Leveraging the potential of Instagram ad campaigns to promote your business, is indeed a no-brainer. Reaching out to a billion subscribers can easily boost your brand awareness if you can create your Insta ad campaign, just right. Many of you may stick to this point of view that Insta ads are all about fancy images and high-resolution videos. That’s true but to a certain extent. A successful ad campaign needs a few other things which many campaigners tend to ignore. Here in this resourceful blog, we are going to walk you through some focal points which play a vital role in the success of an Instagram ad campaign.
Steps to Create a Successful Instagram Ads Campaign:
Before we start with the steps, let’s take a step back to ponder the nature of your business. You need to be sure of what you are offering and what does your audience expect? Once you are clear, let’s proceed with the steps below:
1. Identify Your Goals:
Every single ad campaign which pops up in front of you has a goal. What’s yours? Instagram has a pre-set page for selecting the objective which includes three major goal settings:
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Awareness:
Being a reach-based goal, “Awareness” goal is statistically the most popular goal while creating Instagram ads. It helps your brand to show up in front of as many people as you want. What you need to do is to make sure that the content you choose to upload, is flashy and memorable because your competition is tough.
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Consideration:
For instance, you are in search of something beyond awareness. You want people to sign-up for your service or you want them to perform a specific action, your content should be designed accordingly which welcomes the audience to consider your ads by signing up.
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Conversion:
Let’s just say, you have already created sufficient awareness and there are hundreds and thousands of your subscribers already. Now you want your prospects to buy something from you or download an app you just launched or place an order for what you are selling. Always choose the “Conversion” option if you want people to take some action on your web page.
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Tip: If you are aiming to sell something using Instagram ads, don’t forget to offer discount codes or coupons
2. Pick out Your Audience
Many of you decide irrationally about your audience. Believe me, the last thing you want is to blow your hard-earned money on a really amazing advert with a poorly chosen audience. In order to better identify your target audience, keep a close eye on the analytics. Don’t rush into filling the parameters just yet. Keep the marketing persona as simple as you can. Start with simple parameters like age, area, interests and etc.
Once analytics start to build up, you can dig in deeper. For building your core audience, Instagram offers a variety of parameters including:
- Age.
- Location.
- Gender.
- Relationship status.
- Financial status.
- Education.
- Work.
- Parents.
- Political affiliations.
- Interests.
- Hobbies.
For better insights, it is always recommended to use multiple audience groups. Instagram Ads Manager page lets you create multiple groups with minimum effort.
3. Polish Up Your Content:
Experts are of the view that the content you choose for your Instagram Ads Campaign, should be catchy enough to resonate with the viewers’ core values. To put it simply, a visual is as good as the message it communicates. Edit your creatives to add further touch-ups like, formal or casual, depending upon the audience. Good content will garner your business that level or outreach which you haven’t had thought before. You can also consult analytics to find out the most liked or talked-about image or video you posted earlier and can double down on that.
4. Create Your Very Own Hashtag
Yes, we are living in a world where #hashtags signifies the importance of the content. Well, for your advert to go successful, you need to harness the power of hashtags. By creating your own hashtag, you are improving the discovery of your content by generating some extra buzz. Don’t confuse regularly used hashtags with the ones which we are talking about. We want people to recognize the hashtag the moment they see it. For instance, if an influencer flashes his brand new Lamborghini on Instagram, he uses ”#MyLambo”. See, not only is it simple to read, but also defines the brand. In other words, people out there want to see branded hashtags, which are short, sweet and memorable.
5. Pick the Placement for Your Insta Ads
Consider 70% of the task is done. Now you’ll have to pick the placements for your ads. Instagram offers a variety of placements and you can choose as many as you like. For starters, we recommend choosing Instagram Feed and Stories. There are 15 placements to choose from which are:
- Facebook Feed.
- Instant Articles.
- Facebook In-stream Videos.
- Right Column.
- Suggested Videos.
- Marketplace.
- Facebook Stories.
- Insta Feed.
- Insta Stories.
- Native, Banner & Interstitial.
- In-stream Videos in Audience Network.
- Rewarded Videos.
- Messenger Inbox.
- Messenger Stories.
- Sponsored Messages.
6. Define Budget:
For your Instagram Ad Campaigns, there are 2 budget options to choose from:
- Daily Budget.
- Lifetime Budget.
Both budget options have their own merits and shortcomings. If you plan to set a daily budget for your campaign, be ready to pay for the campaign on a daily basis. However, if you specify a lifetime budget, it’ll be considered as the overall budget you are willing to spend throughout the life-cycle of a certain campaign.
Setting the bid amount is the next task you’ll have to deal with. You can either set your bidding amount manually or automatically. If you choose manual bidding, it means your audience is restricted to a limited amount and you fear if the bidding doesn’t go high enough. You can choose automatic bidding if you believe your audience spans over tens of thousands and you are desperate to outperform your rivals.
7. Select a Format & Add Your Website’s URL:
By now, you’ll have to decide how exactly you want your Insta ad campaign to look alike? There are a few options to choose from which are:
- Single Image.
- Instagram Stories.
- Video.
- Carousel Images (Slider)
Remember, with every format you select, you’ll have to provide the content accordingly. For instance, the carousel format requires more than what a single image format does. So, don’t forget to populate the content properly. Coming to adding the URL of your website part, we’d suggest you never miss it. Ultimately, you are trying to contain the leads and the best way to do so is to redirect the traffic directly to your website. Employ some resourceful marketing software to track the visitors otherwise, you won’t be able to analyse the incoming traffic.
8. Create a Headline & a CTA
A catchy headline is all you need to get the clicks you want. You don’t have to create a headline every time. Just do it once and it’ll do the trick. Adding a Call to Action (CTA) is the easiest when it comes to Instagram. Initially, the campaign manager had to employ different plugins to do this task. Thanks to the innovators at Instagram, you don’t have to create a CTA by yourself rather choose from a variety of CTAs provided by the platform including:
- Watch More.
- Sign-Up.
- Download.
- Contact Us.
- Learn More.
- Apply Now.
Finally, it’s time to review your Insta ad campaign and launch it.
Final Word
This Insta ad creation guide aims to provide an in-depth ad creation insight to the starters out there. If you do it right, you’ll be amazed at the overwhelming response you’ll receive. Once you master the steps mentioned above, you don’t have to hire any help. Happy Instagramming guys!
