With over 400 million users that share up to 80 million posts every day, Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms in the world for both end-users and advertisers. While the average age of Facebook users is 40.5 years, Instagram is more popular among the young audience with 75 percent of the users falling under the 18-24 age bracket.
That means Instagram is perfect for brands that want to advertise to a younger audience. But every social media platform is unique and Instagram is no exception. Creating engaging ads on Instagram takes a lot of research, techniques, and tips.
Here are the top tips to create winning Instagram ads:
1- Solve a Problem with Your Ads
Identify the main problems and pain points of your target audience and create an Instagram ad that can show how your products or services can solve those particular problems. The idea behind this is to create an emotional bond with your prospective customers.
For instance, if you run a pet food company, you can create an ad that discusses how difficult it is to find nutritious, healthy, and safe food for dogs and then offer your products as the perfect solution.
2- Focus on One Single Goal at a Time
A single Instagram ad cannot help you achieve all of your marketing goals. Every company wants brand awareness, product education, new leads, and of course, direct conversions. But all of these are different advertising goals and there is almost no way for you to achieve all of that through one ad.
Adding all of these CTA’s in one single ad will only end up confusing your target audience which will lead to decreased engagement. Instead, focus on one single goal at a time with every ad. You can run multiple ad campaigns consecutively to achieve different marketing goals.
3- Target your Prospective Customers Carefully
Instagram’s audience targeting features have advanced leaps and bounds over the years and they are not just restricted to the age or gender of the end-users anymore. Instagram (and by default Facebook) gathers a lot of data about user behavior which makes it easy for brands to find and target prospective customers through effective ads. In case you already have a list of buyer personas for your brand, you can just use that to create different audience segments for your Instagram ads.
Here are a few ways you can find and target users on Instagram:
Location: It's possible to select countries, regions, states, cities, and even postal codes of the target audience -- perfect for small and local businesses
Age and gender: You can select the exact age group and gender of your target audience
Demographics: You can target or even exclude people based on their average yearly income, education, employment status, and other lifestyle choices. For instance, you can target newly married people if you are trying to advertise a new travel destination. Similarly, you can also target new parents if your brand sells baby products.
Interests: Instagram identifies the main topics of interest for every user and helps you target them accordingly
Behavior: You can target end customers based on their purchasing and engagement behavior
It can take some hit and trial to find the right audience segment which gives you optimum results. The best way is to continuously experiment with small ad budgets and run them with small variations in your ad segments to see which ones deliver the highest conversions.
4- Create an Ad that doesn’t Look Like an Ad
The ads you create and publish shouldn’t look like ads, in fact, they should look like native Instagram posts in order to blend well with the rest of the Instagram feed to actually make users stop and take notice. After all, digital users today see ads online everywhere they go and they have become way too skilled in identifying and ignoring sponsored content.
Instead of creating visuals that are self-promoting, focus on sharing graphics that are more relatable, creative, and engaging to capture the attention of your target audience. Your ads should look and feel like native posts which are usually shared by Instagram users -- the more organic they look, the better they will perform.
The best way to do that is by reviewing the Instagram feeds of your target audience or influencers and then creating native-looking ads that align with their feed.
5- Use the Power of Carousel Ads
Carousel ads are similar to the basic photo ads in the way that they appear in the users’ feeds. But they allow you to add up to 10 videos/ images in one post. For every video/image, you can add different captions, hashtags, and call to action buttons. These ads are perfect for eCommerce stores that want to showcase their product catalouge. You can also create a whole story through images and videos through carousel ads, which would have been otherwise difficult with a single image post.
While carousel ads are charged the same as single image ads, they can decrease cost per conversion by over 30-50 percent and cost per click by up to 20-30 percent.
Get Social Media Experts on Board
While Instagram advertising may seem direct, there are a lot of moving parts in it and it's way too easy to make a mistake. When you have already decided to use paid advertising in order to convert more customers, it's better to get the help of social media experts onboard instead of experimenting with Instagram ads which may lead to no results at all.
Prrowess offers unlimited graphic design services and the support of social media marketing managers who can post regularly on your brand’s Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn pages. From researching relevant hashtags to scheduling posts and creating a monthly marketing calendar, Prrowess can help you with just about everything.
Watch the demo and register today to learn more about how Prrowess can help your brand.