversions or traffic by using a call-to-action button.

Instagram sees more than 928 million users and this platform is the main tool for various social media marketers. Having access to Facebook, its parent company, it has a wide choice of targeting options and tools. Advertising on Instagram is indeed an effective way to market your brand and easy to implement as well.

Instagram advertising is a way to post funded content on the platform and reach targeted audiences. There are many details as to why a business decides to advertise with Instagram. Businesses think to advertise on Instagram every time to increase their brand exposure, generate more website traffic, generate new leads, and push current leads down the marketing funnel to convert them. As Instagram is more a visual platform, text advertisements do not work much here. Instead, better to make use of images or videos so that it could reach maximum audiences.

There are many active business owners who advertise on Instagram and ost many per day. So, you need to ensure that you stand out from them. In this article, let us have a look at everything that you require to know about the various ways to advertise on Instagram.

Before that, let us see the numerous benefits for your business to advertise on Instagram. Businesses having an Instagram account come under the vast people community who lookout to explore their likes and interests. Whatever business you are in, you can connect with various people to increase your brand. You can get connected with people who are in the same domain as yours, reach out to people with similar interests to your business, and be able to share your business with the world.

Benefits of Promoting on Instagram

The various benefits to promote on Instagram are the following:

Instagram has millions of users and it keeps growing.

Facebook and Instagram are connected and hence it becomes easier to target your audience basis the Facebook data. Task scheduling and budgeting, ad set up and creation are performed through Facebook. So, you need not start from the beginning and understand Instagram in case you have already used Facebook for advertising and marketing.

Your ads are non-intrusive when you advertise on Instagram and less likely to irritate your target audience.

When you advertise on Instagram, engagement rates are higher than on other platforms.

You can integrate Shopify and be able to sell your products promptly.

Instagram rates your ad’s success based on awareness, reach, likes, or comments.

With regards to cost and ROI, advertising on Instagram fetches better results. It is efficient and consumes less time than any other online marketing channels.

Having discussed the benefits, you must wonder about the Instagram advertising costs. Cost is an important point to consider and it is based on various factors. It is based on the cost-per-click model (CPC) and cost per impression (CPM), and the prices are found as per the Instagram ad auction. Instagram ads are affected by many factors right from your audiences to your advertisement feedback.

Advertisers often find that Instagram advertising often had a higher engagement even though it may cost more. Instagram advertising costs are higher than the cost of Facebook ads. However, advertisers also have control over the way their budgets are allocated. For example, advertisers can be able to choose between a daily budget or a lifetime budget. A daily budget would limit the advertising amount spent per day and the lifetime budget would allow you to execute your ads for a time length till the budget is exhausted.

You can even control your Instagram advertising costs that include the following:

Ad Schedule Setting – It could be certain hours of the day you prefer your ad to execute.

Ad Delivery Method Setting – This could be three options like impressions, link clicks, and daily unique reach.

Your Bid Amount – This could be either manual or automatic.

How to Advertise on Instagram

It is quite easy to advertise on Instagram. Here, we will discuss the ways to create ads through the common method using Facebook Ad Manager. This is a common method as it is easy to use and has the ability for ad customization to a high degree as much as possible within the app itself. While you configure Instagram ads, it is not complex, follow the steps listed below:

Navigate To Facebook Ad Manager

To start with, go to the ad manager on Facebook with your appropriate Facebook account. Ideally, have one account for your business with the business name. Also, Instagram does not have any specific Ad Manager, all Instagram ads must be managed through the UI of the Facebook ads.

Set Your Marketing Objective

The main objective of your marketing should be set. While you advertise on Instagram, your ads must meet your marketing objective. This would help you to get more traffic and help to increase your brand awareness. You need to be aware that the Instagram ads work with the following goals:

1. Reach
2. Traffic
3. Brand Awareness
4. App Installs
5. Engagement
6. Video Views
7. Conversions

These goals are instinctive, few come along with few more configurations listed below:

Brand Awareness

This is a common goal that will try to show your ads to many potential audiences who are likely to be interested. The Instagram platform would determine some new and apt audiences for your brand.

Reach

If your main goal is to reach maximum people to see your ads, then you should select the appropriate Instagram account when you create the ad itself. You can also check out in case you are looking to execute an Instagram story ad, for this the ideal objective would be ‘reach’. This objective is very smooth, and you can take advantage of Facebook’s split testing feature that would allow you to split testing of two ads to check out which one yields more installs from your audience. Split testing is also available for app installs, traffic, lead generation, video views, and conversion goals.

Traffic

In case you are looking to get more traffic on your website or to your app store for your app download, this is the apt goal for your post. You need to choose from the two main options of website or app download. Then you need to enter the URL and allow the traffic in.

Engagement

For your post, you would prefer more share, like, and get the overall engagement. In case your main goal is engagement, one main thing to note is that, at present, you can only pay to execute for post engagement on Instagram. When you set this goal, you can get more people to see and engage with your ad page or post. Engagement includes a comment on your post, share your post, audiences like your post, event responses, and provide claims.

App Installs

In case your main goal to advertise on Instagram is to increase your app installation on the audience gadgets, you need to choose this option. To configure this, you should select your app from the app store during the setup.

Video Views

Videos are an important way to reach the audience and it is often considered an investment of time and money. Selecting this goal is a straightforward method and does not involve any extra steps.

Lead Generation

Getting more leads is an ideal goal for all marketing platforms. For this main objective, lead generation ads do not provide the same pre-filled Facebook fields. Currently, Instagram supports the following:

1. Email
2. Full name
3. Gender
4. Phone number

These Instagram ads have more obstacles than the Facebook lead generation ads as when a lead clicks to view the ad, they would require clicking through to fill out their information. On the Facebook platform, leads can be able to fill out the information without a click on anything extra. Also, you need to create a lead form while you create your ad to advertise on Instagram.

Conversions

While you advertise with Instagram, if your main goal is conversion, it would help you to drive more leads to act and convert on your website or on your app. For this, you need to configure the following:

1. Facebook pixel
2. App event-based that is displayed on your website
3. The app that you look to promote

These would help you to monitor the conversions from your post.

Target Audience Configuration

Once your marketing objective is in place, it would be effective only if your ad targets the right audience. This is the actual essence of Instagram ads as you would be using Facebook’s knowledge to reach the right audience. If this is done for your Facebook ads, then you would probably have many audiences and are acquainted with the process. In case you are new to advertise on Instagram, you need to set your targeting options. The following points list the pointers to set your target audience:

Location – This parameter indicates the location preference. Whether you need to target a region, country, city, zip, state, include or exclude certain places. All these selections are done using location targeting.

Age – This parameter would allow you to set the age of the target audience. This would allow you to choose the age from 13.

Gender – Using this parameter, you can select the gender for your target audience.

Languages – Usually, Facebook suggests leaving this blank except the language that your target is not common to your target location.

Demographics – This is seen in ‘Detailed Targeting’ that has many sub-categories like education, finances, home, life events, etc.

Interests – This option is also under ‘Detailed Targeting’ with many sub-categories to get information. For example, if you are looking for people who are interested in movies, science, beverages, these options are readily available to select.

Connections – Here, you can target people who are connected to your page, event, or app.

Custom Audience – This would allow you to upload your contact list to target.

Placement Selection – Once you have targeted the right audience for your ad, it is time to choose your placements. This is important in case your goal for a campaign is to advertise on Instagram. In case you choose to ignore this step, Facebook will permit your ads to be executed on both the platforms.

Budget Setting And Ad Schedule – This step would be easy for you, if you are familiar with the budget setting through AdWords, Facebook, and other online advertising platforms. Go to the Budget & Schedule and define how much you prefer to spend and when you would prefer your ads to appear. For budget, you can set for a daily budget or a lifetime. Also, you can set up an ad schedule to target a certain number of times per day or per week. This can be done when you are aware when your audience is more active at what time on your platform.

Create Your Instagram Ad – Now, once the background is set, it is time to create your Instagram ad. While you were planning for it, you must be having some appropriate content to promote on the Instagram platform. Make use of the ‘Create New Ad’ option to go forward. Choose the various formats as to how you would like your ad to look. Follow the steps to complete the ad.

Conclusion

Instagram ads are a great way to reach out to wide audiences for your business. So, if you have not used Instagram ads for your business, get ahead to set the tone to advertise on Instagram. Check out the traffic and conversions that it brings for you.

Source: Technians – Advertise On Instagram