Published on July 16th, 2019
Instagram is one of the hot social and digital media platforms which is omnipresent these days. This photo-blogging site is being used by the audience, celebs and brands to get the best out of themselves.
Since most of the crowd is currently surfing through this application, the brands are also trying their level hard to make their presence felt in this category. Thus, Through Instagram advertising, you can reach a larger and more targeted audience.
More than other social media platforms Instagram works better in branding for certain reasons. It has better engagement with its posts and advertisements than many other social media platforms.
This is the biggest reason why it has become the most popular platform for advertisers.
Here Is Our Step By Step Guide To Run An Effective Advertising Campaign:
How Instagram Advertising Works
When planning your advertising campaign on Instagram there can be many objectives to doing so. You have to make your choice from a list that is presented to you. The choice you make would decide how these ads are optimized and the results you get from them.
Following Are Some Goals That You Can Choose From:
1. Brand Awareness
You must select this objective when you want to increase your brand awareness in the eyes of your customers. In this category, you can find many other supporting factors like Image Ads, Video Ads, Carousel Ads, Slideshow Ads, and Stories Ads.
2. Reach
You have decided to increase awareness but where do you want the same to happen. Under this category, you may find Local Awareness and Reach & Frequency. While brand awareness is restricted to a few customers, reach helps you target many such people together.
3. Traffic
Next is the attempt to get more people to your website. In case, you have a mobile app in place you can use it to drive people towards it. Two popular objectives here are Website clicks and traffic. You may create an offer for your audience using them.
4. App Installs
If you wish people to download your app, then App installs is a perfect choice for you. Again, this objective is useful for any Instagram ad type.
5. Engagement
You can use engagement to promote any offers that you may be having. Use this effectively to promote all your Instagram posts and accounts. Image Ads, Video Ads, and Slideshow Ads are the options that can be useful in this case.
6. Video Views
If you want to run a Video Ad, Carousel Ad, Slideshow Ad, or Stories Ad, you must use the Video Views objective. Not only do you get to promote the video but also drive any awareness for the brands and products.
7. Lead Generation
The Instagram ads’ Lead Generation objective can be optimized to gather information like email addresses from customers and market your product to them.
Conversions
If the final objective is to increase the sales then the Conversions objective would be ideal. Under the conversions objective fall both the Website Conversions and Dynamic Ads options. You can also use conversions in case you want people to take some particular action in your app.
How To Create An Instagram Business Account
1. Setting Up Your Instagram Account
Upon opening the Instagram app, you can log in either by signing up through phone/email or Facebook. At this point, you should use your business email so that the Instagram account does not relate to your personal Facebook account. The next step involves adding account details like the business name which should be the name with which you are recognized. If the business name has already been picked up by someone else you can use a part of it.
2. Optimizing Your Instagram Account
Your next step is to pick up a profile picture for yourself. This picture will leave a profound impression on your customers. Hence, use an image that matches the taste of your brand. Here, you could use your logo which the people can relate to. Then create your Bio which should be a 150-word summary about what you are propagating. These bios are not searchable and hence hashtags and keyword insertion here is not necessary. You can encourage your readers to visit your website or take any other action.
3. Managing Your Instagram Settings
In the end, you will have to review the account settings. In the upper right-hand corner of the profile, there would be three stacked lines. You have to click on them and then on the settings which come later.
Settings show multiple options like changing password, liked post details, notifications enabling and others. To get more people to engage with you, you must allow them to be able to see and comment back on your stories.
Next, you need to switch to a business profile as doing this helps users to get in touch with you. Also, you get to promote your brand and receive detailed insights about how the marketing efforts are responding. In order to switch to an Instagram business profile, you must have a Facebook business page.
To do so you have to first choose the setting, log on to Facebook, and give Instagram permission to manage pages. Link your Facebook page to your Instagram profile. Automatically important information from the Facebook account would be imported to the Instagram profile as well.
You May Like: How To Grow Your Instagram Social Club?
Why Advertise on Instagram?
Instagram is a part of the Facebook family and advertising there offers some unique features and benefits that we share here.
1. Customizable CTA Buttons
You have created an ad and next, you want to make sure that you receive the best possible response from your customers. CTA or call to action buttons are responsible to force your customer to think positively about your product and proceed ahead.
As a benefit, you receive five CTA buttons on Instagram. You can do multiple things with these buttons and get your customers on board. You can request them to visit your website or give them app details where your products are readily available for purchase.
2. Different Ad Types
You know the size of your target audience and the best way to reach out to them. With the benefit of different ads for different goals, you can build them in a manner that your audience is bound to react in a positive manner.
3. Performance Tracking
One major reason why you should advertise on Instagram is that you can always track its performance. You can use the Facebook Ad Manager to create and manage ads and get to track the relevant metrics and modify the content to get the best returns. Apart from that, you can customize the ads such that only the relevant customers get to have a look at them.
4. Organic Growth
Unlike others, Instagram is all about creating an environment such that you gain organic growth without using paid means. This means that customers get to make a natural bond with you and thus respond better to your ads.
You May Like: 5 Helpful Instagram Tips For Newbies
Different Types of Instagram Ads
Let’s have a look at five different kinds of Instagram ads which will brighten your next social media campaign:
1. Instagram Stories Ad
These are the ads that appear on the full screen and these are between the story ads. Since stories are valid only for 24 hours, this is perfect when you want to capture attention in a strict time frame. Also, the swipe feature in stories brings out the call to action feature – “Apply now”, “Buy”, “view” and likewise.
How To Create Them:
- Begin by firstly defining your market objective.
- Choose a story image as this will be a vital tool in pulling the audience.
- Use the attractive call to action buttons.
Prepare a separate campaign for other social networking accounts as well as Facebook and Twitter. Make sure you use different images for both.
2. Photo Ads
Another unique way of attracting the crowd is through beautiful and compelling images. But this is relevant only when you already have got huge followers. Thus, with a huge number of followers, getting mileage through photos becomes much easier.
3. Video Ad
Research has proved that more and more people are spending while watching Instagram videos. That is why Instagram is now strategically focusing on making more and more engaging videos. Many advertisers are leveraging on videos to attract audience base towards themselves. Call to action words like “Apply now”, “Book now”, “contact us”, “call now” are being used in huge numbers.
4. Carousel Ads
This is another interesting and highly successful crowd-pulling strategy available on Instagram. Here a single service can be subdivided into 10 different images. The USP with carousel ads is that multiple products can be highlighted through this feature. You can also share a part or even multi-part story with this feature. Some of the major calls to action buttons are “Apply now”, “Book now”, “contact us”, “call now” and likewise.
One of the most successful carousel ads of present times is “La La Land” by Lionsgate UK.
5. Collection Ads
This is a relatively newer feature, introduced as recently as in 2018. This feature is extremely powerful as here you can see the combination of photos and video both. Here if somebody clicks, they will be taken directly to the “Shop Now” page.
How To Run A Successful Instagram Advertising Campaign?
1. Adjust Your Goal
Campaigns cannot work properly until you have not set up the desired goal. You should be clear about what you want to achieve while investing some amount of money. Make a plan accordingly, and this trick will make your campaign work more effectively. You have many goals to choose from such as ‘likes’, ‘followers’, ‘reach’, ‘improving brand awareness’, ‘improving content views’, ‘getting traffic’ or ‘getting views’.
2. Target The Right Audience
Instagram ads can be more successful if it reaches to the target audience. Before launching your ad, you should identify which type of audience you want to target on a priority basis. Using Instagram, you can easily select the audience as per the demographics, age, interest, and income.
You May Like: Instagram Likes – The Relevant Things To Know To Do It Rightly
3. Select The Right Format
While composing your Instagram ads, you will come across various formats. You should choose the right format as per the type of your business and your objectives.
4. Use Appropriate Designing Tool
Only a well-designed ad format can help you in improving the reach of your Instagram ad. There are several things that you should keep in your mind prior to designing Instagram ads which are:
- Make Use Of The Business Logo: You should use the business logo while you are designing your business ad. This will generate trust.
- Make It Simple And Easy To Understand: You should make your Instagram ad simple and easily understandable. Ads having too many images and the content will not be understood easily.
5. Start With A Reasonable Budget
If you are setting your Instagram ads for the first time, then you should make sure to set up an affordable budget. As this is the first time for you, you should first get an idea about how much you will be charged for your Instagram ads.
6. Keep Call To Action Or CTA In Mind
CTA plays a vital role when you are designing your own Instagram ad. The overwhelming CTA helps in improving the conversion rate. Your CTA must be compelling, simple and direct. You can also customize your Instagram CTA button as per your need. You can use ‘click here’, ‘visit here’, ‘show now’, ‘signup’, depending upon the category of your business.
7. Use Hashtags
Hashtags are helpful in making search better and make the Instagram post discoverable. Some of the major tips you can use to make your hashtags more effective:
- Keep Short And Sweet: Always use Hashtag using three words, which are easy to understand.
- Make It Memorable: It should be such that your followers can remember it easily.
- Make It Unique: Keeping Instagram tags unique is very important.
- Keep Them Relevant As Per Your Business Type: You must spread the right message to your readers through hashtags.
Tools To Monitor Your Instagram Ad
- The IG Manager: Using this tool, you can have an idea about the reach, overall engagement, and performance.
- Website Analysis: With the help of Google Analytics, you can also learn about the engagement of the visitors towards your Instagram ads. You can also learn about Instagram traffic and learn about how your Instagram ad is performing.
- Facebook Ads Manager: From the Facebook ads manager, you can easily come to know about the exact number of impressions, reach, clicks and links.
Targeting The Right Audience
Suppose you want to offer a service that will make people aware of some delicious food recipes. You you have your video ready. It is the time to select the right audience of your video with the help of the ad targeting tool.
The ad targeting involves the selection of the people to whom you want to show your ad. This is the only thing that you have to keep in your mind while you are shaping your Instagram or Facebook ad. Using the feature of the ad targeting option, you can easily make the selection of the right customers to whom you want to show your ad.
Some Of The Factors On Which The Ad Targeting Feature Depends:
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Interests
- And many more
Set Up Your Budget
Setting Instagram ads involves budget. This also involves the time interval during which you want to run you
Instagram ads. First of all,
- You should determine during which time you want to run your Instagram ad
- Set up your goal and learn whether you can reach your goal within a week or not
- Learn about the time during, which you should run your Instagram ad
The advantage of using the feature of the Instagram ads is that you can easily set up your own flexible budget. Some of the ways that can make you ease in setting your budget in Facebook ads:
- As per the ad set
- As per the ad campaign
From this, you can easily set up your daily budget or lifetime budget, the daily budget deals with the setting of the money you want to spend each day, which is up to you. You can set up your budget to $10 or to $100, and you can set the interval that can be one day or 10 days.
If you choose the lifetime budget, then you will spend this money on the completion of your life. If you are spending around $100 on your ads, then the ads manager will automatically adjust your budget on your selected days. This is beneficial for all types of industries, whether it is small-scale industries or large-scale enterprises.
Common Instagram Ad Mistakes And How To Avoid Them
The major aim of running an Instagram ad is to improve awareness, widen the reach and generate more and more traffic towards the business. These will automatically improve the sales of the business and let the business grow.
But often people make some common mistakes which make their ads ineffective:
Mistake 1: Not Keeping The Goal In Your Mind
Some people use too many visuals or create videos that don’t convey the right message. Using too many images or meaningless videos can actually backfire.
The major goal of generating Instagram ads is to generate awareness, increase the followers, increase traffic on the website, downloading the mobile app or getting phone calls. Whenever you are generating your own Instagram ads, you should be aware of your goals and keep them in mind.
Things You Should Keep In Your Mind:
- The right target of your Instagram ad
- Types of person you want to target
- Do you want to generate website traffic? If yes, then at what time you want to receive the traffic?
Mistake 2: Not Keeping Attention Towards The Target Audience
Instagram ads are beneficial in targeting the right audience, but before doing so you should have an idea for what type of people your services are beneficial. But many people don’t keep attention to the target audience.
Tips:
- Just have an eye on the services of a particular business and whom they are going to be beneficial.
- Learn whether the business is selling some kind of products
- Check out whether the business is offering some kinds of service
- Learn about your competition
- Go and learn about the businesses in the same field and check what type of ads they are generating.
Keep The Demographics In Your Mind
This can help you keep your budget low and make your ad to reach the right people at the right time. After choosing the demographics for your ad, you must understand all of these things:
- Learn about the age of the people you want to target
- Check whether they are male or female
- Keep the location of the audience in your mind
- Learn about the education of the audience
- Catch the details of the earning of the audience
- Whether they are married or not, or they are having children or not
Mistake 3: Not Paying Enough Attention To Content
Not paying enough attention to content is one of the common mistakes that ads managers make. How to avoid this mistake?
- Use hashtags carefully.
- Use the right call to action or CTA
- Learn how to use the right emojis
- Create content for your ad that should reflect your brand positioning, products, and services
- Never try to be too self-promotional. Ads showing and inspiration and values become more popular
Mistake 4: Thinking Only In The Short Term
Never think only in the short term. Brad building and audience engagement should be a long-term strategy. You should never forget that your visitors are going to remember you for a long time.
Tips:
- Adverting is a continuous brand building strategy, hence you must adopt a holistic approach
- Don’t forget that relationships are built over time
- It takes time before conversions start; hence, you should have lots of patience
Mistake 5: Using Poor Quality Of Images And Videos
Some people don’t know that good visual content can make a real difference. All memorable Instagram ad campaigns have used good quality of images and videos. All forgettable ones had a poor quality of images and videos.
It is the image that catches the attention of Instagram users. They will not slow down and stop for poor quality images and videos. They love to engage with good quality images and videos.
You May Like: How To Edit Photos For Instagram And Apply A Unique Style
Tips:
- Make Use Of The Quality Tools For The Best Results: Use only the fine quality of the camera.
- Keep your background in your mind: When you are making your ad, then you should use the background which is quite simple and make sure that it matches with your services.
- Although natural light is the best option, the Adobe Lightroom app can brighten your images.
- Add variety to your images. Avoid out of proportion framing and background clutter.
