Advertising has always been a slippery slope, but it’s equally exciting if you know how to find your way around it. Marketing has been at the center of business development for years, and it seems to be becoming a more and more dynamic process with time. Today, advertising is multi-faceted and multi-channeled, with the internet playing a massive role in the way current trends have turned out.
Enter social media, the prodigal child of the internet. Social media is home to millions of online profiles and accounts, and a significant section of this also includes business profiles. It’s not surprising that so many brands are actively using social media for marketing efforts; it gives them a much larger reach and traffic on the whole.
Why Instagram is such an important platform
Instagram has successfully turned into one of the most used social media apps in the world. Over a billion accounts and counting, Instagram has seen insane amounts of traffic in recent times. Trade analysts say that by the end of 2020, Instagram will easily become larger, more comprehensive in features, and be home to many more active accounts.
Which means one very important thing for brands – Instagram is the go-to hub for digital marketing.
Advertising on Instagram can help pages in many ways – by increasing reach, visibility, likes, follows, shares, web traffic, and much more. Another credible way to make this happen is to buy packages for likes and followers from sources like idigic which provides legitimate accounts and genuine engagement that can boost a brand’s presence on Instagram.
Instagram as a platform in itself has made it fairly conducive for marketers to use Instagram as a medium for effective digital marketing. There are several tools for both analysis and execution, which make it simpler for marketers to create digital campaigns.
The Era of Instagram Advertising
Instagram ads have become a huge trend and brought success to many brands in recent years. More and more brands are making a conscious decision to invest in advertising on Instagram to reap its positive results. ROI is boosted when brands can redirect their resources towards effective advertising on Instagram, which helps them reach out to more people from various parts of the world.
Effective advertising essentially entails understanding how ads on a certain medium would be most lucrative, and also how they can be implemented to yield maximum results.
How much do Instagram ads cost?
Instagram ads have varying rates, based on a number of factors such as the duration of the ad, the size of the ad, the niche to which the ad belongs (FMCG, apparel) and so on. Instagram ads follow a CPC – Cost Per Click – model. On average, the CPC for Instagram is between $0.50 and $1.
However, the Instagram ad prices for a more competitive industry could be higher, going up to almost $3 CPC. As of 2019, understanding how to create and buy Instagram ads is essential knowledge. Facebook and Instagram ads are quite popular, and they also work very similarly since Instagram’s acquisition by Facebook.
If you’re looking to buy Instagram ads, you can check out this guide on costs for advertising on Instagram to get a better idea.
Understanding how to optimize your Instagram ads
Now, let’s consider that you’re a brand that’s new to Instagram advertising, or you’re maybe just looking to revamp your Instagram ads strategy to improve ROI. Below, we’re listing 7 such ways that you can optimize your promotions into effective advertising:
1. Study the best Instagram ads
Creating Instagram ads involves a lot of research, not just of your competitors but also of other brands in other niches. Advertising tactics turn out to be successful, more often than not, when they are back by adequate analysis and research that is useful. The most effective advertisements often follow a strategy, a pattern, and a roadmap. If you can identify this pattern, you can then move on to identify what other factors contributed to its success.
Take Target’s Instagram ad campaign, for example. One of their campaigns used Lego characters instead of actual people to create a funny but out-of-the-box string of ads. They were catchy, quirky, and still managed to be relatable. So, how can you come up with an offbeat idea, that also gives out the right message to your consumers?
That’s where you need to use this research data when you’re at the drawing board.
2. Include a call-for-action
Your call for action needs to be effective, and no, we’re not just talking about the button on the ad which might say “Sign up now” or “Find out more”. There also needs to be a call for action included in the caption and the ad itself. It gives viewers the incentive to take your ad seriously and even creates curiosity for them to click on the button and proceed to engage with the ad.
Again, research matters here. Some call for action phrases are more effective and work better than others. So, take time to understand what would work best with your audience before you proceed.
3. Invest in story ads
Story ads are Instagram advertisements that appear between stories instead of on a user’s feed. These ads feature a “swipe up” option which then redirects users to a profile, a website, or a form. Story ads are very effective because there are over 500 million stories being posted on a day to day basis. This means that visibility on stories is quite commendable, and you should definitely be tapping into it.
This informative article on Instagram ads through stories can help you understand more about how they work and what you need to do to optimize them.
4. Pick and promote all your best content
You’re well aware of the posts that are a reflection of your best work. When you have stellar content in hand, make sure you promote that post and help it reach out to a maximum number of people. That’s the whole advantage of promoted and sponsored ads – people beyond just your follower list can view your content and be motivated to follow your page, or at least check out the campaign that you’re targeting.
5. Revise your targeting plan
Since Instagram and Facebook ads are integrated and allow you to be as specific as you want to be with your targeting, you should make the most of it! Now, the whole idea is to strike the right balance by not letting your targeting be too broad or too specific. You have the option to narrow down your audience by age, gender, location, interests, and so on.
When you optimize your ad through the ad platform on Facebook, there’s a meter that shows you how broad or specific your audience is. The aim is to be in the center of the green zone, or leaning more towards specific (but not too much). This way you won’t be reaching out to too many irrelevant accounts, but you won’t be making your target pool too small either.
6. Don’t overdo the appearance of ads
Instagram users are viewing ads on a daily basis, which can get quite mundane over time. A marketer’s biggest task in this scenario is to create ads that stand out and are interesting enough for people to click on. Sometimes, the best way to do this is to play with the psychology of the consumer and create ads that have the look and feel of a regular Instagram post.
By making an ad look too much like an ad, you run the risk of overselling yourself and repelling customers away. Using actual people, creative videos and images, creating curiosity instead of just hard-selling something – all of these will help your audience stay interested and go for the call-for-action.
7. Don’t stress on hashtags
For regular Instagram posts, hashtags are an absolute necessity. However, the same rule doesn’t apply to Instagram ads. If you think about it, hashtags on Instagram serve the main purpose of increasing the visibility of posts. Relevant hashtags help posts be visible to those who are following those tags.
For ads, however, this isn’t of much help because you’re already using the different metrics available to reach out to specific audiences, and these ads are boosted, promoted, and sponsored to be more visible than a regular post. So, focus more on a catchy caption and maybe add one or two hashtags for personality, but you can also choose to avoid it.
In a Nutshell
Instagram ads aren’t as complicated as they might seem, as long as you understand how trends and algorithms work on the platform. Nailing down your research to the T is the key to getting your campaigns out in the best way possible, and in the meantime giving your brand the leverage it needs to create a strong social media presence. All-in-all, don’t forget to give Instagram a considerable chunk of space in your marketing plan, because the future seems to be all about double taps and clicks!
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