The power of social media in today’s digital world is incredibly important. Not only do pictures, videos, or other forms of media posted have the ability to change the way we view the world, they also help keep us connected to our friends, family, and followers who might be interested in what we post. Never has this been more true for businesses, who can utilise social media networks to give news updates to their customers and market their products to a huge database of people.
Below we discuss how you can get started with advertising your goods and services on Instagram, as well as how to target your desired audience.
With a wide selection of media available to upload, Instagram is a great social media tool for businesses to take advantage of. What’s more, with Instagram adverts able to reach over 1.2 billion people, or 20% of the world’s population over the age of 13, it’s vital businesses know how to use adverts on the platform correctly.
Promoting a post
To create an advert when uploading a post (an image/s or video/s) start by choosing what you want to publish by tapping on the ‘+’ icon in the box at the bottom of your news feed page and then hit ‘Next’.
Once that’s complete, you’ll be given a variety of options about which filter to use should you want to edit your image – skip this step if you’d prefer not to do this by simply clicking ‘Next’ again.
On the subsequent screen you’ll be given a menu of options to choose from, including if you want to share the post to multiple social media networks or other Instagram accounts you may own. Note that if you choose to share the post to other social media networks, this doesn’t automatically create an advert on these other sites.
To make your post into an advert you’ll need to select the option ‘Create a promotion’ and then click ‘Share’. As you’ve chosen to add paid spend to your post, Instagram should automatically bring up a page asking you how exactly you’d like your advert to be marketed. Instagram gives you three options as to where you’d like the people who view your advert to go – your Instagram profile, your website, or to encourage them to send you direct messages. If you select the option for your advert to take viewers to visit a website, you’ll also need to provide the site’s URL.
Defining your audience
Instagram will also ask you to tailor your advert based on audience and budget. While Instagram does provide an ‘Automatic’ option to target your advert based on ‘people similar to your followers’, sometimes this is not the best way to reach the people you want. For example, if you’re a new account, with not many followers, Instagram doesn’t have a lot of data about the type of interests your followers generally have. A similar thing can also happen if a lot of ‘bots’ follow your account, as this can skew the data away from your real followers’ interests.
Therefore, while it may be more time consuming, to create the best adverts you should aim to manually define the audience you’d like to reach. To do this, tap ‘Create your own’ on the audience page. From here you’ll be able to select locations in the world you’d like your primary views to come from, which is useful if you’re selling a product that only ships in the US, for instance. The locations you select can either be cities, regions, or counties.
Then, input some interests you think the people who view your advert should have. If you run a website that sells tennis shoes, for example, you’ll probably want to target your advert at people who like sport, fitness, clothes, etc. Lastly, decide what age and gender you’d like the people who are viewing your advert to be. If you were selling an anti-ageing cream, for instance, you might decide to target an older audience.
You can also name this audience and save it for future reference to save time, especially if all your adverts moving forward are going to be targeted at the same group.
With all the parameters now inputted, Instagram can tell you an estimated audience size – basically how many users it believes match the people you want to target.
Budget and Duration
Finally, you’ll be asked to set your budget based on how much you want to spend per day and how long you want your advert to run for. You can spend up to £1000 daily and the longest your advert can run for is 30 days. After that you’ll need to boost it to restart paid spend.
Based on how you’ve defined your audience, Instagram will tell you how many people it estimates will see the advert. If you’re happy, tap ‘Create Promotion’.
Boosting a post
You can also boost an existing post that might be getting good engagement from your followers, which will show it to new people who aren’t following you yet. However, in order to do this you’ll need a business or creator account on the platform. To boost a post, simply click ‘Promote’, which should appear in the bottom right-hand corner of the post itself.
You’ll then be prompted to choose your preferred audience, destination, budget and duration for your advert to run. Once you’ve inserted your objectives, tap ‘Boost post’.
In both cases Meta will review your advert to make sure it is in keeping with their community guidelines and once approved the advert will go live.
Will you be using these tips to create your own social media adverts? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section. And, if you have any questions or other technology queries, please tweet us at @techtroublesho1.
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