admin / 10-22-2021
With over 1 billion monthly active users(and counting), Instagram is one of the hottest social media marketing platforms today. This staggering number is enough to convince any business to invest in Instagram marketing, and rightly so.
The easiest and fastest way to promote your business on Instagram is through paid ads. In the US alone, Instagram averages $18 billion in ad revenues and is expected to exceed the $20-billion mark by the end of 2022.
If you are new to Instagram and don’t know how to create Instagram ads to promote your brand, you are not alone. However, creating Instagram ads is no rocket science and can be learned and perfected just like any other skill.
Learning to create and promote Instagram ads is important, but having the right insights, tools, and strategies in place is crucial to optimize your budget for your marketing objectives, be it generating qualified leads, boosting conversions, or driving website traffic.
In this blog post, we are going to explain everything about Instagram ads so that you can learn to promote your business to the right people, at the right time.
‘Instagram ads’ is a feature offered by Instagram, to businesses who want to promote their brand, products, or services to a predefined user-base.
Instagram ads are ideal for businesses or individuals who want to increase their profile’s reach and engagement instantly. Following an AI-based algorithm, these ads are served to the relevant audience and at the best time for maximum engagement.
In addition to that, Instagram offers various types of ads to choose from. Since each ad type is intended to serve a certain marketing objective, it is important to choose the right ad format in order to get the best value for your money.
Could be an image or a video, Stories ads pop up between users’ Stories. This ad format is widely preferred and used by businesses because of two reasons. Stories ads cover the whole screen for an immersive, distraction-free experience. Secondly, Stories Ads are viewed by over 500 million users, offering a massive visibility potential.
When creating Stories Ads, businesses should be mindful of the fact that people tend to skip ads as they see one. That is why it is recommended to create posts that look and feel like a regular Story and do not jump out at users as ads. Remember, the goal here is to get maximum eyeballs and engagement.
Explore ads can be videos or images that are served to users within the Explore tab. This ad format makes sense because over 50% of Instagram users access the Explore tab every month. Explore ads appear after the user clicks on a post within the Explore tab. An Explore ad may appear as a distraction, but that doesn’t matter if the distraction is beautiful and relevant.
If done right, Explore ads can help businesses and individuals gain massive exposure. Therefore, it is suggested to engage an expert to create and run your ads for maximum return on investment.
Ideal for eCommerce businesses with conversions as their prime objective, Collection Ads will display your product catalog in the form of a carousel. These ads offer the best returns because they are interactive and allow users to make a purchase directly from the ad in just one step. The ad redirects the user to Instagram Instant Experience Storefront, where they can view product’s details and make a purchase right away.
With over 130 million Instagram users interacting with shopping ads every month, there’s no reason eCommerce businesses shouldn’t leverage this ad format. Designed with a conversion intent, shopping ads can also be used to increase brand awareness and link clicks.
Shopping ads redirect users to a product page within the Instagram app and allow them to make a purchase in a couple of easy steps.
Instagram is a popular social media platform, second only to Facebook. It offers all the features and provisions necessary to run commercial ads and drive engagement. There are several convincing reasons to use Instagram ads, and here are five of them.
Precise Targeting
To help you get the best value for your marketing capital, Instagram allows you to target your audience as precisely as possible. Before your ad goes live, you can decide who will see your ad, at what time and for how long. The specificities include location, demographics, age-group, interests, behaviors, and more. With customization to the T, you can expect your ad to appear in the feed of people who are highly likely to complete the desired Call-to-Action.
Accurate Tracking
Once your campaign is live, you can track its progress and measure its effectiveness against other marketing channels. Based on the insights, you can also tweak your ongoing ads to narrow down or expand your targeting to improve results.
Instagram ads analytics are easy to understand and quite helpful in knowing which ad campaign is performing well and which one needs to be altered and positioned better. You can also keep track of your ad spends and calculate your return on investment based on the number of leads converted into customers.
Work with any budget
Here’s the best thing about Instagram ads. You don’t have to be a million-dollar business to run your ads on Instagram. You can decide on a budget before launching your campaign, and you will be charged only when someone clicks on your ad. This is called the Pay-per-Click model, which is used by social media platforms and search engines alike.
You can run Instagram ads for as low as $1 a day. However, if you are working with a small budget, you must manage your expectations accordingly.
High-recall quotient
Instagram is all about visuals. Even your ads will be in the form of an image or a video. And as we know that a picture is worth a thousand words, your Instagram ads are more likely to stick around as compared to search engine ads.
Thanks to their high-recall quotient, your ads will be remembered by your audience for a relatively long time. And they will be more likely to come back to your profile as soon as they need your product or service.
Always Evolving
Instagram keeps you on the cutting edge of marketing. With the introduction of new features for users and marketers alike, Instagram is evolving faster than any other social media platform. As a result, all you have to do is focus on creating ads that are compelling and optimized for your audience and marketing budget.
Instagram ads are based on a cost-per-click model. Currently in 2021, the CPC may vary anywhere from $0.40 to $0.70.
You can also set up your ads for cost per 1000 impressions, which is a great metric if your marketing objective is brand awareness. In 2021, Instagram’s cost per 1000 impressions varies from $2.50 to $3.50.
Plus, if you want to boost engagement on your Instagram profile or anything that you share, you can go with the CPE model and expect to pay anywhere between $0.01 and $ 0.05 for every like, comment, or share.
Your Instagram advertising cost depends on various factors.
Target Audience Size
If you have a small budget, target a broader audience. Doing so will show your ads to just about anyone on the platform, which will reduce your cost of running your campaign because you are competing with virtually no one. However, the cost goes up as you vie for the attention of a specific audience that is being targeted by your close competitors.
Campaign objective
Campaigns with lower-value objectives like brand awareness run cheaper than high-value objectives that are further down the sales funnel – conversion, for instance.
Budget
If you start with a small budget and run your ads for a short duration, your ad credits will get exhausted before the algorithm learns to align your objectives with the desired results. Ads with relatively large budgets are rewarded with a higher return on investment over time.
As mentioned above, the overall cost of your ads largely depends on your marketing objectives. Even if your objectives are not budget-driven, you should have them written down so that you have clarity throughout the process. The objectives for running Instagram ads can be brand awareness, engagement, website traffic, app installs, increasing reach, lead generation, or conversions.
Naming your ad campaign will help you track its performance in analytics and avoid mix-ups since you will be running multiple campaigns in the future. If it’s your first campaign, you could use it as a reference point for your future campaigns and track your growth over the years.
Instagram ads network has a floor rate of $1 a day, and there’s no ceiling. You can select the dollar amount and the number of days you want to run your ads for.
Choose your target audience by age group, gender, language preference, and location. You can also add interests and behaviors to further narrow your audience. This will ensure that your ad reaches people who matter to you and are most likely to become your customers.
Where do you want your ads to appear? In the feed, Stories, Reels or elsewhere? If you are not sure which ad format will ensure the best results, leave it to Instagram’s automatic placement option.
When everything is set and you are ready to push your ad live, make sure you have enough funds in your account to run the ad as intended. You will be presented with a price breakdown including taxes. So, make sure you have a little over that in your account.
The ad will be sent in for review, which usually takes 24 hours or less.
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