Guide to Instagram Ads
It’s is one of the fastest growing social media platforms for bloggers and influencers. It’s showing mega growth in potential revenue for advertisers as well. With over 800 million monthly active users, it’s no secret Instagram is a powerful tool for promoting your brand and connecting
with audiences.
It’s reported by eMarketer.com that Instagram will bring in over $6.84 billion in ad revenue by 2019. That’s a big slice of revenue for any business. If you’re company is ready to join the millions of companies already using Instagram ads to reach audiences and promote products, you need to know how to create Instagram ads.
How to Advertise on Instagram
You can buy and run ads on Instagram ads three different ways. In the Instagram app by promoting posts you’ve already shared on Instagram, with Instagram Partners who help you with everything from buying ads to sourcing and delivering the creatives, and finally, through the Facebook Ad Manager. This is the most common method because of the ease-of-use and customizations.
Here are the steps to creating an ad in the Facebook Ads Manager:
Step 1: To begin creating ads on Instagram your Facebook account needs to be a business account and you should have a Facebook Page. Also, your Instagram account needs to connect
to your Facebook page. Go to the Facebook Ads Manager
(https://www.facebook.com/business/tools/ads-manager).
Step 2: Create and Set up your ad. Choose your objective, target audience and your ad format. Add your headline, description, call-to-action and the destination URL where people will land when they click on the link.
Step 3: Create your target audience by narrowing down who to target your ads to. Choose a custom name if you are going to re-use in another campaign. Choose the location, gender, age,
and the language of the users.
Step 4: Choose your ad placements. Will it be on Instagram only, or on Facebook as well?
Step 5: Choose your budget and schedule the duration your ad will run. Select how much you will spend on your ad per day, or a specific total budget for the ad.
Step 6: Publish your ads.
You have the option of creating a new ad or boosting a published post on Instagram.
Promote Posts Through Instagram
If you have an Instagram business account, you can promote your posts with a call-to-action banner.
In the Instagram app, click on the Promote button under the post you want to boost. You’ll be asked to log in to your Facebook account for authentication.
Select the goal for the post: do you want to drive more users to your website?
Maximize the number of people who see your post? Or do you want them to do something specific?
You can add a call-to-action button such as Sign up or Shop Now to the post. It will appear below the image or video in the post.
Choose default audience or create a targeted audience based on interests, demographics or location.
Choose your budget for the post and the ad duration.
Hit Create Promotion.
Ad Formats
Advertising on Instagram can be done in five ad formats. Each one is seamlessly integrated into
the Feeds and Stories for smooth experience by the user.
Photo ads allow you to tell your story while showcasing a product image.
Video Ads are a popular format that’s well received by Instagram users. A good tip is to feature your brand in the first few seconds of the video to improve audience remembering. Videos can be up to 60 seconds long.
Carousel ads allow the user to swipe through a series of images or videos. This type of ad gives you creative space to tell a longer or multipart story, highlight several products, go deeper
into a service or some other type of information in up to 10 images or videos.
Stories ads appear to users between Stories they are already seeing. They are full-screen ads.
Stories ads let you target your audience and decide how often the ads are seen.
This type of format is good for sharing limited time offers since Stories expire after 24 hours.
Canvas Story ads are part of the Facebook Canvas that allows engaging videos to load quickly and are optimized for mobile viewing. Facebook has templates for creating canvas ads or you can create a custom one for a unique ad.
Ad Tips to Inspire Clicks
- Know who you are trying to reach in your ad. You know their demographics, their likes, wants and needs.
- Use text caption wisely. You can have up to 2200 characters per caption. Write effective call-to-action buttons that will drive your audience to click.
- Be specific when choosing your demographics to get in front of the right audience.
- Make sure your visuals are eye-catching in both video and images. Never be boring but be appropriate for your niche.
- Your content should be top notch. It needs to engage the viewer to immediately take action NOW.
- Use a clear call to action so the prospect knows how to get your offer.
- Keep it fresh instead of posting the same old ad that has worked well in the past. You want to prevent your audience from tuning by keeping their interest peeked. Try different captions, audiences and formats.
- Use up to 30 hashtags to boost engagement. Add a branded hashtag unique to your company or campaign boosts awareness and engagement.
- Create a consistency in your brands message. The visuals, message and tone should reinforce your brand image while still following your brand values.
- Add personality to each ad. People want to be entertained, amazed and amused. Use appealing emotions like a funny goof, an emotion video or a stunning image.
- Make your ad relevant to the platform. Put yourself in your potential buyers’ place. Don’t make your ads overly sales-driven.
- Promoting a contest or giveaway is an effective way to get people excited about your products.
- Tease your followers by posting a teaser ad before introducing the product.
- Make them understand why they need your product or service.
- Encourage your followers to tag their friends.
- Use active language like “buy now,” “click on,” “subscribe to”.
- Create a sense of urgency such as “for a limited time only”.
- Focus on them using statements containing “you” statements.
- Change to a bigger size of the CTA in your Instagram Stories ads.
- Use Laymen’s terms that doesn’t confuse the reader.
How to Use Call to Action in IG Ads
Instagram doesn’t allow links in their posts. That means your ad is going to need a call-to-action banner of some type. Instagram has what they call mobile banners. This app links the ad to your profile page when someone clicks on the ad from the newsfeed. The banner pops up at the
bottom of the screen prompting them to take some type of action like visit a website or download something.
Click on the shopping cart in the lower left corner to show product text.
Click on the product to be taken to the website or sales page.
Targeting options
Targeting your ads to the right users is key to achieving success with your campaigns. Ad targeting on Instagram and Facebook works basically the same way. It’s created and managed in the Facebook Business Manager, through the audience page.
There are four main types of audiences:
- Saved
- Custom
- Lookalike
- Value-based
Start by creating a saved audience if you are just getting started. Saved audiences are the ones you can define through:
- Location
- Interests
- Age
- Gender
- Languages
- Behaviors
- Demographics
- Connections to pages
Custom Audiences lets you target your newsletter subscribers, leads or app users or based on website traffic.
The lookalike audiences let you reach people who are similar to your existing customers. This makes them more likely to convert.
Value based audiences help you reach people who resemble your current high-value customers.
Ad targeting tips to get you started.
Start with the saved audiences if you’re new to Instagram ads.
Create retargeting audiences:
– your landing page visitors by offering a small discount to incentivize them.
– those who have made past purchases
– blog readers by sharing your latest posts on Instagram to lead more to your blog
Promote to your current Facebook and Instagram followers.
Exclude your custom audiences who have already purchased and have already seen your ads.
Match your specific niche Instagram ad offer to the specific target audience that matches it.
Instagram Ad Templates
In the included templates, we’ve given you an Instagram Advertising Checklist, Ad Targeting Worksheet, 20 Text Ad Templates along with 13 images and 9 Instagram Ad Graphic Templates in varying sizes.
As always, you are encouraged to edit everything to make it custom for you and /or your clients.
Instagram Advertising Checklist
Use this checklist to keep track of all the steps you need to take in your Instagram ad campaign.
Instagram Ad Targeting Worksheet
Use this worksheet to help guide you in finding the right demographics for your Instagram ad.
INSTAGRAM DOMINATION
PLANNER
Users Guide
With everyone from seniors to teenagers and millennials uploading and viewing photos and videos, and with over 100 million daily users…
It’s not hard to see why Instagram is now a social media force to be reckoned with.
Since 2015, Instagram has been considered the “king of social engagement ” and it’s easy to see why.
According to Nate Elliot of Forrester Research, Instagram produces 29 percent more engagement than Facebook, and a whopping 60 percent more than Twitter.
The Forrester researchers assessed some 11.8 million user interactions that were based on 2,500 posts.
For instance, the brands who posted on Instagram picked up 1+ million followers in 2015; which was almost five times higher than in 2014.
If that isn’t impressive enough, Instagram engagement is approximately 3.5 percent higher than Facebook and Twitter.
The bottom line in the study?
Instagram engagement delivered 58 percent more engagement than Facebook, and a gigantic 120 times more than Twitter.
Here are some Instagram numbers as collected by Expanded Ramblings Research:
- 400+ million users
- 75 million daily users
- Approximately 30 percent of the U.S. population uses Instagram
- 49 percent of U.S. adults use Instagram daily
Seeing these impressive statistics, one cannot ignore the enormous opportunity that exists on Instagram for a company or brand, that wants to gain traction with their social media campaigns.
With this is mind, here are some inside tips you can use to leverage the power of Instagram.
- Use unique images to tell your story. For example, add photos with a motivational quote, and add photos with a helpful quote about business. On Instagram, you’ll find everything from simple photos of the family pet to company logos. So, don’t be shy sharing, but be sure to follow the rules.
- Use Instagram to tell your brand’s story. For example: If you’re hiring, consider using your photo series for posting links to job ads or job alert sign up pages. Be sure to include a call-to-action.
- Add a tag which encourages interest and clicks. Remember, Instagram markets you using the tag/s you add to your photos. Take or upload a photo or video. Choose to add a filter, then type # followed by text or an emoji in the Caption field (ex: #flower)
- Create engagement with contests, puzzles and surveys. Today the top strategies who successfully create engagement use these three items. All of them create what
psychologists call ‘micro-commitments’. - Find a good keyword tool to help discover the best category title. To generate superior results on Instagram, it’s important you choose the right category for your posts. Get this wrong and potential viewers and clients will overlook you. This is where good keywords come in handy. Do some research (See link above) to find the best keywords before
choosing an Instagram category. - Use the hash# tag to further brand your business. It’s easier to create a buzz on social media when you use your own unique hash# tag.
- Use Instagram’s Geo-Tags to help customers find your business.
- Set up a mobile storefront. You then ask customers to upload their photos using or wearing your products. Depending upon the type of photos they upload (unique, funny,
beautiful, for example) these photos can cause your Instagram posts to go viral. - Import your email contacts to increase the potential for engagement.
- Always share your Instagram photos on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and LinkedIn.
- Follow others, share other’s photos and vids; this can provide info to use when
connecting with potential clients. - Add videos. Your videos can create solid engagement fast.
Today videos are the top tool for creating engagement and most viewed Internet content. Post anything from funny to absurd, fascinating to beautiful. Most important, your videos must be interesting.
Also, share others videos to create additional engagement.
One aspect of Instagram that is a marketer’s dream, lies in the fact they allow you to share your photos and videos on a variety of other social networking platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr and Flickr.
So, what type of photos should you use?
Research suggests you can generate a serious upward swing in engagement when using ‘organic’ photos.
Engagement with slick photos hovers around 2.3 percent, while engagement with organic photos is eight percent.
If you’re still unclear as to the value of Instagram when building and branding your biz, here’s a fact which you should be aware of.
Currently, Instagram is closing in on 500M viewers. They are projected to have one billion users within three years.
Of those millions, there will surely be thousands who fall into the category of potential client or customer for your business. Something to give serious consideration to.
What is the difference between Instagram and the ever popular and growing Snapchat?
The main difference is messages/photos uploaded to Snapchat last a specific amount of time; up to 24 hours (at the time of this writing), whereas photos you upload to Instagram are hosted on their servers and not on a time limit.
They also can be viewed by anyone on the Internet at any time, if you so choose that.
In addition to that, anyone can comment on your Instagram photos; which can start a discussion, which may with a bit of luck and timing, cause your post to go viral.
The following are additional tips and tricks you can also use to create and increase engagement on Instagram.
Aside from being allowed to share your photos and videos on other social networks, you can, and absolutely should…
- Follow friends, clients and potential clients
- Find topics of interest to clients; email them with links to these posts
- ‘Like’ the activities of clients, potential clients and others.
- A recent change even allows you to send direct messages via the Instagram platform.
Leveraging the powerhouse that is Instagram is simple. First set up a user profile. Similar to Facebook, it allows you to add a name, website and short bio.
With its built-in filters, it’s a simple task to edit and tag your photos using hashtags. Once that is completed, you can begin to market your business.