How Do You Advertise on Instagram?
You may have heard all of the benefits of advertising on Instagram including, but not limited to, the large and rapidly expanding user base, the fact that the ads look no different than all of the other posts on the platform, therefore, users don’t find them annoying, you get to set your own budget, as well as the fact that this network boasts the highest engagement rate of all other platforms. Now, you want to give it a try, but you just don’t know where to start. Fortunately, we’ve got your back. Keep reading to learn the step-by-step process necessary to take in order to bring your Instagram ad campaign to life.
How do I advertise on Instagram?
If you’ve ever had the opportunity of advertising on Facebook, then it’s safe to say that you’ll know how to advertise on Instagram. The thing is, Facebook is actually the parent company of Instagram, therefore, they share the same Ads Manager. All you need to do is link your Instagram profile to a Facebook business page and you’re all set to begin your journey of creating your Instagram ad campaign.
You begin the process by selecting an ad objective. You don’t need to rack your brain to come up with one and instead, you can choose from one of the following: boosting your posts, sending people to your site, increasing conversions on your site, getting installs of your app, increasing engagement in your app, or getting video views. As soon as you’ve selected your objective, you can continue by choosing your audience. The Ads Manager is notorious for its large variety of targeting options, therefore, make sure you take advantage of them. The thing is, the narrower you make your audience, the higher the chance that the majority of them will convert as you will have targeted those that would relate to the ad the most. On the other hand, if your targeted audience is too narrow, then there’s a chance that you’ll be paying a whole lot more without seeing much of a return. Thankfully, though, the Ads Manager provides you with a gauge that will let you know whether or not your selected target audience is narrow enough. A few of the targeting options that they provide you with include age, location, language, gender, relationship, generation, interests, behaviors, and connections. As you can see, the options range from very simple ones to ones that are very specific. In addition, you have to opportunity to create a couple of different audiences. With the custom audience, you are able to reach out to those who have already interacted with your company in the past. A lookalike audience, on the other hand, allows you to reach out to those that you’ve never interacted with before, but have a high chance of converting as they are very similar to your most valuable audiences. Also, any audiences that you’ve created, you can save, therefore, you can reuse them in the future.
The next step is very important as it’s what will guarantee that your ad is displayed on Instagram. In the placement section, be sure that you only select Instagram as the rest are all for Facebook. Afterward, it’s time to establish both your budget and schedule. As mentioned before, you get to set your own price, this way you won’t ever be paying more than you can afford. You’re allowed to choose from one of two budgets. If you choose to set a daily budget, then it’s the amount that you’re willing to pay for an ad on a daily basis. A lifetime budget, on the other hand, is the amount that you can spend during the lifetime of an ad. In addition to the budget, you need to set the schedule. You can either choose to have the ad run continuously the day that you submit it or you can set your own specific start and end date. Then, you need to set the optimization for ad delivery. You can choose from these three different options: link clicks, impressions, and daily unique reach. Your selection impacts who sees your ads. As soon as you’ve made a selection, it’s time to set your bid amount, which determines how efficiently the ad will be delivered. Here, you can choose between manual or automatic. However, it’s often recommended to start with automatic as Facebook will determine how to get the most clicks at the lowest cost for you.
As soon as all of that’s been set up, you can establish your ad creative. Begin by choosing one of the three ad formats: a single image, a video, or a slideshow. Beware that whichever format you choose, you know the size and quality specifications of it. You don’t want to be paying for something that is displayed beautifully as that will just be a waste of money. Once the visual is set, take some time creating the caption. There’s no need to write your company’s entire story in it, but rather create something short, yet captivating, in order catch the attention of your target audience. In addition, now’s the time to select a CTA, or a call-to-action, such as “Learn More”, “Contact Us”, or “Download”. Then, all that’s left is to place the order.
Technically, though, your work doesn’t end there. Once the ad is live, it’s important that you track its performance and make changes to it accordingly. The analytics feature that’s in the Ads Manager is alright for starters, but you’ll find that you’ll lack information the further your ad gets. That’s why it’s important that you use other solutions with it. For instance, our agency, TEA, works to fend off those human-like bots that work to eat up your budget while analyzing the user engagement outside of the platform that way we can identify any obstacles or trends happening amongst them. This is all possible thanks to a variety of tools that we have including engagement trends analysis and automated click fraud protection, to name a few. If you would like to learn more, visit our site to watch our free webinar.