Instagram Advertising For Beginners

Published on: 28 January 2021 Last Updated on: 22 March 2023

More and more businesses are using Instagram advertising to reach and engage with customers. Are you ready to hop on board?

Whether you plan on handling it yourself or working with an agent who provides Instagram advertising services, it’s important to understand what Instagram ads can do for you. Learn more on how ads benefits your business.

In this guide, we’ll cover:

Setting up your Instagram Ad account
Creating ad campaigns
Targeting a specific audience
Choosing the right ad format
Monitoring the success of your ads

But first, let’s chat about whether Instagram Advertising is actually right for your business.

Is Instagram Advertising right for me?

If you’re not sure if Instagrams ads will be profitable for you, ask yourself these questions:

What are my business goals?

Instagram tends to work best for businesses that want to build their brand, gather new customers, and convert people who have already made a connection with their business.

What is the nature of your business?

Instagram is an effective advertising platform for all kinds of businesses selling physical products or professional services. As a visual platform, strong brand imagery is crucial.

Who’s your target audience?

Although a wide range of people uses Instagram, the demographic is younger than Facebook users. Instagram’s advanced targeting features will help you narrow down your audience and reach the right people.

How to set up Instagram Ads

You’ll need two important things before you can start creating ads:

Facebook Ads Manager account (since Instagram is owned by Facebook, you’ll be making all your ads through here)
A business account on Instagram (only business accounts can run ads)

Now let’s dive into the good stuff. Making your ads.

In Facebook Ads Manager, you’ll be guided through a step-by-step process.

Campaign

this is where you’ll choose your objective. What do you want the ad to achieve? It could be anything from getting more store visits, reaching a wide audience, or gaining lots of engagement.

Instagram breaks campaign goals into three sections: Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion

Ad Set

here you’ll pick the finer details of how the ad will run. That includes who you target, how long the campaign will run for, how much you want to spend, and where the ad will show.

Ad Level

now you can decide on what actually goes into your ad. The copy, the images, videos, colors, etc. It’s up to you to create ad content that is highly relevant and engaging for your audience.

How to target the right audience with Instagram Ads

The great thing about Instagram ads is that you get access to Facebook’s powerful targeting options.

That means you can target people based on location, gender, age, job title, relationship status, etc. You can also target based on interests such as yoga, camping, cat owners, etc.

Some cool Instagram targeting features include:

Connections

this feature lets you target people who like your page or friends of those people. You can even exclude people who like your page if you want to reach new customers.

Custom Audience

use this feature to reach people who have previously interacted with your business. E.g. visited your site, signed up for your newsletter, or watched your videos.

Lookalike Audience

this feature helps you target people who haven’t interacted with your business before but are similar to people who have.

How much does Instagram advertising cost?

Instagram advertising is a form of Paid per Click (PPC) advertising. This means you pay every time someone performs a particular action on your ad or sees your ad – it all depends on the goals you set at the beginning of your campaign.

When setting your budget, there are two options:

Daily budget

set how much you want to spend per day the campaign is running.

Lifetime budget

set how much you want to spend over the whole length of the campaign.

While you can start with a budget as low as $5 per day, you’ll want to come at your budget with a strategic approach. Think about your product, profit margins, and business objectives.

At the end of the day, you want to find the sweet spot that gets you the best return on investment (ROI).

Which ad formats perform best on Instagram?

Instagram offers a number of visual-based ad formats. The ideal one for your business will depend on the nature of your industry, your target audience, and the objectives you want to achieve.

Sometimes it takes testing out a few different formats to see what your audience responds well to.

Single Image Link Ad

Simple and straight to the point. This ad format works well if you want to get one clear message to your audience.

Video Ad

Show up to 60 seconds of video and captivate your audience with both visual and audio elements. Protip: adding captions can improve watch time.

Carousel Ad

Show multiple images or videos and link to different pages on your website. This is a good format if you’ve got a lot to showcase.

Slideshow Ad

Best for when you want to show multiple images. It’s automatic, so the user doesn’t have to slide through.

Story Add

Want to reach people while they’re watching Instagram stories? This format lets you use photos, videos, or a combination of both.

How to monitor the success of your Instagram campaign

All the data about your campaign is collected in Facebook Ads Manager. Some of the most important metrics to look at are:

Impressions

how many people saw your ad

Clicks

how many clicks your ad received

Cost per action (CPA)

how much you pay each time someone completes the desired action such as signing up for a newsletter or making a purchase

That’s cool and all, but what’s so important about monitoring your campaigns?

When you know the numbers, you can put more of your budget into the ads that are working and scrap the ones that aren’t. It’s all about optimizing your ads to drive up conversions and lower your CPA.

Over to you

If you’re just diving into the world of Instagram marketing, hopefully, you feel more confident having read this guide. Of course, there’s so much more to discuss – from utilizing hashtags to crafting a click worthy call-to-action and leveraging user generated content… But that’s for another day.

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Your ad can show to a potential customer when your targeted language matches:

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New Platforms to Explore in Advertising this Year

Each year is treated by marketers as a time to shed old methods and adopt new ones. This past year saw major upheavals in online search algorithms and privacy standards (to name a few). For average customers, this means less of the same annoying “tricks” used for summoning consumer’s cash. Marketing developers will need to come up with new strategies based on winning the buyer’s trust. As e-commerce grows at an annual rate of 23%, the cost of digital advertisements will increase. These costs can be cut once marketers begin adopting revolutionary methods of ad placement. Listed below are just a few of the new platforms to explore in online advertising for 2019. New Platforms to Explore in Advertising this Year: Demand Side Platforms: Purchasing ads couldn’t get easier with Demand Side Platforms. DSPs use supply-side platforms to streamline bidding and posting. The ad’s impression information is sent to the SSP for processing where it’s then matched to the highest bid within their algorithm. Ad purchases take a few seconds; the same amount of time it takes to load a webpage. The program uses data such as demographics and visits counts for audience targeting. This ensures an ad will get only the highest exposure. Dashboards: Anyone with a YouTube page will notice the dashboard feature located in the “Creator Studio” section. This dashboard provides charts for the amount of time spent watching a video, the number of subscribers, and how many “Likes” and “Dislikes” it received. App developers have now been able to make this platform and make it a bit more streamlined. Companies, like Sprout Social, are creating customizable dashboards attuned to a business’s specific analytics. All current data can be collected and calculated to generate presentation-ready graphics. Certain features even allow you to synch these dashboards with multiple social media accounts. Wearables: In an age where refrigerators can be smart, even the accessories we wear can have internet capabilities. Wearable devices like smart watches make accessing data less complicated as we move about our daily activities. Marketing agencies are abuzz with various methods to introduce wearable device and programs. Wearable ads go hand in hand with blockchain technology. A block chain model can be used to authenticate user IDs and provide tokens to register them. Through the IDs, businesses will be able to track the user’s buying habits so online ads can be precisely placed and scheduled. These new features may even be used to gauge the customer’s personality traits. Transparency: News of hackers and trolls are causing consumers to hold off on accepting any offer from an online business. The more profitable a business is, the more it is held to the same light as government and relationships. That’s why it’s important to seek out transparent platforms for use. Transparency is a virtue that many potential customers are willing to spend the extra dollar on. Areas that customers demand transparency on include company values, practices, and policy or pricing changes. Honesty, when answering questions and admitting mistakes, is the best demonstration of transparency. Read Also: Who Are The Best Software Vendors Out There? 3 Things To Consider When Designing A Company Logo For Your Business

How we could be able to get benefits from the outdoor marketing

Outdoor advertising, very simple, is marketing that organized outdoor massive places to attract the customers. Various types of outdoor branding can be done to make a brand visibility. Billboards can be comprised about 65% of outdoor marketing. • Sitting benches branding • Schools gates branding • Specific event coverage • Recreational place banners • Shops branding • Shopping malls • Bus branding • Bus stands • Bridge branding Here we also include other populated areas are vital to show all types of flying flags imprinted with logos, images, and promotional messages. There are plenty of ways to attract your customers by seizing the attention and offering them a huge amount of benefits while the competitors are not. To make our brand a significant exposure outside the home where most of the folks are outing, visiting and taking rest of long hours of hectic work burden. Outdoor marketing isn’t a new way to market the products and brands. In the current era people are getting bored with the old stuff of commercialization – now they are demanding some new content as our world has advanced into the digital world of marketing. To make our brand’s promotion different from the competitors’ it would be better to give a strong reason to our customers so that they easily can buy products. Why should we use outdoor Marketing? 1. Target your audiences 2. Positioning at points of sale 3. Brands talking point build 4. Consumer pulls distributor push 5. Target your audiences efficiently 6. Outdoor advertising can’t be turned off 7. Other media cover outdoor promotional activities How we can take the maximum benefits from outdoor marketing through outdoor banners. 1- Outdoor Advertising has High Impact To preparing TV ads and other digital media promotional content, we keep in mind how to be attractive in the 30-second streaming ad. But in outdoor advertising, it would be slightly easy to attract the audience with just simple but reliable graphical that according to the place atmosphere where it has changed. No matter the passengers taking attention or just this outdoor banner going through their eyes. It is not just a 30-second ad that will stream off. This is the main benefit of outdoor marketing to be there for some particular period by attracting the folks. 2- It would be Very Cost Effective Way of Marketing Through a widely accepted survey, it has been reddened that outdoor promotion is very cost-effective form all other advertising phases. It is just given and take the way of marketing how much we invest it would be good enough return profit. 3- It has Widely Reach to the maximum Audiences As outdoor advertising is stand out directly to customers every time, while passengers are walking or passing through. Most of the time some folks are individually read out what is being shown off on the display boards, sometimes its texture, content, images, and graphics. Through all these, our display boards would be the maximum reach to the audiences. 4- Outdoor Marketing is an Engaging Media Unlike most mediums, outdoor is actually liked by consumers. Research from APN Outdoor found that 71% of Australians preferred buses with advertising than those without and that 36% stated outdoor advertising as a welcome distraction. 5- Outdoor Marketing Impacts’ well on Sale It is a good marketing channel and mostly seen by the buyers, so that is the primary concern to enhance the chances of sale on the brands’ outlet or other places it is put on sale out. In outdoor stalls or extra promotional activities, we could be able to get promotional, visibility and sale by investing in this type of marketing. Read More: 5 Marketing Tips To Help Grow Your Business On Instagram Google Maps Marketing: Guides On How To Boost Brand Advantage Social Media Marketing Role In Technology

Always Remember, Promoting Is Important

If an artist wants to make it they cannot sit down and wait for the opportunity to fall on them, because those are extremely rare. They have to strive to create opportunities and do whatever they can. They have to give it their all and somehow try to promote themselves. It doesn’t matter if it is small or huge, what matters is how much of an impact is made. When promoting yourself it needs to done efficiently so that it can grab the attention of fellow listeners. Soundcloud promotion (streamdigic.com) can be done financially, or non-financially. Always Remember, Promoting Is Important: Non financial Promoting: Non financial promoting is where not a single drop of money is used when promoting. These methods are especially good for struggling artist who isn’t making that much and is on a budget. So, this is a great way to save them from their expenses. There are various methods to non-financially promote themselves, like; Making your profile more visually appealing- It is important that your SoundCloud profile is pleasing, as many people always look at the picture rather than the actual work. So by designing your profile to be more aesthetic, or color full, or something that will represent your genre of music, and being able to catch anyone’s eyes, then you are self-promoting yourself, without any costs being incurred. Social Media- This is one of the most effective, and popular ways to promote anything. Literally anything. Everyone has some form of social media, and it only takes a few people to make anything go viral. Soit is fast, effective and can be seen by the whole world. Consistency- Another important factor. Consistency is key when it comes to music, especially for new artists. If you are not consistent with the work that you put around, then fans will turn into former fans, and it may lead to you being forgotten by them. I mean we aren’t all Adele, it would be difficult for ay new artists to fall and rise even better than before, especially if they are forgotten. Building yourself a network- If more artists are connected with other artists online then everyone can talk to each other and give them advice and criticism Financial Promoting: Financial promoting is where money or other forms of finance are used to promote. Just like non-financial promoting there are financial methods which prove to be just as effective, such as; Buying plays, likes, and comments- due to the purchase of these it is beneficial, as it gains more attention from other listeners. As many people care about who and what is popular these days. Therefore, this would be the best way to reach their attention. Paying social media to promote- You can offer money to media sites so that they will promote you. The benefits of promoting: Soundcloud promotion is key when it comes to furthering your career like said, there are plenty of ways to do so, but the question is, why is promoting important? Yes, it is important because it helps to push an artist’s career forward, but there are so many other reasons, like; There will be high sales and profits in the near future It strengthens the view of yourself Increases brand awareness Increases the fan base It helps to develop your brand And so much more, so this why promoting is needed. Read Also: Demystifying The Common GDPR Myths How Financial Trading Can Give You The Life You Want The Importance Of Saving: The Bedrock Of A Bright Financial Future