Instagram Ads offer a cool way to directly connect with your target audience, with potential to reach over a billion people.
Get creative with your content, and you’ll craft captivating ads that will draw the attention of both new and existing customers. Meaning more business for you and more success for your brand.
By mastering the basics of Facebook Ads Manager or Instagram themselves, you’ll have a winning setup for connecting with and engaging the right people for your business goals.
We’re here to guide you through it with an overview of how Instagram Ads can give your business that extra boost.
How to Use Instagram Ads to Reach Your Target Audience: 2 Popular Methods
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Method 1: Creating Instagram Ads via the Facebook Ads Manager
Using the Facebook Ads Manager to create Instagram ads is relatively easy, but it does take some time to get used to it. Creating effective and profitable Instagram campaigns requires understanding the different features and options in the Facebook Ads Manager.
Step 1. Login to Facebook and Navigate to the Facebook Ads Manager:
Go to www.facebook.com and login with your account credentials. After logging in, tap the dropdown menu at the top right of the page and tap “Manage Ads.” This will take you to your Ads Manager page, where you can create, edit, and track all of your Facebook campaigns.
In the Ads Manager page, look for the “Create Ad” button and click it to begin creating an ad for Instagram placement.
Step 2. Choosing an Advertising Objective:
Choosing an advertising objective to use Instagram Ads to reach your target audience is an important decision for any business. The 8 main objectives you should consider are brand awareness, reach/impressions, traffic, engagement, video views, lead generation, conversions, and app installs.
1. Brand Awareness:
Utilizing ads can help create more brand recognition, as these campaigns tend to have higher reach and visibility than regular posts on the platform. Creating Ad Sets tailored to the specific target market will ensure that the message resonates with a wide range of users, fostering brand awareness.
2. Reach/Impressions:
When you’re using Instagram Ads, you should focus on reach and impressions. Reach, and impressions aren’t the same. While reach measures how many unique people saw an ad, impressions measure how many times it was viewed.
When creating an ad on Instagram, you can optimize your campaigns for either or both metrics depending on what best suits your overall aims.
3. Traffic:
Traffic as an advertising objective with Instagram Ads can help you get those visits. This will also give you better accuracy in tracking the activities within Analytics, like subscribing to a newsletter or making purchases so that success is easier to measure.
4. Engagement:
Engage your audience with Instagram Ads. Promote interactions with followers, like comments, and likes on posts. You can even encourage users to save your content for easy future access. Unlock more potential than ever before by taking advantage of this underutilized strategy.
5. Video Views:
By creating engaging video content that speaks directly to the needs of your target audience, you can generate interest and encourage more people to watch your videos.
Using Instagram Ads with a ‘Views’ objective will allow you to be able to target a custom audience and control who sees your ads. This makes it easier for you to reach the right people and increase the effectiveness of your campaign.
6. Lead Generation:
Access the powerful lead generation option to create tailored ads for your target individuals. Include features like call-to-action buttons and user friendly forms so they can easily provide you with their details without exiting the app.
7. Conversions:
Take your ad campaigns to the next level with conversions. Engage potential customers and fuel desired outcomes, like sign-ups or downloads. Track success rates easily so you can see the performance of each individual ad in action and uplevel your whole strategy.
8. App Installs:
Instantly turbocharge your app downloads with Instagram Ads. Setting up an ‘App Installs’ objective on the platform makes it super easy for users, who can be directed straight to either Apple Store or Google Play.
It’s a great way to experience increased installations in no time at all without requiring any extra effort from them.
Step 3. Choose Your Target Audience:
1. Identifying Demographics and Locations of Your Audience:
You need to understand who your target audience is, where they live, what their age and gender are. Look at your Instagram followers, insights and other analytics tools to find out which demographics are most likely to be interested in your product.
Consider local trends and preferences that could affect how people interact with your brand on Instagram. For example, if you’re targeting a younger demographic, you may want to narrow down your geographic area to cities with universities or larger city centers with more young people living in them.
2. Understanding Gender and Age:
By understanding a target audience’s gender and age groupings, advertisers can better understand the preferences of their target audience to tailor ad content accordingly.
Knowing these two factors allows companies to segment users into different groups based on demographics like age range (13-65+) or gender (men or women). It also helps them create creative ad campaigns that are more relevant to the desired audience.
Younger audiences tend to be more connected with visual content whereas older users may be drawn towards text-based ads that offer more information about a product or service.
3. Selecting Languages:
Choosing the right language for an ad campaign can help make sure it reaches the right people at the right time. You should create versions of your ads in multiple languages if you’re trying to reach an international audience.
This will ensure you can cater to everyone, no matter what language they speak. Language can also help appeal to different cultures by including local slang or other cultural elements in the ad.
For example, if a company is targeting people from Singapore then it would be wise to craft ads in English to make sure they are seen by those who speak English fluently.
4. Establishing Needs and Interests in Your Audience:
Understand what interests them so that you can create content tailored specifically for them. You can do this by looking at their previous Instagram behavior, such as what topics they’ve engaged with recently through comments or posts they liked.
By collecting data on consumers’ interests through surveys and analytics, companies gain invaluable insights into what drives their targeted audiences. This understanding helps them create tailored content to meet individual needs and passions, from lifestyle choices to hobbies or preferred products/services.
5. Selecting Connections:
Knowing which of your connections are engaging with you on Instagram, an app, or at events can help craft powerful ads that drive the best results. With targeted messaging and creative campaigns for each platform, it’s easy to turn casual connections into lasting relationships.
Step 4. Choose Your Placement:
Now it’s time to decide which placement type makes sense for the goals of each specific ad campaign. If you choose automatic placements, they’ll post on both Facebook and Instagram, depending on where they perform best.
Alternatively, if you only want to use one platform, you can choose manual placements. It allows you to choose either Facebook or Instagram alone instead of both at once.
Also, manual placements work better with smaller budgets since there’s less competition between advertisers for top positions on news feeds and stories sections.
Step 5. Set a Budget and Schedule:
Set a budget and decide how long each ad should run before it ends automatically before launching any Facebook or Instagram ad campaign. By doing this, you keep costs down and make sure all campaigns perform well within their designated time frame.
Don’t forget that higher budgets tend to get more impressions, while lower budgets get fewer views/clicks. Depending on how well each advertisement was targeted against its defined audience segmentation parameters (as established in Step 3), it may still yield positive results.
Method 2: Creating Instagram Ads via the Instagram App
Creating Instagram Ads via the app is simple and can be done in just a few steps. By following the instructions below, you will be able to create ads on your own.
Step 1. Select Type of Add Format:
Type 1. Single Photo Ads:
Creating Instagram ads for single photo ads is an ideal way to reach a larger audience and promote your products or services. To create an effective ad, you’ll want to choose an image that reflects your message and brand identity.
You can use tools like Canva or Adobe Photoshop to edit photos or create ads from scratch. You’ll need to write a compelling copy for the ad’s headline and description.
1: Select an eye-catching image from image library.
2: Upload New image.
3: Fill up the text field with up to 300 characters
4: Select “Add a website URL” and paste your link or URL.
6: Select a call-to-action button (optional).
Type 2. Single Video Ads:
Instagram advertising for Single Video Ads is simple and straightforward when done correctly. Here are the processes for single video ads:
1. Select a single video (GIF) ad format from the dropdown menu in your advertising platform.
2. Upload a video clip from your phone library or other sources, such as YouTube or Dropbox.
3. Choose a thumbnail for the video from the available options, or upload your own.
4. It is also possible to upload an SRT file as captions for the video if necessary.
5. In the text field below, write a short text of up to 300 characters.
6. If you want to drive traffic to your website, select ‘Add a website URL’ and then fill in the relevant fields with your URL and call-to-action button choice.
Type 3. Carousel Ads:
Creating carousel ads is a great way to showcase multiple images, videos, or slideshows in one ad. Here are the steps for creating carousel ads:
1. Log in to your ad manager and select the ‘Carousel Ads’ option from the list of available campaigns.
2. Provide a caption in the text field for your carousel ad that briefly describes its content.
3. Create up to 10 cards per carousel ad by uploading an image, video, or slideshow
4. For each card, provide a headline that accurately describes the content of the card and leave any descriptions blank.
5. Enter a valid URL in the destination field where users can be directed after clicking on your ad.
6. Ignore both ‘See More URL’ and ‘See More Display URL’ fields as these are optional and used only if you need an additional level of tracking for your specific campaign goals.
7. Select an appropriate call-to-action button which best aligns with your ultimate goal for the campaign such as ‘Shop Now’, ‘Learn More,’ or ‘Sign Up’.
Type 4. Slideshow Ads:
Slideshow ads are a great way to showcase your products and services in an engaging and interactive format. They provide an ideal visual platform for storytelling, helping you communicate your message quickly and effectively.
1. Upload Your Images:
Choose images that are relevant to the message of your ad and make sure they’re high quality. You can upload existing photos from your computer or from online sources such as stock photo websites. Make sure you upload only quality content. That way, you will definitely maximize the likes on your Instagram posts.
2: Arrange Your Photos:
Once you’ve selected the images, arrange them into the order that best conveys your story. Pay attention to how each photo transitions into the next one and make sure there is a logical flow between them.
3: Adjust Settings:
Before creating the actual ad, adjust settings such as duration, transition effects, and text display options. This will help ensure that each slide looks exactly how you want it to when combined with the other images in the ad.
4: Add Audio:
Add audio to your slideshow if you prefer. Choose a track that best compliments your visuals for a better viewing experience.
5: Select A Thumbnail & Upload Video Captions:
Select a cover image for the ad from one of the slides in the slideshow or upload a separate image entirely. This will be displayed when viewers click on the video before it starts playing.
6: Fill Up Caption and Add Website URL:
Write captions for each slide in the slideshow ads if desired. Then add a link to a landing page or website along with this caption if desired.
7: Select Call-To-Action Button:
Choose a call-to-action button that compliments both the content of your ad and encourages viewers to take action after watching it.
Type 5. Stories Ads:
With Single Image:
Creating Instagram Stories Ads with a single image is a simple and effective way to promote your business or product to target audiences. It allows you to upload up to six different versions of the same image, which can be used in one or multiple stories.
1: Upload your image(s) for your ad in the same way that you would for any other Instagram story post.
2: If you want to enable tracking for this ad, click “Show Advanced Options” under the upload screen. Here, you can enable pixel or offline tracking, which will help you optimize your campaign’s performance.
3: Once your image is uploaded, you can add text, stickers, GIFs, and more as if it was any regular Instagram story post. This will help make your ads look more attractive and engaging to potential customers or viewers.
4: Once all of your customizations are complete, click “Share” to publish the ad into the stories section of your profile page, where it will be visible to people who follow you on Instagram.
5: You can view the performance of this Story Ad by going into Insights on your profile page and then selecting “Stories Ads” from the menu on the left-hand side of the screen.
With Single Video:
With Single Video Ads, you can create an engaging ad that is sure to grab attention.
1. Upload a video or GIF that is up to 15 seconds in length to get started.
2: After uploading the clip, choose a video thumbnail that will be seen before the video plays.
3. Once you have selected the thumbnail, you can enable pixel and offline tracking if desired by clicking the “Show Advanced Options” button at the bottom of the page.
Step 1. Select The Post for Promotion:
Click on the blue “Promote” button next to the post you want to promote. You might have to log in to Facebook.
Step 2: Set Your Action Button, Audience:
The action button allows users to choose whether they want visitors to visit their website or download their app when viewers click on the ad. Depending on your goal, this will affect your campaign’s success, so it’s essential to choose wisely when setting this up.
After setting your action button, you will need to identify who you want your ad seen by narrowing down certain demographics such as age, gender, location, and interests.
This will ensure that your ad gets seen by people who are more likely interested in what you’re selling instead of wasting money on those who don’t fit into these criteria.
Step 3. Select an Ad Objective:
You only have two options: Visit your Website or Call or visit your business.
Step 4: Set your Budget, Duration and Promote:
Set up the budget for each ad campaign as well as determine how long it should run for before automatically ceasing promotion. Simply select the action button that best fits your desired outcome, then enter an associated URL, address, or phone number.
Once all these parameters have been set up it’s time to start promoting. You can do this by adding relevant hashtags or tagging influencers in order to gain exposure among their followers as well as boosting visibility within other networks such as Facebook or Twitter.
Adding captivating visuals alongside high-quality content should also help attract more views from people who may be interested in what you’re offering.
Unlock The Power of Instagram Ads to Reach Your Target Audience
Having your business or work featured on Instagram can be rewarding for an individual and for a business alike. With access to features and options that allow you to craft a truly impactful campaign, it has the potential to be an extremely beneficial tool if done correctly.
Through strategic practices like intelligently setting up ads, selecting appropriate ad formats for your target audience, understanding your budget, measuring performance metrics and more, you can effectively harness the power of Instagram Ads and see better returns on your investments.
If you want to reach out to potential clients in the digital landscape, then Instagram Ads can be a great option. So go ahead and unlock its power.