Instagram Advertising
Leveraging Instagram
With over 800 million users worldwide and advanced targeting abilities, Instagram has the ability to reach a vast amount of people in an inexpensive way. That is why many small companies promote their businesses through instagram advertising. Instagram has the advanced targeting options that are offered by Facebook, including targeting based on location, age, education level, marital status, and more. Instagram is especially significant for millennial consumers, or those between the ages of 20 and 36 years old today, who prefer shopping online and make up a large portion of Instagram’s current user base.
Instagram advertising is unique in the way that paid posts look almost identical to regular posts. When a user scrolls through their feed, they will see photos of their friends and whom else they are following, along with sponsored posts interspersed between these photos. The only difference between a regular post and an instagram ad will be the word “Sponsored” on the top left of the photo, along with a call to action banner (which could say something like Learn More, Shop Now, Sign Up, etc.), urging the viewer to take further action and be led to a webpage.
There are many advantages for small companies to having their products and services advertised on Instagram. Firstly, the advanced targeting abilities allows businesses to target their ads so that they only show to users that mirror their current customers. For example, businesses could target married women who are new to parenthood, or female university students in Toronto. Also, as Instagram is solely a photo sharing application, this contributes to high engagement rates. Unlike Facebook, there is not much clutter on the newsfeed as there is with Facebook and are therefore much more engaged with each post. In fact, consumers are 58 times more likely to engage with brand content on Instagram versus Facebook, and 120 times more likely compared to Twitter. Instagram also has great tracking abilities. You will be able to see many impressions, clicks, and conversions all your ads are making in one well-organized dashboard. It will give you measurable data, so you can determine what ad campaigns are and are not working for you, so you know exactly where to spend your budget. A social media marketing agency Toronto expert can help you create the ideal instagram ad campaigns.
Is Instagram Right For Your Business?
As 71% of Instagram’s users are under the age of 35, you will know that Instagram is right for you if your customers are within this age range. This is vastly different compared to Facebook, where only 64% of their users are under the age of 35. This audience prefers content related to fashion and beauty, food, television and film, hobbies, and music. Depending on what your business is offering and your campaign goals, you can target people based on their individual interests, along with location, gender and age. Secondly, Instagram users highly value aesthetics, so your visual content must blend well with your audience and be visually compelling. You need to be able to make a visual impression to them within 2 seconds, which a digital marketing agency Toronto can help you with. Lastly, if your competitors are on the platform are are able to develop a following, then you should learn from them and develop an Instagram presence as well.
Instagram Advertising Formats
There are four types of ad formats businesses can choose from: photos, carousel, video, and stories. A single photo advertisement is creative and clean, and can be featured as landscape or portrait style. They are the easiest posts to get up and running, and is a great start for beginners to test the waters and get their ads quickly up and running. Carousel ads have 2 or more scrollable images or videos. You can create up to 10 cards of content. Video ads allow you to place videos or gif ads of up to 60 seconds, in landscape or portrait format. User engagement is much high for videos than static images. If branding or engagement is very important for your campaign, a video may be worth trying. Lastly, instagram’s newest form of advertising is Stories ads. As these disappear from people’s feeds and your company’s profile in 24 hours, this is a perfect option for time-sensitive messages.
Instagram Ad Objectives
You may be familiar with Facebook ad campaign objectives. However, not all campaign objects that are offered by Facebook are also offered on Instagram. The campaign objectives available for Instagram ads are: brand awareness, reach, traffic, app installs, engagement, video views, and conversion. Brand awareness allows you to reach an audience who are likely to pay attention to your ads, therefore increasing awareness of your brand. Reach allows you to show your ad to the maximum number of people possible. App installs send people to the Android or Apple store in order to purchase your app. Engagement gets people to view and engage with your post, which could including anything from likes, comments, shares, RSVPing for an event, or offer claims. Video views involve promoting videos, which could include interesting content like product launches or customer testimonials or stories. Conversions involve getting the audience to take actions on your website or application. Click here to learn more about ad objectives.
What Mrkt360 Can Do For You!
Mrkt360, a top social media management Toronto based company has the experience and learnings from various clients and industries to know what works best for campaigns in your industry and specific location. Our agency has a vast range of team members with different backgrounds and skill sets that will help strengthen your Instagram ad campaigns. Also, as Facebook Partners we have ongoing training and are provided with the best resources to ensure that your ads are optimized and working successfully. Also, with an agency you are more likely to achieve quicker results, as we know what works and what does not, according to your target audience, product, or value proposition. As more and more brands are promoting their business on Instagram, finding a spot and standing out against the competitors is becoming increasingly difficult. Mrkt360, social media marketing agency Toronto, will help you create compelling visual content that will grow your number of followers’, capture leads, and win sales.
