Instagram is a social media network on the rise, particularly among millennials and Gen Z users. Instagram users are incredibly engaged, which means that there’s huge advertising potential for your B2B or B2C business. Since it’s a visual platform based entirely around photos and videos, it’s an ideal channel to show off visually pleasing products and services, although any business can benefit from using Instagram. If you’re just getting started with the platform, you may be wondering how to set up an Instagram advertising strategy and campaign. Here are some key Instagram marketing tips to know.
Instagram Marketing Tips: Quality Content Is Key
Instagram is serious about promoting authentic, quality content – in fact, they’ve been taking measures lately to encourage users to be creative and crack down on bots. When developing your content, it’s important to spend time creating something that will really grab users’ attention. Both photos and videos can be effective, but they need to be crisp, high-quality images since competition on Instagram is high. It’s also worth taking the time to make your entire profile cohesive, with each photo and video using a similar color scheme and aesthetic. Having a cohesive profile immediately makes your brand’s Instagram page look professional.
You’ll have several different content options to choose from when creating an Instagram ad. You can opt for a traditional photo or video post, but there are also options that offer a little more creativity. For example, you can create a carousel ad, which has several different images. You can also use ads on Instagram stories. These ads are much more interactive and are great for directing traffic to your website or eCommerce stores (check out these eCommerce marketing strategies).
Develop Your Target Audience with Instagram Marketing
The next thing to think about when putting together your Instagram marketing campaign is your target audience. Chances are, you already have some idea of the type of people you want to sell your products to, in terms of their age, gender, location, and interests. Instagram gives you plenty of tools to help you target these demographics even more specifically. When you use a business profile, you will be able to check the demographics of the people who are seeing and engaging with your posts. You’ll see the age, gender, and location of the users, as well as the times and days of the week when they are online. It’s also helpful to look at your competitors to see what hashtags they are using and what times of day they post to get success.
If you’re running an eCommerce company or have an Amazon store, a great way to build your audience is to create a branded hashtag, whether you simply use your business name, a creative phrase or an existing slogan. Take Topshop (#TopshopStyle) or Forever21 (#F21xMe) as examples – both have hundreds of thousands of photos generated by their customers that they didn’t ask for with hashtags such as #topshop and #forever21. Adopting a similar strategy could give your Instagram eCommerce store more exposure, helping you to gain followers and customers.
When you set up your paid Instagram marketing campaign, you will be able to dig even deeper with your targeting. You’ll start by selecting a goal for your ad campaign, whether that’s just growing your reach on the app or improving traffic to your website. Then you’ll set your target audience by selecting locations, an age range, gender, and location. You can also use detailed targeting to reach people with very specific interests and online behaviors.
Start with a Conservative Budget
One of the trickiest parts of setting up your Instagram marketing ad is the budget. You’ll need to start with a small budget just to see how your ad performs and get some baseline data before you start spending more money. You can set a daily or lifetime ad budget, and you’ll get charged whenever your ad makes an impression up to the budget max. One good way to think about your budget is to optimize for eventual conversion. You’ll need to assume that to get one person to visit your site, you’ll need to attract, say, 10 people to your Instagram page. For each of the people that end up on your Instagram page, there will be maybe 10 people that don’t click on the ad. These numbers are just examples, but you can use this principle to determine how many people you need to see your ad, and set your budget that way.
Use A/B Testing to Find Effective Content
Since the cost of Instagram ads can add up over time, it’s helpful to use A/B testing to try different types of content out. Instagram makes it very easy to set up an A/B test. You’ll upload it similar to the way you would upload a traditional ad, with demographics and a budget, and then set up a time period to run the A/B test. At the end of that time and campaign period, you’ll get detailed statistics about which ad was more effective. You could also use A/B testing to target different demographics or other variables in your ads. If you’re running an eCommerce store, you should look at your click-through rates, the number of clicks and views you receive, as well as the average cost per click. You can then use this information to make your Instagram marketing more successful going forward.
Leveraging Instagram as a social media channel can help your company grow its online presence. It can take time to develop an online following, but using social media is one of the best ways to effectively reach your target demographics. For more Instagram marketing tips and social media strategies, visit our digital marketing blog.
Learn more about partnering with Make Your Mark, a Philadelphia social media marketing agency to start growing your online presence.
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