When dealing with Digital Marketing, there are truly a myriad of options to choose from, you can go with Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Bing Ads, Twitter and the list goes on and on. At the end of the day you need to ensure that any method you choose to approach makes sense and is in line with your online marketing strategy. It’s hugely important for any business to bring their product as close to the consumer as possible, whenever they can, if they are looking to boost conversation rates and that clearly extends to their mobile as well. 

Another tool to add to your digital marketing arsenal is advertising with instagram. In recent years, the platform owned by Facebook has skyrocketed in popularity. In fact, it has approximately 4 times the engagement that Facebook does. Take a second to think what a platform with 4 times the impressions as Facebook can do for your ROI. Instagram has developed so much that it has become a career in and of itself. Influencers who manage to garner large followings are able to take their particular niche and make it profitable, whether it’s through using their popularity to advertise their own products or someone else’s. The social media giant has taken note of this, and offers its own advertising possibilities. With an estimated 800 million daily users, this is a market that you don’t want to ignore. 

Instagram Advertising

This method of advertising at its core is quite similar to Google Ads or any other form of paid digital advertising. It’s goal is to expand your visibility, increase your brand exposure and drive traffic to your website and/or eCommerce store. The difference lies in the fact that this is a more visual platform than a text-based one like Google or Bing, which means that you are going to need to change your advertising tactics by turning your campaigns into visually striking ones in order to stimulate a high amount of taps. 

Keep in mind that Instagram ads work on improving upon the following: 

• Brand Awareness
• Reach
• Traffic
• Conversions (website and/ or app
• App Installs 
• Engagement (for posts)
• Videos Views

As you can see this is plenty and is fairly to the point when it comes to seeing how Instagram can serve as a useful tool for your business. Within the above mentioned parameters, you can also specify your target audience with metrics such as location, age, gender and more in order to ensure you are reaching the most relevant demographic for your particular venture. 

Cost

Instagram advertising similar to Google Ads works on a Pay-Per-Click basis. While it is difficult to provide you here with a breakdown of the costs, it’s clear that instagram ads cost more than Facebook ads, but this cost depends on a variety of different factors. 

A nice feature that Instagram offers you to manage your costs is that it allows you to ad schedule (i.e. control factors like the hours of the day you want your ads to run). On the whole however, a recent study on Instagram found that the average Cost Per Click ranges between .70 – .80 dollars, but as always, this can vary depending upon how you are using the platform. 

Tips for Advertising on Instagram

• Make every post count – Just like with any ad, you want it to reflect your brand and its personality. Do your best to put that through to your audience, while entertaining them. 

• Stay Within Context – Imagine you were browsing for a similar product to yours, and then think what kind of content would make you tap. Formulate your formatting and presentation to one that would make people interest in what you have to offer tap on your content. 

• Hashtags are Friends not Food – Don’t go crazy with them, around 5-10 relevant ones to the audience should do. Think of these like keywords, the more relevant they are, the closer they will get you to your audience. 

• Visuals are Key – The more impressive your ad is visually, the more likely it is to get taps. 
• Post at the Right Time – When do you most use social media? Just like in life, for an ad, timing is everything. When using instagram it’s best to maximize your ad by scheduling it for commute hours and after work hours. 

Want a group of social media experts (no the job isn’t scrolling through Instagram all day…sort of) to deal with the nitty gritty of algorithms, time frame optimization, hashtag relevance and more while you focus on your business? Feel free to reach out to us and we’ll take on optimizing the use of instagram ads so that your business can reap the benefits. The first consultation is on us!