8 Tips for a Successful Instagram Advertising Campaign

 In Best Practices

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Advertising on Instagram is one of the best ways to spread the word about your business. There are a billion monthly Instagram users who see 2 million Instagram advertisements on the platform. That’s because Instagram is one of the best networks for creating engaging ads and targeting the right audience to see them.

Instagram also has a 2.2 percent engagement rate with its posts and advertisements. This is the highest interaction rate of any social media platform. Best of all, it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg to run these ads.

Simply running an Instagram ad doesn’t necessarily guarantee success, however. You’ll need a creative, well-designed, and measurable campaign platform to succeed. Here are some tips for getting your first campaign off the ground.

1. Set your goals

No campaign can be successful without a few clearly defined goals. This tells you where you’re headed so that you can allocate the appropriate budget, make the right plans, and see the most success with your campaign.

Most Instagram advertisers set goals in the following categories:

  • Followers
  • Likes, comments, engagement, etc.
  • Reach
  • Brand awareness
  • Content views
  • Conversions
  • Traffic

Setting a specific goal is important because it helps you curate a good plan. You also need to be able to measure your goals. Consider Owlmetrics’ Instagram analytics tool, which measures each of these metrics as they climb to reach your goals.

2. Choose the right format

When designing your Instagram ads, you’ll have a variety of formats to choose from. You’ll want to choose the best format for your chosen objectives. Different ad formats deliver different results. Here are some of the most common ad formats to consider:

  • Photo ad: These are usually best for building brand awareness, telling a visual story, showcasing your product catalog, and increasing engagement.
  • Carousel ad: You’ll post multiple photos or videos so that viewers can scroll through them. They’re great for eliciting interactions, providing value, and driving clicks and conversions.
  • Stories ad: Stories is one of the most popular places to publish an ad on Instagram. Stories ads appear in between stories from everyday users. They’re great for expanding brand reach, boosting brand awareness, and encouraging consumer conversions.

3. Target your audience

Instagram ads are highly effective because they target a very specific audience, but you have to know who your audience is and how to reach them first. You need strong customer personas with detailed information about their demographics. This includes age, location, gender, interests, income range, and other relevant information that can help you target the right people. You can see who your current followers are with an Instagram analytics tool.

You’ll get the most bang for your buck if you know your audience well. Don’t cut corners on your research. Your ads will hit closer to home when you can clearly visualize your target consumers.

4. Use design tools

Designing your ad is also an important part of reaching your target audience. There’s a lot that goes into designing a great ad, including:

  • Write copy that’s direct and concise. It should grab your audience’s attention within seconds, so there’s no need for them to read it twice to understand.
  • Use your brand’s logo. Typically, this will appear somewhere out of the way, such as the top or bottom of the ad. You can also tag your Instagram handle in the ad as well to make it easy for consumers to reach out to you.
  • Keep it simple. If you’re having a competition, giveaway, or promotion, don’t try to overtake the promotion with too many images, stories, graphics, colors, or other distracting elements. Make it compelling, but simple.
  • Use a simple design tool. Look for online tools that help you design an ad, such as Canva. It’s free at the basic level and super easy to use in order to create compelling Instagram ads in any format.

5. Set a reasonable budget

It’s hard to know exactly what you’ll spend on your Instagram ad campaign since it’s the first you’ve ever done. You’ll learn as you go, but start out conservatively. Run a couple of affordable ads to see what works for your business. You can always spend more in the future using what you learned during the initial process.

You don’t really have an excuse if you go over budget with Instagram ads. You can set each advertisement to reach a certain dollar amount, and it won’t spend any more than that amount. This makes it the most accessible advertising platform for any budget.

6. Focus on your CTAs

A good call to action may be the most important element of any Instagram ad. This is the statement that tells consumers what to do so that you can win a conversion. Writing a compelling CTA is an art form that every marketer must master. Above all, it should be simple and direct.

Instagram allows you to add customizable CTA buttons to fit your business’s needs. You could write “shop now,” “learn more,” or “sign up.” Let the story do most of the talking while your CTA drives home the conversion with just a word or two.

7. Utilize hashtags

Hashtags make your posts discoverable, which is essential for a good ad campaign. Each Instagram ad requires a customized campaign. Here are some simple tips to help you perfect your ad hashtags:

  • Short and sweet: preferably three words or fewer and easy to spell.
  • Memorable: make it something followers can remember so they’ll use it.
  • Unique: while it can be good to use a popular, oft-used hashtag in your posts, try to develop one that fits well with your brand and isn’t being used by others.
  • Relevant: it should represent your message and brand clearly.
  • Multiple hashtags: five to 10 hashtags work best for optimum ad traction.

8. Test your campaign

To test the effectiveness of your Instagram ad before you run it, use split testing and A/B testing to ensure an ad’s effectiveness. Try to run just one test, looking at one element at a time. It can be expensive, time-consuming, and confusing to try to run too many tests at once.

You can also use a statistical significance calculator on your analytics app, which tells you if you possess significant enough results with this campaign to repeat it. You’re looking for a confidence level of 95 percent or above to show a campaign is worth repeating.

These tips can be applied in various ways to provide you the most effective ad campaigns possible. Monitor your successes and failures to get the most out of each campaign.

This article was written by Jared Polites from e27 and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@newscred.com.

There is no endorsement, affiliation, or sponsorship between Getty Images and the companies/services mentioned/linked within this article.

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