If you work in the world of digital marketing, you can’t have missed all the hype about Facebook’s latest venture in to Instagram advertising. The question is, are you willing to try it for yourself? Well for those of you that are willing to dip your toes in the Insta-water, we’ve got 6 top tips to help you get set up quickly and easily.

First a little background… 

Today, there are over 400 million Instagram users across the world, collectively posting over 80 million posts a day that generate 3.5 billion likes. That’s a lot of social love.

 

Users of the social network would have noticed the recent influx of ‘sponsored’ ads on their news-feed, after Instagram decided to give advertisers the opportunity to pay for their ads to be displayed alongside regular posts. Many advertisers are now taking advantage of this relatively cheap and relatively uncluttered space to advertise their brand, products and services. There’s even a thought that it might not be too long until we see ads working across both Facebook and Instagram as the norm.

Here’s our 6 top tips for creating Instagram ads, from setting up an account, through to targeting with a pinch of our very own recommendations.

1. Instagram was bought by Facebook for $1bn in 2012. Therefore, all Instagram ads creation and optimisation is conducted through the Facebook advertising interface. Advertisers need a Facebook Ads account and an Instagram page that must then be linked in order to set up Insta-Ads.

 

2. Once the accounts have been linked, you’re ready to create your first campaign. We would recommend creating separate campaigns for different objectives i.e. if you want to target new customers and remarket to customers that have already visited your site, split these into their own campaigns so that your account is easier to manage.

3. After creating your campaigns, the next step is to create your advert sets. This is where settings and budget are decided, so bear this is mind when creating your ad sets as you may want to separate and apply more budget to particular products or have different ads for different languages/countries.

 

4. There are many ways to segment your audience – by location, language, age, gender, interests and behaviours. You can also create and use ‘custom audiences’, which allow advertisers to remarket to the people who have already engaged with their brand or website, are a member of the mailing list or those who have previously used their app. As long as you have the customer data via email addresses, you can create your own custom audience.

 

5. If you’re familiar with Instagram, you’ll know that the visual imagery is the most important thing about any Instagram post. It is therefore best practice to use images that are of good quality, eye catching and ideally that are bright and sharp. Remember to focus on a focal point, use minimal text and try (if possible) to subtly communicate something unique about your brand.

 

6. The types of advert you can use include single frame ads and multi frame carousels. Multi-frame carousels contain up to 5 images where users can scroll through the different frames. Video ads should also be made available to use very soon. We would recommend testing all variations in order to assess which works best for your brand and products.

 

 OUR FINDINGS

We have seen campaigns generate large increases in Instagram account followers and we have seen heightened engagement levels, however we have seen less of a positive effect on direct response marketing. If you’re looking for a way to increase brand visibility, awareness and engage customers, we would certainly recommend adding Instagram ads in to your 2016 marketing strategy.

Keep an eye out for our Instagram Case Study coming soon where we will delve further into creative and targeting recommendations.