INSTAGRAM ADS: A STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE FOR 2021!

 

We all know how good Instagram is for sharing creative visual content, but Instagram advertising is also a super effective way for businesses to generate sales and build engagement!

In fact, according to a recent report, 75% of Instagram users will take action after viewing Instagram ads, such as visiting a website or making a purchase.

But setting up ads on Instagram requires a lot of thinking.

What should your target audience be? What should you say about your ad copy? What image should you use? Not to mention more technical information, such as tracking conversions...

In the complete guide on Instagram advertising, we will walk you through all the steps of creating your first Instagram advertising campaign: develop effective advertising ideas, target the right audience and optimize them when the campaign is launched.

Quick reminder: Instagram uses Facebook's advertising platform. Therefore, even though this guide is about advertising on Instagram, all advertising settings, budgets, planning, and creation are done through Facebook

LEARN: How To Run Instagram Ads?

Expectations of this guide

Creating and running your first Instagram ad campaign sounds daunting, right? Well, to make it easier, we divide it into 5 key steps: research, campaign goals, targeting, creatives, and tracking.

·        The research aims to find inspiration for their Instagram ads by analyzing the performance of competitors and other industry leaders.

·        A campaign goal is a goal or desired result of your Instagram campaign, whether it's increasing brand awareness, attracting traffic or making sales.

·        Targeting is about finding the audience that is most likely to help you achieve your campaign goals.

·        The idea is to create pictures, videos, slogans and calls to action to inspire Instagram users to interact with your ads.

·        Tracking is the process of measuring the results and impact of Instagram advertising campaigns based on the goals you set.

Instagram Advertising Step 1: Research Competitors

Before you start creating Instagram ads, you need to spend some time researching your competitors: What type of ads are they running? What call to action do they use? How much participation did they get?

One of the best ways to conduct such competitive research is to visit a competitor’s Instagram account and click through to its mobile website.

Next, scroll through its product page and click on a specific product.

If the Instagram account uses Facebook pixels for remarketing (a form of advertising where you can target users with ads that have visited your website before), then when you return to Instagram, you should find the feed that contains the products you viewed advertisement.

This is an experiment: Open Instagram on your mobile device and visit @article's account. Now, click on the link in their resume to visit their mobile website.

Once there, scroll through their product pages and click on a specific product. When finished, log out of their mobile website and reopen Instagram on the same device.

Have you noticed that when you scroll through the feed, Instagram ads on Article are likely to appear!

You can repeat this process several times with other competitors to understand what type of ads they are running.

This is also a great way to get inspiration from your own Instagram campaign!

Instagram Advertising Step 2: Create A Campaign Goal

Before we start actually creating an Instagram ad, let’s talk about the goals of the campaign. A campaign goal is what you want people to do when they see your ad.

Instagram provides some advertising campaign goals, you can choose from a pre-made list-the goal you choose will affect the optimization method of the advertisement and the payment method.

For example, if your goal is to attract more followers, the the priority of ad clicks will be lower.

You may already be familiar with campaign goals by creating Facebook ads. However, not all campaign goals that apply to Facebook can be used on Instagram.

On Instagram, you can choose the following activity goals:

Brand awareness: Attract people who are more likely to follow your ad and increase brand awareness

Reach: Show ads to the largest number of people

Traffic: Click on your website or your app to the app store

App installation: Take people to a store where you can buy your app

Engagement: Attract more people to see and interact with your post or page. Participation can include comments, sharing, likes, incident response and offer statement

Video views: promotional videos to show behind-the-scenes the footage, product releases, or customer stories to increase awareness of your brand

Conversions: Encourage people to take valuable actions on your website or app, such as adding payment information or making a purchase

If your goal is to sell e-commerce products (conversions) or conduct remarketing campaigns for users who visit your website, you must first create and install a Facebook pixel.

As mentioned above, the Facebook pixel is a small piece of code that you can place on your website to track visitors and conversions.

If you have a Facebook pixel on your website, when someone clicks on your Instagram ad, visits your website, and buys one of your products, the pixel will tell Facebook that a conversion has occurred.

Then, Facebook matches the conversion with the people who clicked on your Instagram ad so you can see how many sales the ad actually generated.

For more information, here is a guide on how to create and install a Facebook pixel in Facebook Ads Manager.

Instagram Advertising Step 3: Set Instagram Advertising Targeting

Instagram advertising targeting seeks to find people who are best suited to advertise-for example, who is most likely to perform the actions you specify in your campaign goals.

For example, if you are a company that runs interesting and interesting socks, then you will try to target users who are most likely to buy your products.

Fortunately, Instagram ads have the same targeting options as Facebook ads, including targeting based on location, demographics, interests, behavior, etc.

At the most basic level, your campaign needs to target a specific country, gender (if promoting gender-specific offers), and age group. For example, your campaign can target men and women between the ages of 18 and 40 who live in a fashionable metropolis.

However, it is best to narrow the scope of the target market! The more target audiences your ads target, the better their chances of achieving their campaign goals.

You can also choose to create a "custom audience" to attract users who have already interacted with your company, or create a "lookalike audience" to attract new users on Facebook who are similar to your most valuable audience.

Custom audience

Facebook custom audiences are people who have visited your website or shared their contact information with you.

Ads that target these groups tend to perform very well because they have already expressed interest in your business!

When you set up targeting on Facebook based on location, demographics, interests, behavior, or any other options Facebook offers, you are building a fixed audience. After selecting a targeting option, you will notice that the potential reach under the "Audience Definition" section to the right of the targeting option will increase or decrease.

When building a custom audience, you won’t choose any of Facebook’s built-in targeting options.

Instead, you upload an email or phone number database, and Facebook matches Facebook users. You can then target ads to that audience on Instagram.

Using the e-commerce business example above, if you collect information about your audience (email, phone number, first and last name, city, state/province, country/region, etc.) through socks newsletters, surveys, interviews or other means, You can upload these data to Facebook's Ads Manager.

Simply navigate to the Ads Manager, open "Tools", Click the "New" drop-down menu, and select "Custom Audience".

Similar audience

A Facebook lookalike audience is a custom audience that allows you to create super-specific targeting for your ads.

The conversion trend of these audiences is very good because their target audience is the most like your existing customers!

Basically, "similar audiences" allows you to acquire a custom audience and then serve ads to users who are similar to that audience.

Facebook will determine the common qualities of people in the audience, such as demographics or interests, and find people similar to them in the country/region of your choice.

You can also create similar audiences based on users who like your current Facebook page. This may lead to better results because your target audience is people who already understand your business and are interested in the products you offer.

By collecting targeted information about the demographics, interests, and behaviors of your audience, you can further expand your coverage. Facebook’s Audience Insights and Google Analytics are the two best tools for this purpose:

1. Facebook audience insights

Audience Insights is a tool from Facebook that allows you to gather insights about your target audience, including aggregated information about geographic location, demographics, buying behavior, etc.

You can use Audience Insights to help you make advertising decisions.

2. Google Analytics

If you use Google Analytics to track website visits, you can also use it to collect demographic information about your target audience.

Under the management section, go to the property settings of the desired analysis properties. Next, go to "Data Collection" under "Tracking Information". Then, turn on the switch under "Ad Report Features."

Instagram Advertising Step 4: Create Instagram Advertising Ideas

Creating an Instagram ad creative is both art and science. Before you start, you need to consider what your goals are, what you want to achieve, and what kind of information and tone will inspire your followers to interact with your ads.

You can choose from three different Instagram ads: image ads, carousel ads, slideshow ads, and video ads.

Instagram photo ads

With photo ads, companies can tell their stories and featured products through visually compelling images. If you are just starting to use Instagram ads, it is best to stick with photo ads. They are the easiest to set up, and they perform very well.

Instagram Carousel Ads

When displaying multiple products (or multiple uses of a single product) is of strategic significance, carousel ads are a good choice.

With the help of Carousel ads, Instagram users can swipe to view other images, and the call to action button will take them to the website to learn more.

For example, a new restaurant can show how to combine multiple ingredients to make delicious dishes. After the user swipes in the picture, you can use the button to direct them to the booking page of the website.

Instagram video ads

You can set the duration of Instagram video ads to 60 seconds, but according to Wistia data, the first 30 seconds of social videos are the most important. If you can attract an audience during this time, they are more likely to stay and interact with your business!

When designing a new video ad, try to create content that organically integrates content into your followers’ feeds.

It is also a good idea to stick to a single theme or focus. The last thing you want to do is to flood your audience with a lot of information!

Instagram slideshow ads

With the help of Instagram slideshow ads, advertisers can create lightweight video ads based on a series of still photos. In this way, companies that do not have the time or resources to create video content can quickly create videos with existing assets!

Some companies have also seen good results by placing ads on top of user-generated content (UGC). If you want to promote a product in an Instagram ad, try to display the product in real life that is relevant to your audience.

For example, for an e-commerce company that sells socks, it makes sense to feature the image of the person wearing your product.

Now that you know how to set goals, identify target audiences, and create ads, it’s time to create your first Instagram ad!