How to Advertise on Instagram Successfully

Today, if you don’t yet advertise on social media, then you’re missing out big time. This is due to the fact that companies don’t know where to start when it comes to social media advertising and they’re worried about what to expect when it comes to the cost. There’s this rumor out there that paid advertising just eats up all of your money with little to show in return. Frankly speaking, of course that would happen if you don’t know what you’re doing. However, if you go into it with the right tools, a helpful guide, and some tips and tricks for the process, then you’re set well on your way for numerous conversions and the greatest ROI that you’ve ever witnessed.

Instagram

There are many platforms to choose from, but we decided that we’d outline how to advertise on Instagram for a number of reasons. For one, Instagram and Facebook are linked, therefore, when outlining how to use the Ads Manager, you are essentially learning how to advertise on both platforms. Now, we understand that Facebook is the more popular choice as it boasts the largest audience, but Instagram is growing rapidly and we have no doubt that eventually, it’ll surpass Facebook. This large and diverse community is a great way for your brand or item to gain exposure as the ads aren’t intrusive. Audiences won’t be annoyed by them because they aren’t any different from posts or stories, for instance. They just seamlessly fit in. This may prove why the engagement rate on Instagram is the highest of all other social media platforms. In addition, it’s a mobile app. This is huge as the majority of people spend around an hour and a half a day on their phone. On top of that, this platform returns the best results in terms of ROI and cost. It’s effective and yet you don’t need to spend that much time on it in comparison to other channels.

Instagram Advertising Cost

Now, you may be wondering the exact advertising cost that way you can get an idea of how much you’re looking at. Although it’s impossible to give you an exact number as this price depends on a lot of factors, thankfully, averages have been calculated in order to give you a reference point. Worldwide, on average, the CPC, or the cost-per-click, was around $2.40 during the fourth quarter of 2017. If you’re in the states, however, you may be looking at a price a bit above the average at around $3.68. Therefore, as you can see, the location is one of the factors that immensely impact the cost. Other factors include age range, ad placement, month, the day of the week, and gender, to name a few. Therefore, for instance, there’s no need to discount users that are over 35, or don’t place your ad on Tuesday’s or Wednesday’s as those are the two days with the highest CPCs throughout the week. Keep in mind, though, that the ultimate amount that you end up paying is solely up to you as you’re the one who sets the budget. In fact, you are able to choose from two types of budgets. The daily budget is the amount that you’re willing to spend per day on a certain ad while the lifetime budget is the amount that you are able to spend during the lifetime of an ad.

How to Advertise on Instagram

You have a good reference point as to how much your ad could potentially cost you, so now, let’s get into the steps necessary to take in order to actually get your ad onto Instagram. Upon entering the Ad manager, the first step is to set your marketing objective. Thankfully, you don’t need to come up with anything on your own. On the contrary, you just need to choose one of the goals listed such as brand awareness, reach, traffic, app installs, engagement, video views, or conversions. Then, you need to work on selecting your target audience with the help of their numerous options. A few of the ones that they offer include location, age, gender, languages, demographics, interests, behaviors, and connections. In addition, through “custom audiences” you are able to upload your own list of contacts, that way you can target those leads that are already in your pipeline, for instance. Through those “custom audiences”, you have the ability to create “lookalike audiences”, which will let Instagram find those who have similar traits to your other audiences. As soon as you’ve got your audience set, it’s time to select your placement. Advertising on Instagram requires you to edit placements that way you can select Instagram specifically. Otherwise, the Ad Manager will choose the places where it thinks that your ad will perform the best across both Facebook and Instagram.

Once all of the above has been set, it’s time for you to decide how much you’re willing to spend based on the two types of budgets mentioned earlier. Remember that it’s not the amount that you shell out, but whether or not you maximize the amount of money that you laid out. In addition, you have the opportunity of deciding when you’d like your ad to run. It can, for instance, run continuously starting the moment that it’s live, or you can set your own start and end date. The next step is arguably the most creative one. Here, you get to actually create your ad with the help of their various formats. You can choose between an image feed ad, an image story ad, a video feed ad, a video story ad, or a carousel feed ad. However, regardless of the one you choose, you want to make sure that you know the size specifications ahead of time as you don’t want low-quality videos or distorted shots.

As soon as your ad is live, it’s incredibly important that you monitor its success and constantly optimize it so that it constantly improves and stays relevant. However, there are other things that you need to track that the Ads Manager can’t help you with. Thankfully, though, there are solutions out there, such as our own, that can do all of the hard work for you.

TEA

TEA is a solution used to monitor and detect threats such as bots while measuring user engagement in order to detect any trends or obstacles amongst your audience. In addition, we are able to track all of the activities that happen outside of the platform. If you are interested in learning more, head over to our site to watch our free webinar.