How to Create a Successful Instagram Advertising Campaign

Avoiding something due to the fact that it’s something new to you is not a good enough reason for you not to do it. You’ll never truly know what you’re missing out on until that something has completely swiped you off the map. The something, in this case, is Instagram.

Instagram is a social media platform that so many companies are advertising on today. If you aren’t, then trust us when we say that you’re missing out big time. Apart from the fact that you’re missing out, however, is the fact that you soon may be eaten up by your competitors that do advertise on there, so if this isn’t enough to scare then we don’t know what else will. Don’t pull a Patrick and live under a rock and instead, seize the day by taking advantage of what the world has to offer you. After all, you’ll be able to get your item or service out to those who are truly interested in what you have to offer, therefore, you’ll see major conversions at a price that is close to nothing in comparison to the return. Therefore, without further ado, let’s teach you what it is that you need to do in order to bring your Instagram ad campaign to life.

How to Create an Instagram Advertising Campaign

Start by logging on Facebook. If you weren’t aware, Facebook is the parent company of Instagram, which is why everything actually happens on Facebook. There, you need to link your Facebook business account to your Instagram profile. As soon as the two are connected, you’re ready to enter the Ads Manager, where you can start your journey.

Begin your project by establishing an objective. This part can be tricky, but thankfully the Ads Manager simplifies it for you by offering seven objectives to choose from. They include brand awareness, reach, traffic, app installs, engagement, video views, and conversions. As soon as you’re satisfied with the goal that you’ve set, you can move on and set you’re your targeting.

The Ads Manager is very strong in this department, offering you a variety of options to choose from that range from very wide categories to pretty narrow ones. This means that you can start off with options such as age, gender, and location and then layer those with ones such as interests, connections, and behaviors. Be sure that your selection is narrow enough with the help of their gauge. Afterward, you are able to create a couple types of audiences. A custom audience is one that contains those people who have already visited your site or given you their contact information. These kinds of ads typically do pretty well as the people that you’re targeting have shown interest in your business before. Another kind is a lookalike audience, which is a group of people that are very similar to your already established customers. As a result, this audience has a very high chance of converting. In addition, you also need to set up the amount that you are willing to pay by either establishing a daily or a lifetime budget. A daily budget is the amount that you can spend per day on an ad while a lifetime budget is the amount that you can spend during the duration of an ad campaign. In addition, you also need to set the scheduling of that ad. Think about whether you’d like it to go live right away or whether you’d like to set your own start and end date for it.

This next part is where you get to select how you’d like your ad to be seen. You are allowed to choose one of the four formats: photo ads, carousel ads, slideshow ads, or video ads. Be sure that you know the specifications of the one that you select as you don’t want to spend your money on something that isn’t sized correctly or isn’t of the right format, for instance. The beauty of advertising on Instagram is the fact that your ad will fit in seamlessly with the rest of the platform. It won’t be annoying, but rather fit in perfectly with the rest of the content that your targeted customer is seeing. When you first get started, your best bet is photo ads as they’re the simplest to set up and they tend to do really well. However, if you want to showcase several items, for instance, then carousel ads are a really good choice as users are able to swipe to see an image of every item. If neither of those fit what you’re trying to offer, then you can choose to upload a sixty-second video. Just be sure that you make a video that goes in organically with the feed of your targeted audience. If you don’t have the tools to make a real video, then you can just piece together several photos to create a slideshow. After you’ve uploaded the visuals, it’s time to focus on your text. Here, you can choose to include a CTA, or a call-to-action button such as “Download”, “Send Message”, or “Shop Now”, for instance. You can also write in the caption that you’d like in this section. Just remember that less is more! Also, don’t forget to use those hashtags. They will make a world of a difference.

Now, although you may have completed the process of actually creating the ad, your work doesn’t stop there. In fact, it’s a waste of money to neglect the next step. As soon as your ad is live, you want to make sure that you’re tracking its performance to see whether or not it needs to be optimized. You also want to make sure that nasty human-like bots aren’t clicking away on your ads for no reason but to eat up your budget. Therefore, you need an agency such as our own that can do just that for you. TEA, which stands for threat and engagement analytics, specializes in finding and getting rid of those bots while making an analysis on user engagement in order to uncover any obstacles or trends amongst your target audience as well as track what they’re doing outside of the platform. To learn more, visit our site and watch our free webinar.