How to Create Effective Instagram Ads

With more than 500 million active monthly Instagram users and some of the world’s biggest brands using the network, it has become a great marketing opportunity for businesses of any size.

Plus, with the introduction of Instagram ads, businesses now have the opportunity to scale their efforts considerably regardless of how big or how small their advertising budget is.

There are many benefits to using Instagram ads.

First, when you create Instagram ads you can simultaneously publish that ad on Facebook too, allowing you to save time while reaching more people. Plus, you can set up Instagram campaigns very quickly, in fact in just a few clicks. Lastly, thanks to Instagram ads you can grow a following much faster than you normally would, and therefore enabling you to benefit from more traffic and more social proof.

In order to set up Instagram ads, you will need three things:

• A Facebook advertising account
• A Facebook page
• An Instagram account

Once you have all three, login to your Facebook account, click on the drop down menu on the top right hand side, and click on “create ads”.

You can select from any campaign objective, apart from “store visits” as this campaign objective doesn’t allow you to set up Instagram ads.

Once you’ve selected your Instagram campaigns objective, Facebook will redirect you to the “ad set” level, which is where you choose who you want to target based on their location, age, gender, language, demographics, behaviours and interests. At the ad set level it’s also where you decide on your budget and more importantly where you want your ads to be published.

Under “placements” if you chose “automatic placements”, Facebook will show your ads where they’re likely to perform best. However, if you want to just display your ads on Instagram, select “edit placements” and untick all the platforms, except from Instagram.

Then, name your ad set so you can easily find it later in “ads manager”.

You then reach the last stage of the Instagram campaigns creation process and have the choice between 5 types of ads: Carousel, single image, single video, slideshow or canvas.

Note that the recommended image size for an Instagram ad is 1080 x 1080 pixels and if you plan to advertise a video, it should not be longer than 60 seconds and the file size of your video should not exceed 30MB. Then, add the url you want people to be redirected to when they click on your ad, the text and the call to action. We also recommend to include a display link. A display link is a link that is not clickable on your ad, but displays your website and therefore masks your potentially long and complex destination url.

You’ll notice that as you create Instagram ads, you’ll be able to see the preview on the right hand side to make sure it all looks like you want it to look. Ads on Instagram look like any other posts on the social network, but they include a “sponsored” tag on the top right hand side as well as a call to action tab on the bottom right hand side of the image.

In order to increase your chances of making your ads successful create Instagram ads that are more likely to get noticed by your target audience. In order to know what your target audience engages with on Instagram, you can look at all the posts you’ve previously published and see which ones received the most engagement, and try and model the most popular posts.

You can either go through all your previous posts manually, or you can use tracking tools such as Iconosquare which will tell you what works best for your audience. Alternatively, you can look at your competitor’s Instagram posts or the Instagram posts of people who attract the same target audience you want to attract and you’ll be able to see what they do that works best.

If you’d like to take your Instagram marketing to the next level, and increase the results you’re getting from your current Instagram marketing efforts considerably, download my FREE Instagram report, titled The Top 15 Instagram Marketing Strategies That Drive Traffic And Sales. Simply enter your name and email and I’ll instantly send you the report.

Another secret to increase your chances of making your ads on Instagram successful, is split testing. Split testing, also known as “A/B testing” is the process of running a variety of different ads, promoting the same thing, to see what works best. There are many things you can test, such as the images you use, the text you write for your ad, the call to action and even your targeting.

For example, if you’d like to know which image is best for your Instagram ad, run 5 identical ads and just change the image. After a few days or sometimes after just a few hours, you’ll be able to see which image is the winning image. Then, repeat the process testing other elements of your ad.

A third secret to increase your chances of making your ads successful is through the use of carefully selected images. Try and avoid using stock photo images as they usually are not original enough and have been used too many times and therefore don’t stand out.

Instead, images that are high quality, that are unique, interesting and attention-grabbing tend to perform much better. Plus, try and avoid adding any branding to your image as it will make your ad look too much like an ad instead of looking like a standard post.

Lastly, to increase your chances of making your ads successful is by effectively combatting ad fatigue. Ad fatigue is when your audience has seen your ad so many times, they don’t notice it anymore. The ad has become way too familiar with them, and stops grabbing their attention. What this means, is that you can experience great results from an ad and then that same ad that brought you all the traffic and leads you were hoping for, stops performing.

This is why, if you run Instagram ads, it is critical you micro manage each ad. Closely monitor the performance of each ad daily, stop running the under-performing ads, increase the budget for the ones that are performing the best and most importantly, replace the images of the ads that used to be performing well, to combat ad fatigue.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this video on how to create effective Instagram ads.

If you’d like to take your Instagram marketing to the next level, and increase the results you’re getting from your current Instagram marketing efforts considerably, download my FREE Instagram report, titled The Top 15 Instagram Marketing Strategies That Drive Traffic And Sales. Simply enter your name and email and I’ll instantly send you the report.

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