How to Create Instagram Ads
With nearly 500 million daily active users, Instagram is an attractive marketing platform for businesses of all sizes. It’s important to know how to create Instagram ads and deliver them to your target audience.
Until a few years ago, the only way to advertise on Instagram was through sponsored posts. This meant a business had to get in touch and negotiate privately with Instagram influencers to persuade them to promote their brand or products on their account. It was a good way to boost traffic and sales. It had its limitations, as it was expensive, time-consuming and success was not guaranteed.
Now anyone can create Instagram ads using Facebook’s own advertising tool called Ads Manager. This platform gives marketers total control over their ads, their design, creative elements, and who sees them. The ads get posted on Instagram directly from the advertisers business account and they have visibility over each ad’s performance.
Create Instagram Ads with Ads Manager
Link your Instagram account to your Facebook page
In order to be able to create Instagram ads in Ads Manager, you need to connect your Instagram account to your Facebook page. You can do this from the Settings section of your Facebook page. Once there, click on Instagram Ads and then log in with your Instagram credentials.
Create an Instagram ad campaign
The next step is where you actually start creating your first Instagram campaign. You can use either Power Editor or Ads Manager to do so. If you decide to use the Ads Manager platform, click on the Create Campaign tab and you will be prompted to choose a campaign objective. Depending on the placement of your ad, it’s important to keep in mind that not all objectives are compatible with Instagram Stories Ads.
Create your Instagram ad set
In this step, advertisers define who they want to see their ads, how much they are willing to spend and decide the schedule for their ads.
For those who have already created Facebook ads, this entire process will be quite familiar. It is important to mention that the same targeting options are available for Instagram ads as well.
This means that you can use your already created Custom Audiences if you have any for targeting with your new Instagram ad. As for your budget, you can choose between a daily budget and lifetime budget.
For ad Placements, you will be able to run your new ad campaign on Instagram Feed or Stories, but also on Facebook and Messenger if you wish so. Based on the marketing objective you chose, on the next screen, you will need to select an ad format and upload your visuals and text. At this point, you have several options to create Instagram ads: single image ad, single video ad, carousel ad, slideshow ad. Once you finish adding your images or videos scroll down to the option that allows you to ad text to your ad, such as headline, text caption, call-to-action.
When everything is done, you can preview how your ad will look on Instagram. If you’re not sure of the final result, you can also check and see how it would look in other ad formats.
Track and analyze performance
Once you’ve launched you Instagram ad, don’t think that your work is complete. It’s always a good idea to monitor its performance, by tracking engagement and conversions. This way, you will be able to optimize it accordingly and test new ideas to find the most effective messaging, creative, and targeting.
Create Instagram Ads by Promoting Posts
Another simple way to create Instagram ads is by promoting a post within the app. This works best for advertisers who notice that one of their posts is performing quite well and getting lots of engagement. Promoting posts within Instagram is an easy, effective method to reach even more users. The downside to it is that you need to have an Instagram business profile in order to promote posts. Moreover, you don’t have as many customization options as you do when you use Facebook’s Ads Manager.
So how does this promotion within the app work? On your business profile, click the Promote button beneath the post you want to boost. You may have to log in to your Facebook account first.
Then, you will be prompted to select a goal for your ad. This depends on whether you want to drive more users to your website or maximize the number of users who see that specific post. You also have the option to add a call-to-action button which will be displayed below the photo or video in your promoted Instagram post.
Additionally, if you want to, you can create a target audience for your post by selecting targeted interests, location, and demographics, or you can let Instagram choose a default audience for your ad. The final step is to select a budget and ad duration, and you’re all done. If you want to learn how to make money from Instagram do read this blog- Instagram Money-Making Blueprint: How to Monetise Instagram.
Conclusion
As you can see, advertisers have several options to create Instagram ads. All they have to do is get to work and learn how to use the Ads Manager tool or the promotion option in order to get the best results for their advertising budget.
For those new to Instagram advertising, know that the first ad is always the hardest. Once you get the gist of it, you will get better and your ads will be ever more successful each time.