How to set up your Instagram ads properly

Social networks have essentially shaped the modern world. They have created the principles of public reputation and enabled people with small budgets to promote their services and talents.

Instagram, now 12 years old, is today the seventh most visited site in the world. In 2021, the network showed particularly strong growth and became the fourth most popular social platform. These facts are direct proof of how valuable an Instagram presence is to your business.

Why is advertising on Instagram an integral part of your marketing strategy? There are several reasons:

1. The social network has around 500 million active users per day. This shows the great popularity of Instagram and its huge audience.
2. Visual content has advantages. The whole point of Instagram is a beautiful story through pictures and interactive content. And as we know, this type of information is perceived best by people today.
3. Hashtags help to promote and find an audience. They have become an integral part of Instagram. Perfectly unite a huge audience through shared experiences and interests.
4. Extensive advertising options are available. Instagram ads can be run through the Facebook Ads Manager platform in particular. Running your ad campaigns simultaneously on both platforms is a unique advantage.
5. Instagram is easy to use. A business profile is created and maintained in the same way as a regular user profile.

Instagram users are a very active and highly engaged audience. Therefore, it is not that difficult to run successful advertising on this platform. People here are already willing to shop around. But it is still important to know the basic nuances, so let's go over them.

What is behind the definition of 'Instagram advertising'?

Instagram users see ads in their feeds and stories, the same place where they view content published by the accounts to which they are subscribed and associated with the hashtags they are interested in.

Promotional posts are similar to regular posts, but always include an "advertisement" tag and often have more features: links, buttons, etc.

What Instagram social media advertising works for:

1. Building of brand awareness. If you're starting a new business, Instagram is a great way to gather your target audience. If your business has been around for a while, Instagram is an opportunity to spread more awareness of your brand, product or service and get closer to your customer. First, try not to focus on the number of sales. Work on getting people to know who you are, what you offer.
2. Great reach. Instagram's targeting capabilities, with its billion-strong user base, make it one of the best social networks to reach your target audience. If you haven't quite figured out who your target audience is yet, take your time, use the data you get from each ad to make your next ad better based on the results.
3. Beautiful self-presentation. Instagram is a chic way to tell your story with an eye-catching picture. A good story, photo or video on Instagram persuades better than a thousand words. Inspire your audience!
4. Sales. Even those who don't have a website can successfully sell on Instagram. Advertising on Instagram gives you the opportunity to make direct sales. For small businesses, it is the most affordable and easy way to promote their product. Especially if there is something that can be presented beautifully: confectionery, clothes, shoes, products from design firms, photo salons, etc.

The response from advertising on Instagram, if set up and run correctly, is 50-60 times higher than on Facebook. Because of the simplicity of the interface and the emphasis on visual content, the platform is ten times more effective.

Types of advertising on Instagram with examples

You can advertise products and services on Instagram using:

• Organic advertising;
• Targeted advertising;
• Influencer advertising;
• Ads bought on an exchange.

Every business or brand starts promoting on Instagram by increasing its audience. Regularly creating engaging content is something you can't get subscribers to your profile without. In fact, every page starts with organic advertising and does so at all times.

Of course, you expect your Instagram promotion results to improve all the time. Plus, you have additional goals. The expectations for your account are rising. Then you should make better use of the social network's advertising tools.

Promotion on Instagram

Targeted advertising on Instagram

This refers to ads that are targeted to a specific audience, their displays are set up accordingly. For targeting ads on Instagram, you select users by gender, age, location, interests and other parameters. Your advertising publication is shown to them.

Such advertising is paid. Content promotion can be run from your own Instagram account or from a linked Facebook account.

How do I create publications for targeted advertising? You can promote your previously published posts or create new ones with Facebook Ads Manager.

If any of your existing ads are getting high engagement, you can easily turn it into a promoted post by adjusting the settings on your profile itself. In this way, it will be added to the feeds of people who are not yet subscribed to you but are potential customers.

Facebook Ads Manager has many more settings to better segment your audience. There is access to detailed statistics and analytics to improve results.

So, targeting advertising has many advantages: flexible settings, quick launch, and detailed statistics.

Advertising from bloggers and opinion leaders

Users are more loyal to people they trust, whom they perceive as their friends. But it's more difficult with just a pretty picture. It has been causing "banner blindness" among the online audience lately.

A blogger is not just showing an advertisement. He recommends a product to his audience, and this greatly affects the results of the advertising message.

Blogger advertising can work for different purposes:

• audience expansion;
• increasing brand awareness and loyalty;
• informing about promotions;
• bringing in new customers.

The main formats of cooperation between advertiser and blogger are post on the feed, Stories, Ambassador.

Finding opinion leaders for an advertiser is a demanding job. It takes a lot of time to negotiate with the influencer, to agree the material with him or her, to get a report. But at the same time, this type of advertising on Instagram is very popular because it usually works very well.

Advertising through an Instagram marketplace

Marketplaces are platforms where buyers find sellers of advertising space. Buyers are those who want to promote their product/service or their own Instagram profile. Sellers sell advertising space.

It is essentially an intermediary platform between bloggers and advertisers.

For advertising buyers, the marketplace is useful in many ways:

1. You can track statistics on your account and on ad creatives to determine the effectiveness of the purchased space on the marketplace.
2. You can use a search tool. Among the thousands of PR-sites can easily find the right one.
3. It is possible to obtain a guarantee on the execution of the order. But the effectiveness of an advertising campaign depends on your understanding of your target audience and on a well chosen advertising space.

Here are some popular Instagram marketplaces: Epicstars, Labelup, Plibber, Storiesgain, Adstamer, Socialjet, etc.

It is also worth mentioning the commission that marketplaces charge from both advertisers and advertising clients. But the costs are well worth it, regardless of whether you are a blogger or a customer.

How do I find my target audience on Instagram?

Requirements for advertising on Instagram

The advertising material is moderated for compliance with the rules of the network before it is published. This takes approximately one day.

What does the system check? Targeting settings, text, images, landing page.

All the format requirements are in the official Facebook manual. The social network website will also tell you what the maximum text, image and video sizes are.

When preparing promotional publications, it is important to correctly predict the reaction of the target audience. To do this, you should study their behavior and preferences. If this is difficult for you, you can use Popsters.ru online service. Use it to analyze data from both your own and your competitors' publishers, decide on activity, the most profitable timescale for publications, and evaluate the content.

Ways to set up targeted advertising on Instagram

Instagram targeting settings are available from your business account - go to it in your page settings.

There are two options for running targeted ads on Instagram:

• from your Instagram profile;
• from Facebook ADS Manager.

Yes, it's much easier to run ads for posts that have already been published in your account. There's a "Promote a post" function under each one, you decide on a few parameters, and your Instagram ad is ready. This is a good option if you're short on time, new to Instagram, or you need coverage for specific ads.

You have many more options when you create your ad in the Facebook ad manager. There you can set up your targeting settings in more detail, including promoting a website, a landing page, i.e. any external resource.

Once you've connected your Instagram account to your Facebook account, the next step is to choose an advertising account. There are two options here: Business Manager or Ads Manager. Business Manager is more functional. It has the ability to work with multiple accounts, pixels, audiences, and to request and provide access to all this to other companies.

Next, let's look at how to set up ads on Instagram.

How to set up an Instagram ads through your profile

Running ads through a profile is a quick and easy process, although there are fewer options. It's an ideal way to advertise if you don't yet have a lot of coverage and want to understand who your main audience is and what their needs and preferences are.

If you run ads from your account from the Instagram app, you can only do so from your business account.

Switching an Instagram profile to a business account

A business profile is a commercial section in Instagram that you have the option to link to a company's Facebook account.

To switch to the business profile, open the "Account" section in "Settings", select "Switch to professional account". Next you need to select a category: "Author" or "Business". If you want to develop your personal brand or become a blogger, you should use the first option. If you are going to offer a service or product, then use the second option.

Publishing posts and Stories to promote

To run ads from your posts, make sure they meet all Instagram's requirements. Click the "Promote" button, select the purpose of the ad and work with the settings.

Ads in Stories can be run directly in the app: publish a story, open it, select "More" and "Promote" in the bottom right corner.

Targeted ads in Instagram Stories can be run in the same way, only when selecting placement you need to deselect "Feed".

Don't forget about the specifics of the platform. If you want to make your content informative, it's best if it's as simple, even fun, as possible. A proven way to connect with your audience on social media is to communicate with them casually.

Defining the purpose of the advertising campaign

There are three types of objectives when setting up an Instagram ad:

1. Increase the number of visits to the profile.
2. Increase website traffic.
3. Increase the number of messages and contacts.

To help yourself decide on a target, click on the “Promote” button below your post and select 'Learn how to choose a target'.

Setting up Instagram ads by ad type

Setting up your Instagram ads is different with the ability to very precisely choose your target audience to whom your ads will be shown.

What type of Instagram ad you can choose from:

• Stories ads;
• photo ads;
• video ads;
• ads with a ring gallery;
• ads with a selection;
• ads in the “Interesting” section.

Study the statistics, keep track of conversions and ROI of your advertised publications to understand which type of ad works best.

Choosing your target audience

The target audience is the group of users interested in your offer. They can all easily become real customers and provide you with a return on your advertising spend.

How do you define your target audience? Draw up a portrait of your customer by answering these questions: What gender and age is he/she? Where is he from? What are his or her hobbies? Complement this portrait by examining the results of your advertising campaigns and user queries.

When setting up your audience when you launch an ad post, you will face a choice: to automatically generate an audience for the ad, trusting Instagram's internal algorithms, or to create one manually by selecting the settings yourself.

Naturally, it makes more sense to define the audience for the impressions yourself. Then your chances of receiving targeted actions from users will be higher.

Setting the budget and timetable for the advertising campaign

You should select the daily budget, the currency and also specify the validity period.

When you change the settings, the total budget of your ad campaign and the projected audience reach will be calculated automatically.

Preview of advertizing material

The "Next" arrow will take you to a tab with a preview and choice of payment method. Please check all information about your advert.

Go through moderation

Make sure your advert is okay and click Create Promotion. Your creative will be moderated for one to two days.

Gathering statistics and basic analytics

Instagram ad performance metrics will be available once your ads start running. In your business profile, find the 'View stats' button and track such basic metrics:

1. Reach. Data on the number of unique users who viewed your publication will help you understand how much one unique impression of your ad cost. By comparing this figure with other metrics, you will be able to conclude whether the collaboration was profitable or not.
2. Impressions. Indicator helps to calculate the clickability ratio of your ad. It depends, for example, how much you will pay for advertising on CPM.
3. Clicks. Indicates whether users are interested in your ad, how many people clicked on the buttons or links on it.
4. Targeted actions. The parameter shows how many users interacted with your advertising publication in the right way.

Always count ROI. This is the return on your investment. By calculating it, you will see if your Instagram ads have paid off. The investment made will be considered covered, and the cooperation can be called profitable if the ROI is more than 100%.

How to run Instagram ads via your Facebook profile

You can only set up Instagram ads fully once you've connected your business profile to your Facebook advertising account.

Advertising on Instagram through Facebook opens up access to a multitude of possibilities: retargeting, dynamic creatives, advanced analytics.

How does advertising on Instagram work? It's targeted, meaning you select your target audience based on a set of characteristics, and Instagram shows your ads to those users. So before you run an ad, you need to get to know your audience well and work with the settings.

Preparing your advertising campaign

Before you publish your first ad, do a good job on your strategy and the key details on which your marketing campaign will be based:

Calculate your advertising budget

The amount spent on the users you attract should not exceed the margin.

Work out the format of the content

Instagram includes several types of content, all of which can become promotional. Test different creatives and decide on the most successful one based on the results. The requirements for advertising formats can be found in Facebook's official guidelines.

Setting up an advertising account

Create an Instagram account and link it to Business Manager. To work via the Ads Manager office, you need administrator rights for the Facebook page to which the account is linked.

How to run ads on Instagram through Ads Manager

Go to your Facebook page. Find the inverted triangle button in the top right corner, click it and go to “Create Ads”.

Define the objective of the advertising campaign

The choice of objective is important because it sets the logic for the ad display algorithms. Objectives are defined by the categories of "Recognition" (if you plan to spread the word about your product), "Consideration" (you want the user to interact with your ad), "Conversions" (you expect a certain action from the user who sees your ad).

Customize your budget and ad impression timetable

In the bottom part you can specify one of the options for optimizing your ads. A split test allows you to run several ads at a time and evaluate the effectiveness of each one. Budget optimization is needed in order to distribute money across days and different ads within a single ad campaign.

Target audience setting

Choose your audience based on where your traffic will be directed: to your website, to your app, etc. It is better to manually set up this targeting based on the nuances of your target audience. Target users can be grouped by age, gender, geography, interests and other parameters.

It is clear that at this stage you should already have a portrait of your target audience ready.

Choose your placements

Decide on your placements, which are the places you want your ads to appear. If you only want Instagram, uncheck all the others. Also, decide whether it's a feed or Stories on Instagram (or both).

Specify budget and display schedule

It is best to run your Instagram ad campaign for at least three days, so that the algorithms have time to study your audience. It is also best to set a budget that is not the lowest, to get at least some coverage.

Preparing your advertising

Decide on the format of your ad: one picture or video, a ring gallery, a selection. To add images and videos, there is a section called "Media objects". You will also need to specify the link type for the ad, write the text, add a website url, etc.

All requirements to files are in settings cabinet.

Try not to advertise exactly the same creatives in the feed and in Stories. You can see how users will be shown your ad by clicking "Preview Promotion". With the "Create promotion" button you will send your publication for moderation.

Paying and running ads via Instagram

When setting up an advertising campaign, you choose which user action you want to be charged for. You can pay for displays, link clicks, and landing page views.

To pay for your advertising campaign, enter the required card or PayPal account details, go to "Pay", specify the country and payment details.

Cost of advertising on Instagram

The more highly competitive the industry, the more brands vying for your audience's attention, the more you will pay. Targeted advertising on Instagram can cost as much as $3.50 per click.

The cost of advertising on Instagram varies. The prices are influenced, among other things, by the settings of the Facebook ad campaign. For example, prices per click will be different for different age groups.

It's difficult to say how much it will cost you to advertise with a blogger, as it's problematic to derive an average figure. You should be more guided by the right choice. A successful choice of Influencer will give you the most "warmed up" audience, ready to buy.

Remember that all Instagram ad spending should be considered in terms of conversions and positive ROI.

What else is important to know about advertising with bloggers

Begin your relationship with a blogger on Instagram by researching their audience and statistics. You can ask for the data you are interested in. For example, statistics on reach and impressions. This is also needed to assess the proposed price, to understand whether it justifies the results of the work.

Make sure your audience is active. Apart from analyzing the blogger's page itself you can also use Socialblade.com service which shows a graph of subscriber growth. If the line is skewed, there may have been subscriber recruitment.

How to order Instagram ads from bloggers and influencers

Most large influencers usually have a manager handling their advertising. The contact details are usually listed in the bio.

Sometimes the terms of cooperation are placed in the "Featured Stories" tab with the name "Advertising" or PR. There will be all the up-to-date information about the placement: the price, how and where to apply.

There are times when additional data is needed. Then write to direct, especially if the blogger is a beginner with a small audience. In that case, discussing collaboration via direct is a perfectly normal tactic.

Where to find bloggers for advertising

The easiest way to start searching is directly on Instagram. Think back to who the opinion leaders are from your field, try running someone through hashtags.

Here are a few ways to find an Influencer:

1. Search by hashtags or geotags.
2. Look on Instagram marketplaces.
3. Find with the help of telegram bots.

You need to know the profile of your target audience in order to assess your bloggers' publisher's subscribers according to the eligibility criteria. If you see that a sufficient percentage of your audience are your potential customers, move on to assess the following criteria. Analyze the blogger's audience. In addition to size and activity, what's important is how well it fits into your target audience profile. Check the engagement. It should not be less than 8-10%. Analyze, as far as possible, the number and quality of ads on the page.

Buy ads from several bloggers and compare the results.

How much does it cost to advertise with bloggers

The advertising situation for bloggers on Instagram remains rather chaotic so far. The average price has not been formed, and even the posting rules are different for each one.

While the results of an influencer placement are hard to predict, such ads can generate more targeted action at a lower price than you would have to spend on a targeted one.

The price of a post or stories depends on the popularity of the Influencer, the format of the collaboration and the number of ads on the blog. It ranges from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands of dollars.

How to analyze the advertising effectiveness of bloggers on Instagram

In order to track the effectiveness of your advertising integration with a blogger based on the results of your collaboration, prepare in advance:

1. Is your goal to increase sales? Make sure new subscribers are motivated to buy something from you. For example, offer a small discount. Have the blogger communicate this to his or her audience. Use a unique promo code to track these buyers.
2. Want to get visitors to your site? Then use UTM tags. Make sure the links lead to the right page. If you lead your buyers to the order form, then check if everything is working as it should be.
3. Monitor the audience's reaction to the ad. Don't let things slide, especially in the early days. Constantly monitor, respond in the comments.
4. Be sure to calculate the return on investment - ROI. If you have used promo codes or UTM tags when buying ads from a blogger, use the data from them to calculate ROI.

It is also important not to forget to agree with the blogger on providing screenshots of the account statistics after the publication of the ad, at the stage when you agree the terms of cooperation with the blogger.

FAQ

What is advertising on Instagram?

Instagram is a great platform for finding clients. Advertising on this popular platform gives you access to a huge audience (more than a billion monthly active users) and the opportunity to make direct sales.

You can run ads in Instagram directly from your account, from the Facebook advertising account, order them from bloggers, move forward in barter, share, cross-promote, massfollowing and massfollowing. You can do it for money or for free.

Paid advertising is an effective marketing tool on Instagram, which complements all the effort brands put into creating content for feeds and stories.

To effectively plan your advertising campaigns and have access to statistics and analytics, you need to set up a business account on Instagram.

What is targeted advertising on Instagram?

Targeted advertising is the promotion of an advertising message whose displays you run to your target audience. These are official Instagram ads. It's paid, and you buy it from Facebook.

These ads allow you to reach your potential audience, eliminating the human element, as they depend solely on the settings you choose. To make sure you're not getting it wrong, ask yourself what kind of results you want from your ad campaign and where your internet audience will be directed from your ads.

You don't have to have an Instagram account to run targeted ads. In your advertising message, you can send users to a website, a landing page, an application form, etc.

How much does it cost to advertise on Instagram?

Advertising on Instagram has a relatively low price, because mobile traffic prevails here, and it is cheaper.

Figures from 2021 show that you will pay between $0.4 and $1 per click on Instagram on average. All kinds of ad clicks are taken into account, including responses, comments, and likes.

What forms the cost of advertising on Instagram:

1. The objective of the advertising campaign.
2. The size of the audience.
3. Your advertising budget.
4. Your CTR rate.

It is important to optimize your advertising spend. If you are counting on a wide audience, try less expensive campaigns first to make your brand known to the target audience. Work on engagement. It may be more appropriate to drive visitors to your web site. If you have an inexpensive product, impulse buying on Instagram can be successful.

How do I order advertising on Instagram?

There are two types of advertisements to be ordered in Instagram: targeted and from a blogger.

Targeted advertising is more effective to run from Facebook Ads Manager. There you can select key settings, segment your audience and study statistics in detail.

If you'd rather advertise with bloggers, do some research and test a few influencers. Don't forget to monitor and compare results.

Remember that any advertising on Instagram starts with learning about your target audience. And it is accompanied by constant monitoring of the results of any collaboration and any advertising campaign.