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Why Use Instagram Ads?
Instagram is hugely popular around the World, and its users have high engagement rates with businesses.
- Over 200 million users visit at least one business a day.
- 80% of Instagram users follow a business.
- 72% of users have bought products influenced by Instagram.
- 65% of the best performing posts contain products.
Instagram continues to create immense value for businesses interested in targeting a specific audience. Lets check out some of Instagram’s precise targeting options.
Location
Instagram advertising allows you to target people based on their location — This includes cities, states, provinces and countries. This is a very valuable feature for those interested in promoting events, live performances or building a local brand.
Demographics
The Demographics targeting option allows you to refine your audience based on gender, age and languages.
Behaviors
This is a key targeting option when it comes to product advertisement. This includes ‘Behaviors’ on Facebook as well. For example, those customers who are interested in outdoor activities (such as hiking, camping and water sports)
Interests
The ‘Interests’ targeting option is different from ‘Behaviors’ in a way that it focuses more on app usage, the accounts you follow and the advertisements customers have clicked on.
Custom Audiences
Do you have an ever-growing email list? Or thinking about starting one? This targeting option is a great way to create an audience based on phone numbers and email addresses.
Lookalike Audiences
The ‘Lookalike’ feature on Instagram advertising is a great way to utilize brand association. This targeting option allows you pinpoint user that are similar to your existing customers.
Automated Targeting
This is one of Instagram’s in-house services. The social media platform creates an audience who might be interested in your content, product or services. The audience is based on a number of factors including interests, location and demographics.
How To Make Your Ad Stand Out
Be strategic to maximize the effectiveness of your Instagram advertisement.
Choose The Best Day And Time To Post
- Instagram user engagement is highest at: Wednesday — 3pm, Thursday — 5am/11am/3–4pm, Friday — 5am
Create Your Own Branded Hashtag To Tie A Campaign Together
- 70% of Instagram hashtags are branded, they provide continuity and make it easy to determine a brand’s popularity.
Test Different Visuals On Your Audience
- The statistics that you can analyze through Instagram Insights allows you to experiment with your advertisements to determine what content your audience likes best.
Include User-Generated Content
- People trust people, especially those they know. So include feedback, testimonials or images from your brand community on Instagram.
The Anatomy of a Successful Instagram Ad
Create ads like a pro by following these simple tips.
- Use high quality visuals that will stand out. Don’t rely on text to convey your message, visuals alone should make it clear what the ad is about.
- Keep text to a minimum. Use as few words as possible and never at the top of the image.
- Use the CTA button. Prompt your audience to follow through with an action.
- Use the right dimensions. 94% of users view their phone vertically so don’t shoot horizontal videos or images.
- Effective hashtag usage. Research the most common hashtags in your field and add them to each post.
- Include subtle brand messaging. Place your product naturally in the image.
- Short and to the point captions. Use short sentences or key facts in the image caption rather than trying to explain things.
The 6 Types of Instagram Ads
There are number of different advertising formats that you can use in Instagram to help you achieve your business objectives.
Photo Ads
Photo ads are a great way to keep your advertisements clean and simple. They consist of one or more images in a landscape or square format.
PRO TIP:Avoid using stock or standalone product imagery straight from a catalog.
Video Ads
Video ads are a great way to ad to add sound, motion and include an added visual aspect to your Instagram advertisement. Videos can be up to 120 seconds long or a GIF — which can contain text and links in the description.
PRO TIP: To get users to follow through, select “Add a website URL” to add a Call To Action button that directs potential customers to your site.
Carousel Ads
Carousel ads are an addition to photo ads on Instagram. This ad format provides a layer of depth for businesses because they can include photos, videos, GIFs and allows customers to scroll through your Instagram post.
PRO TIP: Carousel ads can be used to give customers a step-by-step guide on how to use your product.
Collection Ads
Collection ads on Instagram is a great way to help potential customers discover your products, services or content.
The Instagram ad type allows businesses and brands to craft a message around their story with photos, videos or both.
Collection ads create value by allowing businesses to present a brand story surrounding interests, products and content.
PRO TIP: You can add deep links to enable user tracking through third party application such as Iconosquare and Buzzsumo.
Ads in Explore
Instagram’s Explore advertising is a great way to reach people who are discovery mode and looking for inspiration outside of the core group of accounts they already follow.
Ads in Explore aim to increase reach, brand awareness and grow your follower base into engaged customers. The key is to always add value.
A great example is Kylie Jenner’s Instagram account where she mixes fashion, lifestyle and beauty products to produce a highly active follower base.
PRO TIP:Create a clear action path for user by giving simple steps and describing the results of actions, for example, “Tap the ball to make it bounce”.
Instagram Stories Ads
Instagram Stories Ads is a great way to connect with Instagram’s 500+ million user base already using Instagram Stories daily to grow an audience.
This type of ad format appears in between Instagram Stories in the form of single images or single videos.
PRO TIP:60% of Instagram Stories are viewed with the sound on, so include music or voices to make your Story stick out.
Instagram ads are an effective and cheap way to connect with a wider audience.
Use our Full Instagram guide to help you create ads that can make a difference for your business.
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