The Basics About Instagram Ads For Your Business

Things I Learned – Social Media Series

We all know that Instagram has become a top social media platform for advertising. According to HootSuite, “Instagram has 1 billion monthly users, and 500 million of those use Instagram Stories each day. With more users joining and frequently accessing the platform, there is exponential growth that can come as a result to your company or your clients, as well.” That is where Instagram ads come in for your business.

What is the purpose of running an Instagram ad? Running ads increases your reach!! You can actually reach people you wouldn’t normally reach without the ad. Another great thing about running an ad is that you can filter it for certain locations, ages, genders and interests. Amazingly you can also filter by what people buy, what websites they visit and other Instagram accounts they like! When you run an ad, make sure you have something of value. This will make your followers happy, as opposed to the opposite of running an ad with no value to it.

Instagram Story ads can be videos or photos. With a Story ad you have the ability to swipe up with a direct CTA. You want them to be very eye catching, get straight to the point and catch the viewer’s attention from the first frame. WordStream tells us that “Instagram users love video – so much so that Instagram Stories seem to be engaged with more these days than feed, as 70% of global users view them daily.” For Story videos, the video ad is 15 seconds max unless you are using the carousel video ad and then you can do up to 10 spots with a max of 120 seconds of video. For Story photos, you still have 10 spots for 10 different photos. Remember to stay on brand too!

HubSpot gives us these facts to consider:

• Ad spending on Instagram is 23% higher than on Facebook.
• Videos get 21.2% more interactions compared to images and 18.6% more interactions compared to carousels.
• 71% of U.S. businesses use Instagram.
• 500 million Instagram users use the app daily.

Instagram Feed ads are another way to advertise on Instagram. These ads come through the newsfeed, with one photo or a series of scrollable images (called a carousel) or a video. You can have 10 images in a feed carousel ad. For a Feed image ad, you can have up to 10 images with a call-to-action button like “Learn More” or “Shop Now”. For Feed video ads, you can create videos that are 60 seconds or shorter. First 10 seconds are most important to engage the viewer to keep watching!

With either kind of ad, you can promote to either your website or to your Instagram account. You may also want to decide what is more important – a sale or a follow? Think about it, if you run an ad for a sale and someone sees it and doesn’t act on it, you have lost them. They may never see it again. But if you run an ad for a follow, that helps you stay in front of them frequently, builds trust and then can lead to that sale. So, for example, a video Story ad with a prompt to follow your Instagram account is a great way to reach people and get more followers.

Since Instagram has become such a large and widely popular social media platform, you should definitely take advantage of advertising on it. Start simple, get your feet wet and experiment. As you learn more, you will be able to decide what type of ad will work best for you. Once you do, start getting creative with it! Remember, you want to stand out from the crowd, make your brand noticed. This will help you get more people in front of you and your business.