Ad­vert­ising on Instagram

The past decade has seen the online community of amateur pho­to­graph­ers grow at an un­pre­ced­en­ted rate, thanks in part to Instagram, which recently surpassed the 500 million user mark. It hardly came as a surprise when Instagram recently decided to cap­it­al­ise on its phe­nom­en­al success by expanding its range of functions to appeal to ad­vert­isers and busi­nesses.

In 2015, Instagram launched its ad­vert­ising platform, which allows busi­nesses to promote their goods and services using photos, videos, and carousel ads. This platform was further expanded in 2016 to include a new Instagram Business Profile, with which companies can add further in­form­a­tion and contact details for potential customers. With the help of 30 sponsored posts, busi­nesses can also expand the outreach of their posts and optimise their page further using the new stat­ist­ics and analysis functions. But for those busi­nesses who want to invest in ad­vert­ising with the popular photo sharing platform, it’s crucial to get to grips with Instagram’s uses, char­ac­ter­ist­ics, and quirks. This guide will reveal how to launch a suc­cess­ful and pro­fes­sion­al Instagram ad­vert­ising campaign.

Instagram currently offers companies three different kinds of ad­vert­ising formats:

• Photo ads
• Video ads
• Carousel ads

Instagram ads look almost the same as ordinary posts that appear or­gan­ic­ally in your feed. Users can, however, dis­tin­guish ads by the Instagram handle (the small, circular profile picture and the username), a call-to-action, the ad­vert­ising text in the caption, and the ‘Sponsored’ icon, which appears at the top of the post. All Instagram ad­vert­ising follows this same basic structure, but link des­tin­a­tions and CTAs (calls to action) are adapted to meet your ob­ject­ives. Depending on your settings, which you should have already defined, the link either leads to your website, to the app store, or to a specified shop page.

Videos are another common form of ad­vert­ising on Instagram. Since the beginning of 2016, private users have been able to upload 60 second-long videos to the platform, a feature that has been available for com­mer­cial users for some time now. This shows how quickly Instagram was able to keep up with and respond to growing demands from its user base. Video sharing on the platform grew by 40% in the 6 months before the in­tro­duc­tion of longer videos.

Video ads stand out in par­tic­u­lar thanks to moving images and sound; these features also enable companies to tell a more complex and detailed story than is possible with ordinary pho­to­graphs. The food industry is an es­pe­cially good example of a sector that has re­cog­nised the potential of video ads. The summer of 2016 saw a sudden trend for sharing at­tract­ive cooking videos, both on Facebook and Instagram. Videos from sites like Buzzfeed Tasty started going viral, racking up millions of clicks in just a few hours. This movement was quickly picked up by the ad­vert­ising industry; quite no­tice­ably, large food brands and su­per­mar­kets took advantage of the trend to advertise their products with short recipe clips.

‘What am I trying to achieve with this campaign?’ This simple question is one of the first and most important factors to consider before ad­vert­ising on Instagram. Defining concrete goals from the outset is key to creating a suc­cess­ful Instagram ad campaign. The chosen ad­vert­ising format is ul­ti­mately targeted towards an audience and should therefore be ap­pro­pri­ate for its intended purpose.

If you have pre­vi­ously used Facebook ad­vert­ising, getting to grips with Instagram ads should be re­l­at­ively intuitive. Con­cep­tu­ally, Instagram ad­vert­ising borrows heavily from Facebook – es­pe­cially with regard to the goal-oriented approach. To create a new campaign, you must follow a specific goal from the outset. For Instagram ads, the ads manager offers the following goals:

• User in­ter­ac­tions: On Instagram, two of the central forms of user in­ter­ac­tions are likes (signified by a heart) and comments. Compared to other leading social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, the rate of user en­gage­ment is very high on Instagram.

• Brand awareness: Brand awareness can be very difficult to measure in concrete figures, however, the number of followers, posts, and reactions are helpful key figures that give a good in­dic­a­tion of a brand’s pop­ular­ity. Expanding your outreach is therefore key to in­creas­ing brand awareness.

• Website clicks: One attribute that is unique to Instagram is the fact that backlinks do not feature in the organic posts. While personal Instagram accounts can only link to a website in the short biography at the top of their profile, with a business profile, companies can create links in their Instagram ads, which can then be placed and monitored.

• App in­stall­a­tions and in­ter­ac­tion: Rather than link to a website, it’s also possible to use the call to action to link to an app store and use adverts to push app in­stall­a­tions. It’s also possible to use this action to sub­sequently promote more activity in the app.

• Video plays: If your primary aim is to expand the outreach of your videos, you should select ‘video views’ as your campaign goal.

• Website con­ver­sions: Using a con­ver­sion tracking pixel, you can monitor purchases, downloads, and news­let­ter re­gis­tra­tions on your website. The ad manager allows you to select in­creas­ing con­ver­sions as your campaign aim.

Not all of the Facebook target defin­i­tions are available for or relevant to Instagram ad­vert­ising, including the targeting of par­tic­u­lar groups to increase your follower count. On Facebook, it’s also possible to promote the entire page, rather than just in­di­vidu­al posts, whereas Instagram lacks this option. For many, this is an important dif­fer­ence – though a de­lib­er­ate decision by the de­velopers. The fact that it is not possible to push a page simply by in­creas­ing your budget suits Instagram’s dynamic and personal char­ac­ters, which saw the app grow to a powerful platform with a strong fan base. The Instagram community is under the general un­der­stand­ing that users find new accounts to follow by them­selves, which is why the search function and the explore tab are available, and why hashtags are a key element. To build a large following, you need a com­bin­a­tion of a strategic approach, appealing images, and the right hashtags. Of course, an effective ad campaign of any kind will also result in new followers.

After choosing your CTA button, the app will prompt you to define your desired target group.

Of course, with any form of ad­vert­ising, careful planning and strategic execution is a key factor for success. Whether you’re using the Instagram ad manager or a more com­pre­hens­ive Facebook tool, it’s unlikely that haphazard and random ad­vert­ising will be fruitful. Busi­nesses need to define specific targets in advance. Then, depending on your goals, you have to decide on the most ap­pro­pri­ate kind of ad, if you will use the same campaigns for both Facebook and Instagram, and where to display your ads. You also need to decide where to set up the campaigns: in the app itself or through the Facebook web ap­plic­a­tion.

Despite the fact that the options are quite limited, being able to promote posts on Instagram is of great sig­ni­fic­ance for companies and brands. For your efforts to pay off, you just have to find the right strategy for your product. Your motive here is always of central im­port­ance. But in addition, every post, video, and of course every form of ad­vert­ising should be highly com­mu­nic­at­ive and visually appealing.

Promoting a post is ad­vant­age­ous in that if a post has already been proven to work, it can be pushed again. These suc­cess­ful posts can also be ad­vert­ised with the Instagram ad manager to achieve maximum outreach. This will ensure that your ads resemble organic posts as closely as possible and are added seam­lessly to the stream of user-generated content.