If up until a couple of years ago there could still be some doubts, today it appears clear and definitive: advertising on social media, especially on Facebook and Instagram, is simply essential for all companies that choose to sell products and/or services online.
Specifically, Instagram has reached over 700 million active users worldwide; although the number is already interesting in itself, the number of interactions is even more so, the rate of which turns out to be 70% higher than for Facebook.
Considering that interactions include any action performed by the user (likes, comments, purchases, site visits), it is absolutely worth taking advantage of Instagram’s features to promote products and/or services, with the only condition that the advertising campaigns are obviously in line with your target users.
How to make an advertising campaign on Instagram
Before carrying out any campaign, it is necessary to carry out analyzes and a whole series of other steps in order to get straight to the point and avoid wasting time and money. Let’s go in order and let’s see them in detail:
Look for competitors
The first step to take is to research your competitors, especially the leaders in the reference sector, in order to analyze their behavior and observe what actions they are capable of producing.
Doing so is quite simple: most use Facebook Pixel for remarketing, a system that allows you to track users who have visited a particular site and re-propose sponsored posts to them.
Establish the ultimate goal
Like all marketing activities, advertising on Instagram also needs to establish the ultimate goal: what should users who view the sponsored post do?
Instagram uses the same platform as Facebook, proposing different goals:
- brand awareness, to increase brand visibility;
- coverage, to show the ad to the maximum number of reachable people;
- traffic, to increase clicks on the site or app;
- interactions, to involve as many users as possible in performing an action on the post (like, comment, purchase);
- installation of the app, to get users to the page containing the app and convince them to download it;
- video views, to promote videos and get more views;
conversions, to entice users to make a purchase.
Also in this case, Facebook Pixel proves to be very useful, as it allows you to carry out detailed monitoring of all the movements made by the public of users.
Set a specific target
Thus we arrive at the most important moment of the whole campaign: the selection of the reference target which, in order to bring results, must be chosen carefully.
In this case, Instagram Ads offers a wide choice of options to target your audience, such as:
- locality;
- age;
- gender;
- language;
- interests;
- edit placements.
The closer you get to the real target audience, the more likely it is that the campaign goal will be achieved. Furthermore, you can save the settings to be able to reuse them in the next campaign.
Lookalike Audience
Remaining on the public theme, there is a further tool made available by Instagram and Facebook called Lookalike Audience, i.e. “similar audience”, capable of creating a very specific audience for the post to be sponsored.
Similar audiences tend to convert more as the people intercepted are really interested in a specific product/service. Instagram does nothing but analyze the characteristics of the audience already followers in order to then reach other people with the same interests and characteristics.
To keep in mind and definitely to try!
Make eye-catching creativity
Creating a sponsored post on Instagram requires good creativity which, in line with the goal you want to achieve, helps to achieve excellent results. In a nutshell, you have to think about what you want to achieve and, consequently, create graphics that are able to correctly send the message.
Different types of creativity can be created:
- carousel: a post with two or more scrolling images;
- single image: a post with only one image;
- single video: a complete video post;
- slideshow: a post composed of a continuous video, with a maximum of 10 images;
- canvas: a post that tells a story by combining images and videos.
The choice derives from the type of message you want to send to your audience and, obviously, from the goal you intend to achieve.
How to create a sponsored post on Instagram
Once you have acquired the “theoretical” part of advertising on Instagram, you can move on to practice by performing a whole series of steps that allow you to achieve the set objectives:
Connect your Instagram account to your Facebook page
The main step to take involves connecting the Instagram account to the Facebook page dedicated to the activity. Doing so is simple, you need to go to Settings > Instagram Ads > Add an account and proceed with entering your login credentials.
Create a campaign
The next step is the salient one, because it involves selecting all the parameters that the campaign will have to respect in order to be successful. You must first go to the Advertisement Management > Create Campaign and establish:
- objectives: the marketing objective is chosen (e.g. conversions);
- public: the reference public is selected;
- placements: you can choose where to show sponsored posts;
- budget and scheduling: you set the total or daily budget.
Once this is done, you can proceed to the next step.
Create the ad
This step is all about creativity, so it’s very important. One or more images are inserted depending on the format, or a video, all complete with effective copy aimed at achieving the final goal.
Once this is done, it is always advisable to check the preview and, if everything is ok, click on the green Order button. At this point, all that remains is to wait for Facebook to approve the sponsored post.
Analyze the data
But that’s not all: after having published an advertisement, in fact, it is essential to analyze and monitor its progress, in order to understand if it is proceeding in the right direction and, if not, to make the necessary corrections.
Just go back to the Facebook Ads Manager page, click on the current campaign and view the graph showing the performance of the sponsored post. If your campaign is doing well, you can increase your daily budget.
The more campaigns you carry out, the better you become and the closer you get to the desired result. You simply have to try and try again, never lose heart and keep yourself constantly updated so as never to be caught unprepared!