Instagram Ads: Express mega guide to advertising on Instagram

Here you have an interesting Instagram Ads guide to improve your reach and visibility on Instgram.

Instagram: Ads and publicity for businesses

When we talk about Instagram, we have to think that we are making value judgements about a network that has more than 600 million active users every month… This more or less equates to filling 6,000 stadiums with people. Can you imagine?

Once you comprehend the great reach that this social network has, you will better understand what incredible opportunity there is to reach different audiences through your ads on Instagram.

Benefits of advertising on Instagram

There are 3 good points of Instagram business ads:

✅ The cost per click: it is usually lower than with Facebook campaigns.

✅ The naturalness: the ads appear to be like a normal post or a story, the difference is almost unnoticeable.

✅ The simplicity: the configuration is very easy when you have clear which copy and image to use.

Since Facebook bought Instagram in 2012, the two platforms go hand in hand, but it is true that each one has its differences and impacts in terms of the dissemination of promoted content.

Why use Instagram Ads

Ads on Instagram can provide your company with the most effective way of achieving objectives such as visibility, increased community, customer acquisition, branding or market opening. What does all this mean? 

It means that if you properly configure your ads on Instagram, you can be a better-known brand, as well as get new customers who can become fans of your profile or directly visit your website.

Also, thanks to the ads on Instagram you can open your business to new markets, in other words, get out of your comfort zone (city, province, country) to reach new customers and start selling in different locations.

Learn more about managing Instagram Ads with Metricool by clicking here.

Reasons to bet on Instagram campaigns

If you want to find good reasons to bet on Instagram Ads then you should read the following:

▶️ It is the social network that provides the best advertising option for the money due to its low cost.

▶️ The image is what rules today and Instagram is the kind of the image so its ads create high interaction rates with users.

▶️ Instagram allows you to get a lot of visibility for little money.

▶️ The Ads manager is much more user friendly in comparison with Google Adwords, Linkedin or Twitter Ads.

If your company is located in sectors where women are the target customers, Instagram is your portal to advertise since more than 60% of its (active) users are women.

Basic strategy for Instagram Ads

Once you as a company make a consideration to advertise with Instagram, it is time to devise a strategy to avoid publishing ads wildly at random and blowing your investment for no good reason.

First steps: before configuring your campaign

Before setting up your Instagram ad, you have to be clear about certain aspects so that it reads correctly and fulfills your intent:

⚡️ The objective: You must be clear about what you want to advertise and for what purpose. To do this you will need outline planning for where you want to guide the user, and that clarifies the objective of your campaign.

For example, if you are a footwear brand that wants to launch a new product, you should design your roadmap so the ad leads to the product page, and in case the customer does not buy, make an attractive opt-in form that captures your lead.

⚡️ The public: you should consider the public, who do you want the ad to be shown to? Who is your target audience?

⚡️ The message that you are going to transmit and the image with which you are going to win them over. These elements must go hand in hand for your ad to be 100% effective.

Then you should have: the product you want to advertise, the landing page where you will promote it and a trackable link to know the number of visits. Also, keep in mind that you can not miss the material to make an ad: product images, persuasive text and the intent of the ad.

If you already have everything ready, the time has come to take the final step ➡️ Configuration of the ad.

🚀 Have you seen that not everything is just about advertising?

It is recommended that you complete these planning steps before launching into investing in ads. This way you will avoid situations like ‘Instagram does not work, I have invested millions, and it just doesn’t work’’ that many brands experience after campaigns with high levels of investment result in little impact largely due to the lack of planning.

Once you have everything ready, you’ll need to enter Facebook Ads Manager, the Facebook platform from which the ads are created on Instagram:

How to configure your campaigns

Do you already have the previous steps prepared and have everything ready for the configuration of your ad? Here I leave you the steps you can follow to launch it.

1️⃣ Link Instagram with Facebook. This is a basic step for any company. You should have previously created your Fan Page otherwise it won’t work. Go to the Setting tab that you have on the Facebook menu and then proceed to Add Account.

2️⃣ Choose the type of campaign that you want to launch and that best suits the objectives that you had previously outlined in your strategic plan. You have many types available:

• Promotion of publications
• Traffic to website
• Video promotions
• Campaigns to install Apps
• Increase the engagement of your App
• Web sales

Once you decide the type, you will have to name your campaign. Make sure you give it a memorable title so you can identify it easily to analyze its performance.

3️⃣ In this third step your ad should already be 100% configured because this is where we target our audience. You have many possibilities to focus in on the audience of your ad with points such as location, age, gender, language, affinities, interests, behaviors…

Having your target audience well identified will benefit the performance of your campaign. 

4️⃣ Fourth, set up where you want your ad to be seen. This is the differentiating point between Instagram and Facebook.

On this screen you will have to choose ‘Instagram’ and remove the Mobile News feed, Audience Network options as well as the others that appear.

5️⃣ This is where we discuss money, the issue that makes companies tremble and the point at which many often abandon ad configurations. Here you must choose the budget and your bid strategy. You have a minimum amount that is $5 (as I mentioned earlier, it is a very cheap investment to promote your company).

The cost of your ad will depend on the time and audience classification that you have defined, that is to say, the duration that it will show and your target audience.

When deciding how you want to pay for your ad (that is, the delivery of ads) you have 3 options and each of them pertains to a goal:

• Interaction (or user clicks) if your goal is to have a reaction from your audience.
• Daily unique reach (impressions per user) if you goal is simply impact with limited ad.
• Impressions (number of times the user sees the ad) If your objective is to create brand recognition, have a presence, notoriety and have visibility.

6️⃣ Ad format. Here comes the fun and creative part where you define the format of your ad (if you want a photo carousel, a video or a set of images). This is where you configure the message of your ad, the text and the links to which the images point.  This step completes the configuration of your ad and the next thing to do is publishing it. 

Measure the impacts of your Instagram Ads

Before talking about the Power Editor, which is the control panel where you will measure the impact of your campaigns, I want to tell you about the possibility of using Pixel to track your ads.

This might sound a lot like Facebook that also has one.

What is Pixel for? It is there to tell us if the user finally clicked on your ad and made the purchase of that product that you promoted through Instagram Ad.

Knowing that, we are now going to go to Power Editor (from your Facebook page) which you will find by accessing the Ads Manager to see the impacts of your campaign.

The most important metrics for your company and where you should focus your attention once you’ve launched an ad campaign are:

⏩ Results (Interactions with users)

⏩ Scope (Impacted people)

⏩ Impressions (People who have seen the ad)

⏩ Conversions (ad effectiveness)

⏩ Cost( what you have spent per *ad target in that campaign)

⏩ Amount Spent (what you have invested in the entire campaign)

• Remember that the objective of the ad could be interaction, reach or impressions.

Premium tips for top ads

I can’t finish this mega express guide to ads on Instagram for companies without offering some essential tips so that your campaigns have every possibility of being successful.

There are a number of tricks that enhance the effectiveness of your campaigns and that help seduce or reach more customers. They are as follows:

⭐️ Have a constant CTA. Repeat your call to action in image, titles and text.

⭐️ Add your website in the images and at the end of your ad so that you have more possibilities to increase visits.

⭐️ The images should be attractive, visually striking and always with your logo or a CTA. Of course, do not reload them after they post because you will encounter 2 problems: one with Instagram whom will tell you that it cannot be published again and another with your users, who could interpret it as invasive and might ignore you.

⭐️ If you have the hashtag of your campaign (which you should) include it with the image and / or text

⭐️ Your promotional text should be short and concise. Remember that less is more in this case.

⭐️ If your company has strict guidance on color or an Instagram photo editing manual in which you always need to use the same filter, you should configure your ad with those requirements, it will reinforce your brand identity. As you can see the world of Instagram Ads is very comprehensive but I hope that after this step-by-step guide you will have no fears or doubts when launching your campaigns.

Do you have any doubts about this Instagram Ads guide? I would love to help and to know more about your ideas or impressions about regarding your campaigns. I’ll read your responses in the comments.

Ana Díaz del Río , 10 July 2020