Instagram is a social network with a large and very engaged audience. On this platform, the image is at the heart of any strategic thinking and the advertising formats offered abound. This makes him a major lever for carrying out a social media marketing strategy. To take full advantage of Instagram Ads, you should be familiar with the codes of the platform and know how the various advertising tools work. Discover 10 rules to follow when creating your Instagram ads.
10 rules to follow when doing Instagram ads
Instagram Ads can be a powerful tool to increase visibility, increase leads and grow sales. First of all, you have to look at the different elements to take into account when designing your advertising to achieve these objectives.
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Optimize your Instagram account
To make your business shine on the social network, you should make sure that your Instagram profile is complete and, above all, optimized. This involves first of all having a clearly identifiable name that can be easily searched, but not only.
The profile picture, which is the first thing seen by users of the platform, should not be overlooked either. It’s best to have a simple profile picture that reflects your business. It will also be necessary to take care of his biography by describing in a short and effective way the activity of his company. The goal is that the most relevant information can be found, such as its website.
Set clear goals
As on Facebook, it is essential to clearly define your objectives before developing your Instagram Ads campaign. This gives a guideline, but will be especially useful to the social network, which will understand the results that we want to obtain.
One of the possible objectives may be to increase visits to its website. The ads created will then redirect users to it when they tap on it. It increases its visibility and potentially increases its number of prospects. Instagram even offers to add call-to-action (CTA) buttons like “Learn more”, encouraging the user to click.
In case the goal is to increase visits to his Instagram profile, the designed advertisements will logically redirect users to it when they tap on it. This is particularly useful when highlighting its services, solutions or products through its photos or stories. This can be a great help in acquiring new customers.
In short, each advertisement must meet a clear objective that has been established beforehand. This will allow you to learn about the most suitable tools to create your Instagram Ads campaign.
Analyze your target audience
Before you start posting on Instagram, you should analyze your target audience. In particular, it is necessary to find out which hashtags users use the most or at what time they are most reactive. To do this, it is possible to use the “Statistics” feature in the “Audience” tab of the social network.
It is also recommended to explore the powerful Instagram Ads targeting tools. They make it possible to target users according to the geographical area in which they are located, their demographic data, their center of interest, their age or their gender.
Choosing the right advertising format
Instagram offers several ad formats to promote its offer: photos, videos, stories… The possibilities are numerous. When creating your Instagram Ads campaign, however, it is essential to keep in mind that each of them has specific characteristics and meets different objectives from each other.
Photos, using call-to-action buttons, will for example be useful to increase awareness, improve web traffic and conversion rate or generate more leads. To present a product, it will be wiser to opt for the video format, which has the advantage of sound and movement. Do not forget that a video ad must be between 1 and 120 seconds.
This type of content can then be used in Instagram Explore, Reels, Stories or as carousel ads depending on the desired results. To learn more about the specifics of each format, it is best to rely on our Instagram Ads guide.
Focus on storytelling
Traditional sales techniques aren’t as effective as they used to be. Praising the merits of a product through a simple promotional speech does not convince the younger generations. For this reason, a brand must rather put forward its values, with which its audience can identify. Advertising then becomes a story to tell. It is therefore necessary to master storytelling, not only to sell products, but the entire universe that constitutes a brand.
Know how to use hashtags to your advantage
Hashtags are a constituent element of Instagram. They allow a user to find profiles that he might like and relevant content. However, they are sometimes forgotten when designing an advertising campaign on the social network. To ensure good visibility, it is essential to use them for your Instagram ads. They will help categorize your content so that it can be discovered by an audience interested in a specific trend or topic.
For hashtags to be useful in a social media strategy, they must be used correctly. For this, it is important to know the different types of existing tags:
- the brand hashtagto be easily found by its audience and federate a community;
- the community hashtagto find accounts interested in the same theme, such as #frenchtravelers,
- the hashtag related to the sector of activityto directly target customers or potential partners;
- the niche hashtag, which is less popular, but more accurate. This can be a hashtag used by its customers, making it easy to target them.
To choose the right hashtag, it can be a good idea to search for a generic keyword in the Instagram search bar, and see if this tag is very competitive or not. If this is the case, it will be better to opt for another, allowing you to make a place for yourself among the other publications. In any case, you have to make sure that it is relevant and somewhat popular so that your publication does not fall into oblivion.
It will also be necessary to ensure that you use the correct number of hashtags. The recommended number varies depending on the publication and individual wishes. However, if Instagram allows thirty per post, it is not recommended to put so many.
Use design tools
At first glance, creating an Instagram ad may seem complex. To help advertisers in this task, there are a multitude of tools, especially for design. Canva, for example, allows you to use templates pre-designed by professionals and create a variation of content for an advertising campaign.
On the mobile side, there are many applications. One of the most popular, Mojo, offers the possibility of creating animated stories for the social network. No special graphics skills are required. For videos, there is Videoleap, allowing you to edit a video in a few clicks.
To properly design an Instagram Ads campaign, it is essential to have an overview of it. For this, it may be relevant to opt for a tool like Trello. The latter will be useful to know the progress of each step and distribute the tasks between different collaborators.
Focus on your Call to Action
Photo, video, stories, carousel… Regardless of the format or location chosen for your Instagram ad, it is essential to add calls-to-action, in the form of a hypertext link or a button . To encourage the purchase or download, we write two or three words, such as “Buy now” or “Download for free”. It is also possible to opt for more permanent CTAs, for example “Subscribe now”. Regardless of the formula adopted, they must be highlighted to be clearly visible to their audience.
The goal of a CTA is to elicit a sense of urgency in the user, prompting them to click. It is an essential tool to increase the conversion rates of an Instagram Ads campaign. It is therefore essential to add as soon as possible.
Determine a reasonable budget
On Instagram, the budget influences the number of users seeing the advertisement. The more a company spends, the more people will be affected. You can spend one euro if you wish, but the social network recommends choosing a budget of at least 5 euros per day, for at least six days.
This amount and this duration allow the platform’s algorithm to identify the most appropriate target and collect data to maximize the results of its Instagram Ads. If you want it to perform well, you should choose a reasonable and appropriate budget.
Test the effectiveness of your campaign
As with any advertising campaign, it is essential to test its effectiveness. Like Facebook, Instagram is equipped with powerful analysis tools allowing to know the impact and the fallout of the advertisements created. They are useful for measuring different KPIs, such as the reach indicator. It offers the possibility to know how many people have seen our campaign. The platform also offers features allowing brands to monitor their engagement rate, click-through rate and even mention rate.
These KPIs are essential to know the elements on which it is necessary to work. They are useful for optimizing future campaigns and strengthening your social media strategy.
To show creativity
Finally, we must not forget that on social networks, an advertisement must be creative to stand out in a feed. Otherwise, the user will not spend even a second on a post. For this reason, the visual appeal is not to be neglected, whether it is a photo or a video. The advantage is that Instagram offers many customization tools: font, stickers, filters, colors, sound… There are many features.
By following these basic rules, you will ensure that you create attractive and engaging Instagram Ads advertising campaigns. Ultimately, your return on investment (ROI), your visibility and your sales will only be positively impacted.
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