Instagram, Tips & Tricks Instagram Ads explained + Pro-Tips & Tricks for successful campaign January 31, 20226 minutes VeronicaSocial Media Advisor Instagram is one of the most popular apps out there, with almost 1 billion monthly users. This means being active on the app, as well as taking advantage of Instagram Ads, is a huge opportunity for your business. Utilizing the platform in the right way can increase your brand awareness, traffic to your site, reach and overall leads and sales. In today’s post, we’ll provide you with a step-by-step guide to creating your first Instagram Ads campaign in only a few taps, as well as several pro-tips on how to promote your content better on the platform. Let’s start with a few basic explanations. What are Instagram Ads? Instagram Ads are the instrument that helps businesses place their posts in front of a target audience of the platform’s users. Furthermore, Instagram ads appear in the users’ feeds, Stories, Explore space, and other areas of the app. This type of advertising is very similar to Facebook ads. What sort of budget should you allocate towards Instagram Ads? As you probably expect, there is no typical or benchmark pricing for Instagram advertising. It is highly dependent on a few factors: 👉🏻 Your target audience; 👉🏻 How competitive your industry niche is; 👉🏻 The time of year (average costs per click usually increase around Christmas or Black Friday sales times); According to AdEspresso, Instagram Ads’ average cost per click (CPC) for 2018 was around $0.80. Furthermore, taking into account the inflation and rise of costs, as well as the increasing competition, we can assume that this has now increased for most industries. There is a way to gather an initial Instagram Ads budget forecast through the Audience Definition and Estimated Daily Results modules in your Ads Manager. Those are quite useful tools as they inform you whether your budget settings will be adequate to reach your intended audience within the timeframe you specify. Source: Facebook What types of ads are available on Instagram? Instagram Ads offer quite a large variety of advertising formats. You can easily utilise the newsfeed, story, Reels and IGTV spaces with: ✔️ Image & Video ads ✔️ Stories ads ✔️ Shopping ads ✔️ Carousel ads ✔️ Collection ads ✔️ Explore ads ✔️ IGTV ads ✔️ Reels ads The wide variety of ad types means you can select the ideal one to fit the specific advertising goal of your business. It’s also important to note that each ad type has a unique set of call-to-action choices. This is great as it means your ads will deliver the right type of messaging. We will briefly explain what each ad type is best for. ✅ Image & Video ads Image ads are best for campaigns with captivating visual content. They usually appear on Instagram’s news feed. It’s best practice to use high-quality original designs or photographs to grab people’s attention quicker. You are also able to use text overlay on your ad designs but for the best results, Instagram suggests reducing it as much as possible. Source: Business2Community Instagram Video ads are similar to Image ads in terms of placement. The only difference is that you need to use a video as your creative. The videos you use for your in-feed ads can be as long as 60 minutes. Our advice however is to use shorter ones as they are usually much more effective. ✅ Stories ads Story ads are great as the engagement rate for them is usually higher than in-feed image ads. You can utilise them for a broad type of targeting from B2C purposes like retail, store promos and events to B2B. The greatest Instagram Stories ads are those that blend in with the rest of the feed and don’t stick out as advertisements. You may utilize all native Instagram Stories elements including filters, texts, GIFs, and interactive stickers while creating Stories advertising to make them look more “natural”. You are also able to use photos, carousels and videos in your IG Stories ads. Source: Newsfeed ✅ Shopping ads When you run Instagram Shopping ads, the users who click through your ad are sent to a product description page within the Instagram app. They may then make a purchase on your mobile site or directly on Instagram if you have a set IG shop. You must first create an Instagram Shopping catalogue to run Shopping advertising. Source: Martech ✅ Carousel ads This ad type showcase a series of images or videos that users can swipe through. Those types of ads are usually used to present a group of items that are connected or tell a story that is divided into several parts. It is mainly used for different products within a catalogue group. You can use up to ten photos or videos. Furthermore, Carousel ads may be displayed in both the Instagram feed and Instagram Stories. You can also include a call-to-action button or a swipe link that directs viewers to your website. Source: Newsfeed ✅ Collection ads Collection ads are in a way a combination of Instagram’s Shopping and Carousel ad types. They look very interactive and are a great way to display the products from your catalogue in such a way. Source: Newsfeed Instagram Collection ads are ideal for eCommerce businesses because users may buy the products immediately from the ad. When a person clicks on the ad, they are sent to an Instagram Instant Experience Storefront, where they can learn more about the product and buy it. ✅ Explore ads Instagram’s Explore ads name speaks for itself. They show on the Explore tab and are very similar to the Image ads we mentioned earlier. This is the place where users usually go to find new content and accounts based on their Instagram usage patterns. It is therefore a great place to utilise for your Instagram ads. Source: Newsfeed ✅ IGTV ads IGTV ads are short video advertisements that appear after a user clicks on an IGTV video in their feed to view it. Videos should be up to 15 seconds long and meant to be seen vertically on a full screen. Source: Beebom ✅ Reels ads Instagram has unveiled the opportunity to advertise inside Reels, following the successful introduction of the app. Advertisements appear between Reels and are comparable to Stories ads (full-screen vertical films) in that they can last up to 30 seconds. It’s best practice to also include music or sounds in your reels. Source: WWD So, how do you choose the right Instagram ad type for your business? To be able to pinpoint the best possible Instagram ad type that will suit your business, you need to clearly outline your main advertising goal. You should also have a clear idea of your target audience. Another tip would be to test, always perform tests as a lot of times things we believe will not work well, actually end up doing great. Well, folks, we have reached the end of today’s post. In case you need some inspiration to help you post great content on Instagram while you run your new ads, we believe this article will help you. Lastly – don’t forget to follow us to stay in the loop of all things social.