Today, Instagram has 800 million active users, according to Statista, and the rate of rapid growth it has seen since 2013 is pretty astounding.
Since Instagram is a visual platform, text ads are not a thing here. Rather you need an image, set of images, or video (which can be accompanied by text) to reach your audience with Instagram ads.
Here is a checklist that will help you master the ins and outs of Instagram ads:
- Navigate to Facebook’s Ad Manager
To navigate to ad manager within Facebook, simply follow this link, assuming you’re logged in to the appropriate Facebook account.
Note: There is no specific Ad Manager for Instagram; Instagram ads are managed through the Facebook Ads UI.
Set Your Marketing Objective
Now choose your campaign goal. The goals are named in a self-explanatory manner.
Need more traffic? Select the traffic goal. Looking to increase brand awareness?
Choose the brand awareness goal etc.
One thing to be aware of is that Instagram ads only work with the following goals:
- Brand awareness
- Reach
- Traffic (for clicks to your website or to the app store for your app)
- App installs
- Engagement (for post engagement only)
- Video views
- Conversions (for conversions on your website or app)
Configure Your Target Audience
Now that you’ve selected your objective, you need to target the appropriate audience to get your ads in front of the right people. This is the true beauty of Instagram ads since you’ll be using Facebook’s depth of demographic knowledge to reach the right people.
If you’ve done this for Facebook ads before you likely already have several audiences built, and are quite familiar with the process. If you’re new to this process here’s a run-down of your targeting options, which you can
layer to get a precisely targeted audience. (For instance, if you want to target women, in New York, between the ages of 19 and 65, who are interested in yoga and health food,
you can do just that!)
Location: Whether you want to target a country, region, state, city, zip code, exclude or include certain places, location targeting will allow you to do all of this and more.
Age: Allows you to target ranges from age 13 to 65+
Gender: Choose between all, men, or women
Languages: Facebook recommends leaving this blank unless the language you’re targeting is not common to the location your targeting.
Demographics: Under “Detailed Targeting” you’ll find demographics, which has several sub-categories with even more sub-categories under those. For instance, you can target
“Demographics” > “Home” > “Home Ownership” > “Renters.”
Choose Your Placements
Now that you’re targeting your ideal demographic, it’s time to choose your placements!
This is critical if your goal for a campaign is to only show ads on Instagram. If you choose to ignore this step, Facebook will allow your ads to appear on both platforms.
This isn’t necessarily a negative thing, but if you have content that you’ve created specifically for Instagram, you should select “Edit Placements” here.
Set Your Budget and Ad Schedule
If you are familiar with how budgets work through Facebook, AdWords, and other digital advertising platforms, this step should not be overly challenging for you.
If not, then you might not know exactly where to set your daily or lifetime budget when running your first Instagram ad campaign. The good thing is, you have the control to pause or stop your campaign at any time if you feel your budget is not being properly allocated.
Create Your Instagram Ad
Instagram Advertising Best Practices
Now that you’ve got the basic principles of Instagram advertising down, it is time to get the highest ROI possible by following these best practices to create great Instagram ads.
Instill Each Ad with Personality
Whether it be a funny goof, an emotional video, or just an intriguing image showing off your culture, if your Instagram post doesn’t feel humanized then you will not reach your engagement potential. People use Instagram to be entertained, amused, or amazed.
Whether it’s while you’re on the train to work or when you are unwinding after a long day of work, no one is looking to hop on Instagram to see a boring corporate advertisement.
This is why appealing to emotions is always the way to go. Check out this fun post from Shape Magazine as a perfect example. If you know your audience well, creating your Instagram ads should be a breeze. However, trial and error can also work here.
Think about your vertical. If you’re an online retailer, when do people typically shop for clothing online? Or if you’re a car dealership, what days of the week do you see the highest spike in website traffic?
Asking these questions is a good place to start!