A picture is worth more than a thousand words. Nowhere has that been more true than on Instagram, the social media image sharing platform that has become a household name. If you know how to create and share the right images, then you can drive your company to instant success.
Not only is this a great platform for social media, but it also has a fantastic advertising platform and AI. Read on for how to conduct PPC advertising campaigns on Instagram and supercharge your sales and leads.
What Makes Instagram PPC So Different?
Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) advertising is a marketing revolution. Unlike previous advertising methods, which employed a scattergun approach, PPC advertising lets you target people who have already displayed an interest in your product, service, or a related field. This is done when they like, share or comment on other accounts and upload information to their profile.
With over 700 million active users, Instagram is a large audience you can not afford to ignore. In addition to this, its visual format gives you a very unique method of advertising. More than ever before, the success of your campaigns will be based on the imagery and branding you choose.
Instagram itself claims that 84% of people on their platform are more likely to shop with small businesses. Combine this with the cost-effective method of a pay-per-click campaign, and you have a surefire way to grow your business using great content.
Starting PPC Campaigns on Instagram
Instagram is owned by Facebook. When you start an ad campaign, you have the choice to start it from within the Facebook ads manager, or on the Instagram app. There are a few other methods you can consider using, such as power editor and third-party offers, but to start you just need these two.
The best way to start is with the Facebook ads manager. It has more scope for customization than creating ads in the Instagram app itself.
The beauty of this is that you can run ads on Instagram, even if you don’t have an account on the platform. If you do, it is a simple task to link the account to your Facebook ad account. Once you have this, there are only a few simple steps to create your account.
Choosing an Objective
Once you reach the Facebook ads manager, you will be given a choice of 8 objectives. These are very wide-ranging and should be chosen carefully to tie in with your final advert.
Reach and brand awareness are the first two options and are very similar. They concentrate on showing your Instagram ads to new audiences and people who may be interested in engaging with them. The difference is that choosing reach sends your ads to people who may not have displayed an interest in products, services, or related niches before.
Traffic lets you send people to an area of your choosing, usually your website. You can choose to send them to the app store, but app installs also have their own dedicated conversion section. You may also choose to promote a specific video to your audience.
A conversion is a similar tool to traffic, but it is specifically focused on getting people to perform an action after the click. This could be signing up for a free trial or demo. By installing the Facebook Pixel on your website, the traffic and conversions can all be tracked in one place.
The final option is lead generation. This asks people to provide their details if they are interested in using your service. You can then contact them after to follow up on queries or sales.
Targeting Your Audience
If you have previous data from your other marketing campaigns, digital or not, now is the time to dig into it. Defining an audience is one of the main strengths of PPC advertising on Instagram. Look into your previous data and get an idea of who and what your customers are, based on everything from age to geography.
If you don’t have this, then make a general assessment. You should start out with some small campaigns, to test different audiences and see if you have the right demographic.
The first criteria that define your audience are their location. If you are a local service, you obviously don’t want to be targeting people in other countries. If you are global, think of the countries that your services are delivered in and set it to match the language option.
After this, age and gender are the next criteria. This can then be narrowed down even further with the demographics section. You can choose to target people based on their education, employment, and lifestyle.
Finally, and arguably two of the most important, are behaviors and interests. Behaviors let you target people based on browsing activities, device usage, and how much they interact. Interests target them on pages they have liked and interacted with, allowing you to find people who have liked content similar to yours.
PPC Instagram Ads Cost and Budgeting
Instagram ads are measured in the cost per click. This is the amount you pay whenever anyone clicks on your advertisement. There are a number of factors that can impact the cost per click of your Instagram ads.
Generally, clicks to a URL range from around $0.50 to $1. If you include all metrics within that, such as likes, comments, and shares, then it drops to an average of around $0.55.
The overriding factor that you should always keep in mind, is what happens at the other end after the person has clicked. Your costs per click could be $100, but if every 1 in 3 people who click it are spending $500 on your website, then you are making a fair profit. Luckily, the cost per click is never that high.
Luckily, Instagram has a very clear and transparent pricing system when setting a budget. Firstly, you choose how long you want the ad to run for. The minimum you should run an ad for is a week, to get the insights you need.
After this, you can choose between daily and lifetime budgets. Daily allows you to have a set amount each day, that stops went the money runs out. Lifetime will keep going until your funds are totally spent.
Creating Instagram Ads
The final choice you have to make is to create the ad itself. However, this is not simply about boosting a post. You have a number of choices to make regarding the type of ad.
Single image and single video ads are the easiest to create. You can build up to six different ads with one image, or choose to promote one video. If you want to use up to ten images on a loop, then choose the slideshow option.
Carousel ads have a number of images and videos included. People can scroll through them easily. It is great if you want to show a range of products.
Tips on Creating Instagram Ads
When creating Instagram ads, there are a few hints that may help you along. The first is making the choice between video and image format.
Video does tend to get more engagement than simple images. It can really make you stand out from the crowd. However, videos need to be high quality and this involves extra expense on the side of your marketing campaign.
The next is to do with the destination. You will select this after you have chosen what type of ad you want to promote. It is the place you want to send the viewer once they perform the click.
If the person clicking is going to your website, you should seriously consider creating individual landing pages for them. This can streamline the process from clicking the ad to making a conversion. It also allows you to wow them with your product or service as soon as they arrive.
What Factors Influence the Price of Ads?
The major factor that influences the price is the objective of the campaign. If you have more looser objectives, such as simply raising brand awareness, then you will find costs are kept low. If you have a more direct objective, such as getting people to make a purchase, prices will increase.
The audience you target with PPC campaigns on Instagram can also impact the price. More open, broad audiences will cost less to target than specific, detailed targeting. This also goes for the size of the audience you target, as there is much less competition for groups that are less defined.
You can test this out without even starting a campaign. Start to define an audience, and narrow it down by location or income. You will see the predicted costs creep up, as they are much more specific and niche.
Lowering Your Costs
There are a number of methods you can employ to lower your overall costs. The first is by optimizing your ad delivery. This makes sure that the money you spend is being put to good use, and having the intended results.
Start by deciding on a clear, firm goal. This will either be to increase a social metric, such as engagement and likes, or provide traffic to a URL. Once you have this in mind, you can start by playing with a few low-cost campaigns and see how they fare.
The AI on Facebook will be your best friend here. It can target people who are more likely to convert. This will far outperform other types of ad delivery.
Make sure you set the campaign to automatic bidding. Many people believe that by having a manual bidding option, you have better control over your pricing. However, in your first campaigns, you will have no data to tell you what you should be bidding on.
The Instagram ads AI will work out what is most successful. The money you pay at this point is worth it just for the insights. By studying the analysis after the campaign, you should be able to see what has worked, what has not, and make the necessary changes for your next campaign.
Making Ads Relevant
Another way you can improve the success of your Instagram ads is by making them more relevant. This has nothing to do with the Instagram AI or methods but is based upon what you are choosing to post and use as your PPC campaign.
In the early phases, do some A/B testing. Set up two small, identical campaigns in terms of reach and target audiences. All you should choose that is different is the ad content.
When the campaign ends, test to see which was the more successful. You then know this is more appealing to your audience. In fact, even when you have a really successful campaign you can carry on A/B testing smaller ones to improve the results.
On any ad campaign, make sure that you set the ads to frequency capping. This limits the number of times the ad is shown to a person on Instagram. If people see your ad three or four times and don’t click, it is certain they are not interested in it and you don’t want to be paying money for repeat viewings.
Selecting the Right Images
Above all else, regardless of audience and the ads you choose, the success of your PPC advertising on Instagram comes down to the quality of your images. While an image-based platform allows you a unique advertising opportunity, it is also a curse in that you have to be special to cut through the noise.
Make sure you hire a professional to take your images. The images you post should reflect your brand, or at least tell a story that relates to it. If not, then it fails to serve its purpose of driving your consumers to conversion.
Get Assistance
If you think Instagram PPC advertising sounds tough, then you are correct. Start with small, low-budget campaigns and gradually optimize, until you have the right campaign. Alternatively, hire professionals to do the work for you.
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