4 Main Reasons Why Businesses Should Use Instagram Ads
Today, Instagram ads are a crucial component of your overall digital marketing strategy. The reason is that Instagram is one of the top social networking sites powered by Facebook, one of the largest internet companies in the world.
However, you might be wondering what is it that makes Instagram ads so great first of all?
While a lot of people don’t completely get what Instagram ads can do for their business in the modern-day world, sadly, many others consider it a waste of time and money.
But this is not the truth.
In reality, even small businesses can make thousands of dollars in sales by running Instagram ads. Businesses can generate hundreds of thousands of new followers with the help of Instagram ad campaigns.
Now you may be thinking what exactly Instagram ads are and how you can leverage them to grow your business?
Or perhaps you are already aware of Instagram ads but don’t have any idea about where you should start from to run your own campaigns?
But don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.
This blog will discuss everything about Instagram ads, their importance, their cost, where they fit in your overall digital marketing strategy, and much more.
What Are Instagram Ads?
Instagram ads are those posts and stories for which a brand pays in order to promote their content to their target audience and reach more people outside of their existing followers.
These ads appear like regular posts but have a tiny “sponsored” label attached.
Instagram ads help bring qualified users to your content and are excellent for small businesses who are looking to improve their brand awareness.
Why Do Instagram Ads Matter?
There are tons of reasons why Instagram ads matter a big deal for businesses.
However, these reasons vary from business to business based on the goals they are striving to achieve. But even then, we have narrowed them down and come up with four primary reasons why brands should start using Instagram ads right away.
Reason #1: Instagram Enjoys Plenty of Attention
An average user almost spends an hour every day across platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger.
That means your brand has the potential opportunity to interact with your customer base almost on a daily or at least a weekly basis.
The more opportunities your brand has to communicate with your customer base, the better are the chances of them becoming a fan or purchasing from your brand.
Instagram genuinely provides your business with the ability to grab more attention and trust from your target audience.
Reason #2: Instagram Targeting Options
We often talk a little too much about “reaching the audience,” which begins with pinpointing your target audience’s specifics.
By using Instagram ads, businesses can determine the demographics, location, behaviors, interests, and much more about their audiences.
It also lets you target users who have already purchased from your brand and others alike.
Instagram is owned by Facebook; therefore, both share the same advertising capabilities. And it is also a known fact that Facebook is one of the largest data companies in the world.
This provides your business with large-scale access to your target audience’s data that can be helpful in making your ads more successful.
Reason #3: The Results
According to a study, people tend to recall ads that they view on Instagram more than they recall ads that appeared on a blog post or article.
Hence, Instagram ads can help leave a more enduring impression on your ad viewing audience’s minds, increasing their chances of remembering your brand in the future.
Reason #4: Instagram’s User Growth
In the past several years, Instagram has observed an immense volume of user growth, meaning advertisers can now reach a broader scale of people using Instagram ads.
More and more people are joining social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook daily. This further pushes Facebook to build and launch new features to their different platforms that will help users and businesses to connect with each other better.
More advanced features mean increased chances for brands to reach their target audience better.
So these were the top four reasons why businesses (especially small businesses) should start using Instagram ads right away.
This brings us to our next topic, which probably you must be eager to know – the overall cost of Instagram ads.
Let’s dive in!
How Much Do Instagram Ads Cost?
Honestly speaking, there is no one-size-fits-all sort of answer to this question.
The overall cost of your Instagram ads will depend on many factors that influence the advertising cost, including ad targeting, ad placement, ad format, and the competition, even more so during particular times of the year.
However, the best thing you should do here is first to decide your overall advertising budget and then determine the amount you are willing to spend or the amount you would like to pay for achieving the desired results.
The best part here is that businesses can set their marketing budget as small as a dollar per day or as huge as whatever best suits their needs and pocket.
This brings us to our next and perhaps most interesting topic. Now that you know the reasons for using Instagram ads and their cost, it’s time to learn some tricks that will help you along the way.
Keep reading!
Top Tips for Instagram Ads Success
- Be Clear on Your Goals
Instagram ads are actually pretty straightforward, even though it might not seem the case. They enable businesses to expand their reach and connect with a much wider audience. Therefore, it is really up to you to decide what action users should take when they come across your ad.
The most common yet huge mistake that the majority of businesses make while running Instagram ads is that they expect it to help them with literally everything.
But like it’s said, if you attempt to go into too many paths at the same time, you will end up reaching nowhere.
Hence, what we need here is the focus.
This means you need to identify that specific thing that you need the most at the moment. It is crucial to be aware of what your business is lacking the most in the first place.
Putting it in simple words, here is an example:
Suppose you are a newly established business and therefore obviously receive a very small amount of traffic as well as customers. Therefore, most probably, you need to focus primarily on increasing your brand awareness first of all.
On the other hand, if you are a well-established business and enjoy a decent volume of traffic, let’s suppose approx 15,000 hits every month, then perhaps you need to focus more on nurturing your leads.
Similarly, if your business receives a huge inflow of traffic and heaps of leads per month, then you probably should focus on generating more conversions.
Nevertheless, as a thumb rule, unless your brand is facing extreme difficulties in monetizing its awareness, concentrating on building more brand awareness is an evergreen approach and something that you as a business would not want to overlook at any point in time.
Let’s proceed to the next tip now.
- Install Facebook Tracking Pixels and Grab Your Audience
A Facebook tracking pixel is a piece of code that can be installed on any site.
It lets you capture the activities occurring on your website and build an audience on Instagram or Facebook.
For instance, let’s suppose a user spent almost half an hour on your website, browsing through your products or content but never got in touch with you or purchased something from you.
Typically, if that particular individual is not reminded, they will end up forgetting about your site, and thus the business will ultimately lose that prospective customer.
But, if you had installed a Facebook tracking pixel on your website, you would be able to capture that particular user and then afterward display your Instagram ad to them.
This is known as retargeting or remarketing.
With the help of such ads, you can start winning over your target audience gradually. However, keep in mind that you need brand awareness for that too first.
- Offer Value With Your Instagram Ads
The last but not least tip is ensuring that your Instagram ads offer value to your target audience.
Another most significant mistake that brands make is concluding that advertising gives them the authorization to sell their products/services to anyone, even people who are strangers to their business.
Yet somehow, this is not very surprising. This is mainly because whenever we see TV commercials or ads in magazines, they’re mostly directly advertising their brands.
However, in reality, if you do this too early in the process, it will most probably cut your total advertising potential in half. That’s because, if truth be told, today’s customers do not like being sold to by any brand.
But, just like everything, here are some exceptions too, like if you are offering an impulse product or a low-dollar deal.
Generally, when you are running your initial ads, particularly if you’re in the generating brand awareness or nurturing stage of the marketing funnel, your primary goal should be to try to get your audience to like you in the first place.
This means producing educational or informative content.
You can also hand out a free trial or a free guide to your audience. Perhaps you can advertise a blog post or offer a big fat discount. You can even go with a free live webinar or consultation.
This is a never-ending list. There are tons of ways to offer value to the people first. So the main takeaway here is that just try to offer value to the audience first.
And you must do it since obviously you wouldn’t want to be that brand which is always trying to sell rather than help. Because then it will be much more challenging to earn your audience’s trust.
Think About the Future
The three tips mentioned above will most probably last for a long duration.
However, besides these few tips, you should also think about the future, i.e., where Instagram is headed.
One of the newly-added features on Instagram is IGTV videos, which lets users watch long-form videos on the platform created by other people simply.
It is pretty obvious that the platform wants to promote this feature more and more, and this is probably why it has even begun encouraging content creators to create IGTV videos to earn money.
Therefore, if you can successfully make engaging and useful IGTV videos, which are generally longer than a minute or two, then we anticipate that you will probably receive a boost from the platform’s algorithm.
Considering that this is a relatively new feature, fewer businesses are leveraging it, which means lesser competition, and lesser competition means lower expenses.
Therefore, you might want to make useful IGTV videos for the next year or two and then promote them using Instagram ads.
This can prove to be a powerful strategy that can help lower your costs and increase your ad reach to grow your visibility.
Wrap Up
To conclude, these were our top tips for Instagram ads. By now, we hope you have learned everything that you needed to know about creating effective Instagram ads for your business.
In addition to this, setting up your Instagram ads campaign is not much of a struggle either. Just follow a few easy steps, and you will be good to go.
We hope all this information is enough to help you craft and launch an effective Instagram ads campaign for your business.
Indeed, an enormous segment of the audience is waiting for you to tap into that you can reach just by running a well-optimized Instagram ad campaign.
Social media sites have become an indispensable part of people’s lives today, which is why they are a great place to connect with your target audience.
So go ahead and start creating your own Instagram ads, keep the top tips in mind, and open new doors of opportunities to your business by leveraging this incredible platform.