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How does promotions on instagram work


How to Create One in Minutes + 3 Best Practices

Instagram marketing can be a hit or miss. Especially as you start implementing your social media strategy, it might take a while for your posts to start performing well.

When it does, your first instinct is to figure out what worked well and replicate it in future posts – a great move. What you can also do is boost your post to double down on its performance with a broader audience.

Find out how Instagram promotions work, how to set one up, and best practices to keep in mind when running one.

How do Instagram Promotions work?

Instagram Promotions convert posts, Stories, Highlights, and Story Archives into sponsored posts. They allow users to broaden their reach, expand their brand awareness, and add calls to action to conversion-friendly content.

How are Instagram promotions different from ads?

Promotions give a second life to posts that have already been viewed and likely performed well. Ads, on the other hand, feature new content and are used as part of a campaign.

With a promotion, the goal is to reach a broader audience for more brand awareness and engagement. Or perhaps you want higher conversions on a particular post.

With an ad, however, you’re likely targeting a specific audience with a particular message in mind.

Whether it’s an ad or a promotion, it will show up the same way on Instagram with the "sponsored" label under the account name.

Instagram Promotion Goals

There are three main goals you can have when running an Instagram promotion:

  • More profile visits
  • More direct messages
  • More website visits

The goal you choose will determine where users are led after clicking on the CTA. While the first two goals will keep users on the social platform, the third will lead users to your landing page (LP).

Knowing your goal ahead of time is key to preparing your assets and having a plan for the influx in traffic, whether it’s on your profile, your DMs, or LP.

The first thing to know about running an Instagram ad is that you must have a business account. However, you may not have to link your Instagram account to a Facebook account to run the ad, a previous requirement up until June 2020, if this will be your first promotion.

1. Access the post you want to promote and click on the "Promote" button.

For Stories or Highlights, access your archive, select the post and select 'Boost.'

2. Select a goal.

If you select "More Website Visits," you’ll have to choose a destination for your users as well as your action button, i.e. your CTA. Here are the six button options:

    • Learn More
    • Shop Now
    • Watch More
    • Contact Us
    • Book Now
    • Sign Up

3. Define your audience.

When you choose "Automatic," Instagram will simply target users who match your current followers’ interests and demographics, specifically those who have engaged with your content before. With the "Create Your Own" option, you can filter your audience by location, interest, age, and gender.

4. Set up a daily budget and a promotion duration.

Your daily budget range from $1 to $1,000 and the promotion can last anywhere from 24 hours to 30 days. Instagram recommends starting with a least $5 to reach a good pool of users.

5. Review your promotion and click "Create promotion."

One thing to note is that Instagram will run your promotion on feeds, Stories, and the Explore tab – regardless of where it was originally published. Based on initial data, it will determine to run it where it performs best.

Once you submit your ad, it will go through an approval process, which usually takes 24 hours.

Best Practices for Building a Good Instagram Promotion

1. Promote top-performing content.

While you may be tempted to promote posts that need a little love, resist the urge. You may end up wasting money on a post that doesn’t have great potential.

If your brand is considering boost a one-off post, focus instead on posts with already high engagement.

Why? Well, these posts have already performed well with your followers. This is a good indication that they may perform well with the audience you haven’t yet reached.

2. Make sure your landing page is mobile-friendly.

Instagram is a mobile-first application.

As such, if you’re taking users to a website, make sure it offers a good user experience for mobile users. If not, you’ll end up with a high bounce rate and a low return on ad spend (ROAS).

A few things to keep in mind when designing for mobile:

  • Have a single-column layout – This makes the page much easier to scan and navigate.
  • Avoid too many images and videos – They may up too much space and crowd the site. And they can cause slower loading speeds.
  • Keep your copy short – What seems like perfectly spaced paragraphs on a desktop can easily become overwhelming on mobile.

3. Know your goal is ahead of time.

It’s important that you prepare your Instagram profile and/or landing page ahead of your promotion.

You want to make sure you’re ready to convert those users once they’ve clicked on your ad. Otherwise, what’s the point?

If your goal was to get more profile visits, be sure to have a visually appealing grid, a descriptive bio, and updated contact information.

If you’re hoping for more messages, consider adding a question in your ad to encourage conversation.

The earlier you start preparing, the more ideas you can develop to attract and convert your target audience.

 

Don't forget to share this post!

How do Instagram Promotions Work? (Explanation + Steps to Create Yours)

How do Instagram promotions work? And why would you use them instead of ads? Good questions. 

In this article, we’ll explore answers to these and other equally important topics related to Instagram promotions. We’ll also show you how to create your very own promotion. 

How do Instagram Promotions Work? (+ Steps to Create Yours):

  • Monetising Instagram
  • How do Instagram Promotions Work?
  • What do Promotions Look Like?
  • Where do Promotions Appear?
  • Why Your Promotions Have a Good Chance of Success
  • Are Instagram Promoted Posts, Stories and Highlights More Expensive or Cheaper Than Ads?
  • How to Create an Instagram Promotion
  • Accessing Promotion Insights

Monetising Instagram

Back in 2009, monetizing Instagram wasn’t a clear path for the photo app. In fact, while the idea was definitely on the table, the brand had to evolve into something with a stronger value proposition and product. 

Today, Instagram’s caught up to the rest. 80 per cent of accounts follow a business on Instagram. This means more people are interacting with brand pages and this level of engagement is just what Instagram needed to be able to broaden it’s advertising offerings.  

Source: statista.com

The photo-sharing app offers four advertising options in addition to promotion options. 

These include: 

Photos:

Image: Instagram

Video:

Image: Instagram

Carousel:

Image: Instagram

Ad in Instagram Story:

Image: Instagram

Collection Ads:

Image: Instagram

How do Instagram Promotions Work?

Instagram also offers promotion options. These are different from photo, video, carousel and story ads. Here’s what you have access to and how they work:

Promote a Post You've Shared 

Familiar with boosting a post on Facebook? Promoting a post on Instagram works the same way. If you have a picture or video that’s drummed up a fair amount of likes, comments and shares, you can promote it.  

This option is a great way for businesses to get extra awareness for content they publish. The extra awareness is reach that could help feed your marketing funnel.

Promote a Story From your Profile, Highlights, or Stories Archive

Also similar to boosting a Facebook post, you can promote stories. While limited to those taken with the Instagram camera or in a vertical format, the option is still very useful. 

Some creative elements (filters and stickers) are not accessible when promoting stories, however, this shouldn’t stop you from taking the opportunity to ‘capture authentic moments that speak to your business,’ as Instagram recommends.

Create a Promotion From the Promotions Button on Your Profile

If you’re looking for a quick and direct way of generating results, you can do so with a fresh new ad campaign. These can be created from your business profile. In the process, Instagram will recommend which posts they think will do well as advertisements. This option is best if you're unsure which post you'd like to promote.

So, to recap, the major difference between ads and promotions on Instagram is related to the way you use each option to engage your brand. 

Promotions are used to generate extra awareness and engagement from already successful posts and stories. Ads are used for unique campaigns and generally feature new content. 

What do Promotions Look Like?

While Instagram promotional posts, stories and highlights look similar to their original (organic) forms, they include additional elements. 

Post, stories and highlights all include the “Sponsored” label below the account posting the promotion. 

Image: Instagram

Image: Instagram

As promotions are intended to generate some result, they also come with calls to action. Here’s a list of the options available:

  • Learn More
  • Shop Now
  • Watch More
  • Contact Us
  • Book Now
  • Sign Up

Where do Promotions Appear?

Promotions appear as posts and can also appear in stories. If you’d like to isolate your promotion to appear in one place, you’ll need to create your promotion in Ads Manager. 

Why Your Promotions Have a Good Chance of Success

Algorithmic updates are generally not the easiest to track. In fact, while there are many digital and social marketing circles that constantly test content to generate the best possible results, much about the intricacies of how AI and machine learning influence ad placement, reach and overall campaign success is largely unknown.

There are, however, a couple of interesting ideas we think you should bear in mind when creating your promotions. 

Promotions are all About Reach

Whether testing to find the higher-converting ad or scaling to generate more of the results you’re after, all spend on paid media should be made to generate results. When it comes to what we know about promotions, Instagram recommends that you use “a post that your followers really enjoyed. ”

This means using content that’s received its fair share of likes, comments, and shares.

Why would this matter and how can you use this information?

Ad Revenue and Engagement Fuel Instagram

Instagram, like all other social platforms, wants to create products that users constantly access. The more users using their app, the more ad revenue they are able to generate. 

Instagram also knows that when users show interest in a certain piece of content, there’s a higher probability of generating even more engagement from it if it’s shared with a larger audience. 

Your already successful posts, stories and highlights, therefore, stand a better chance of being more successful with a wider audience. While we’re not sure about the intricacies of their algorithms, this logic is pretty sound.

Are Instagram Promoted Posts, Stories and Highlights More Expensive or Cheaper Than Ads?

There isn’t any conclusive data that shows ads cost more or less than promotions. In a report, AdEspresso found that CPC values range between $.70 and $.80. This average was based on two demographics. Audiences between the ages of 25-34 years can cost as much as $1.23 per click, where a younger group, aged between 13-17 years, came in at $.47.

While we haven’t seen any data on promotion costs, they could be close to these figures considering that you’re still paying to reach the same audience.

How to Create an Instagram Promotion

Creating your promotion is relatively easy. In fact, most of the heavy lifting is done for you. For example, you don’t need to worry about which post to promote because you’ll have data that shows which post received the most engagement. 

Set up Your Instagram Business Profile

To get started (from your phone), open Instagram and visit your business profile. If you haven’t switched to a business page for you your company, you’ll need to make the change. 

Instagram business profiles are linked to Facebook pages. To switch to a business account, go to Settings > Switch to Business Profile.

Image: Instagram

Next, add custom buttons to your account. These can include: 

  • Contact Us
  • Message
  • Start Order
  • Book 
  • Reserve

Note: if you haven’t added a link to your website and a bio, nows a great opportunity to do so.

Create Your Promotion

With the setup of your business profile taken care of, it’s time to create your promotion post. 

Start by accessing the Promotions options via the Promotions button. Next, locate the post you’d like to promote. 

Image: Instagram

Note: if that if you’ve never posted any content to your business profile, you’ll first have to publish a post and then start the process over to promote it. Also, if you already have content posted, Instagram gives you the option of promoting posts directly from your business profile.  

Image: Instagram

Select Your Post

If you’re promoting a post from the Promotion button, you’ll then need to select a post to promote. 

Choose your post and it will open with the option to View Insights or click on the Promote button. Viewing insights will show you how well your organic post performed. This also helps you determine whether this is the post you should really be promoting. 

Image: Instagram

Set Your Goal

Next, select your goal. 

Do you want more profile visits, more website traffic or more promotional views?

Image: Instagram

Establish Your Target Audience

Having selected your goals, it’s time to select your target audience. Instagram makes the process of establishing your target audience easy.  Here are the three options available: 

  1. Automatic: Instagram will target people who are like your followers
  2. Local: target people in a specific location 
  3. Manual: select people, places or interest to target with your promotion

Image: Instagram

Set Your Budget and Promotion Duration

Setting your budget is just as easy as previous steps. Instagram provides a daily budget option along with a duration (in days). 

While setting both, you’re able to get a summary of the estimated profile visits and reach for your promotion. 

Image: Instagram

Review Your Promotion

The final step of the promotion creation process is a review. You’ll be able to see the following: 

  • The post you’ll be promoting
  • The destination all traffic will be sent to 
  • What your action button will say
  • How your audience will be targeted
  • Your budget and promotion duration 

Once reviewed, click on Create Promotion. 

Accessing Promotion Insights

It’s a good idea to keep tabs on how your promotion performs. This will help you determine whether to increase spend and duration or terminate the promotion altogether.

To view insights, open Instagram >  go to your business profile > select the post you'd like to view insights on > below the post's image, tap View Insights.

Clicking on View Insights will show you: 

  • How many people were shown your promotion (audience reach)
  • How many impressions your promotion received 
  • The number of clicks on your promotion
  • How much of your budget has been spent

Summary

Instagram Promotions are one of the simplest ways to engage and reach a larger audience. Promotions can be created from posts, stories and highlights. When created, they appear in audience feeds and stories. 

While there are creative limitations, using promotions is still valuable. They help brands connect with audiences using authentic creative content. Instagram’s budget and duration options make it easy to determine the spend and length of a promotion, and insights will give you information on how well your post is performing and how much money has been used.

What is Instagram Promotion: Tools - Definition

Instagram Promotion is a type of Instagram marketing that involves increasing the reach, comments and click-through rates of posts and Stories using paid social media tools.

Read on to learn more about why promotion is important for your business, the first steps you need to take, and some helpful tips to achieve your desired Instagram goals. nine0003

The number of active users on Instagram has already exceeded two billion people. According to statistics, 6 out of 10 Instagram users visit their account daily, 70% of people review Stories daily, 90% follow at least one business profile, and 83% use the social network to search for products and services. What does this data say in general?

Instagram, in addition to a platform for interacting with friends, has long become an excellent marketplace. This social network helps to increase the target audience, grow loyal customers, increase engagement, convert subscribers into customers, multiply sales, and strengthen brand trust. Therefore, promotion on Instagram is actively used by information businessmen, shops, travel agencies, insurance companies, lawyers, consultants, coffee houses and restaurants, bloggers, publishers, guides, freelancers, digital companies and others. nine0003

Learn more about what tools you can use on Instagram to achieve your marketing goals in the next section.

In addition to advertising, Instagram provides the opportunity to increase the reach of posts and Stories for a fee by raising your content to the TOP of the issue. We'll go into more detail on how this feature works next.

Promote posts on Instagram

Promoting posts, like creating ads, is only available for business profiles on Instagram. Therefore, first of all, you need to transform your personal profile into a professional one. Read more about how to do this here. nine0003

There are several ways to promote posts on Instagram. The first is to use a special button that appears right below the posts, as shown in the screenshot below. Please note that for each publication, detailed statistics will also be available to you.

After you click on the "Promote Post" button, the settings will appear in front of you. On the first page, select the goal of the promotion.

Next, configure the target audience settings. You can select it automatically or manually by specifying age, gender, region, and other characteristics. nine0003

In the next step, set the promotion period and indicate the amount you are willing to invest. Please note that by moving the slider you specify the daily budget. On this page, after selecting the promotion period and budget, the approximate coverage of the publication will be displayed.

Double-check whether you have specified all the promotion parameters correctly. Also add your bank card details and click Promote Post.

nine0002

Another way to promote is available directly from the page through the "Promotional tools" button.

And if you are also promoting your business on Facebook, then connect your page to a professional Instagram account and use the capabilities of the Meta Business Suite application.

With it, you can promote posts on Facebook and Instagram, reply to messages and comments on these two social networks, and track detailed statistics. nine0003

Read on to learn how to increase the reach of your Stories.

Promotion Stories

To start promoting Stories, first publish it and then click "Promote" in the menu below.

Then, just as with publications, set the promotion parameters step by step, starting with the goal.

As you can see, everything is quite simple, but before you get started, familiarize yourself with the first steps in the promotion. nine0003

In order not to waste money and also not exceed your limit on advertising spending, you need a plan.

Find and study your competitors. See how they manage their Instagram profile, what advertising tools they use, what their audience is, analyze the level of engagement. To view competitor ads, use the Ads Library.

Here you can select the country in which you want to view competitors, platform (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger) and post status: active and inactive promoted posts, as well as ads. nine0003

Create a portrait of the target audience. Describe your potential subscribers and customers in as much detail as possible. Find out their age, gender, interests, fears, hobbies and other characteristics that you can use for more detailed targeting. To create a portrait of the target audience, use the recommendations from the blog.

Make a marketing plan. Set goals and objectives, timeframes, select methods and tools for promotion, determine the budget for promotion. The spending limit will not allow you to spend more than the allowable amount and go into negative. Therefore, do not neglect this point. nine0003

For example, you can set a spending limit per post or Stories and calculate a monthly budget based on the number of stories. Or you can go the other way and determine first the monthly budget, and then the number of promoted content units and the spending limit for each of them. There are different approaches - choose the most suitable and effective for your business.

Create your first promotion campaign and analyze the statistics. Record your results in your plan and think about how you can improve them. The main thing is to make changes gradually in order to understand exactly what brought the result. Try to make one change at a time. nine0003

For example, change the goal of a promoted post or story, target audience parameters, daily budget, and then analyze the statistics and move on. So, step by step, improve your Instagram promotion strategy, set new goals and achieve the desired results. To ease your path in this difficult task, we have prepared some useful recommendations for you in the section below.

Check out tips to help you improve your Instagram marketing strategy, increase your followers and sales, and build loyalty. nine0003

  • Create posts and stories to boost comments. In your content strategy, it is extremely important to build a dialogue, not a monologue. This not only strengthens the relationship with the audience, but also helps to increase the visibility of your posts through likes, comments, reposts. To stimulate interaction, use intelligent criticism, unexpected provocative headlines and statements, subscriber-friendly humor, stories, motivational speeches, and other content that evokes certain emotions. nine0094
  • Connect the chatbot. You can create a virtual assistant for Instagram without special skills using the free SendPulse Chatbot Builder. The chatbot helps automate communication with the target audience, respond to Stories tags in a timely manner, accept payments, and even check customer subscriptions to the account. With the help of a virtual assistant, you can automate answers to frequently asked questions and offload the support desk, as well as interact with hundreds of subscribers at the same time 24/7. nine0094
  • Clean and update the Highlights section. This recommendation is not strictly related to promotion, but it affects the first impression of potential subscribers. Brands add new Stories to the "Relevant" section, however, many people forget to periodically delete the old ones. This leads to the fact that before seeing really relevant information, users have to scroll through hundreds of Stories from five years ago, which negatively affects the first impression and trust. nine0094
  • Create a multilink. This is a page where you can add all the necessary information about the company, including photos, links to important sections of the site, address, phone numbers and actual messenger buttons. In some companies, it serves as a business card, in others it serves as a selling landing page. You can create a multilink right now without any special skills using the SendPulse landing page builder.
  • Use different Instagram promotion tools. nine0066 Don't limit your strategy to social network advertising tools. Organize contests among subscribers, use event marketing with original hashtags, initiate collaborations with influencers, launch word of mouth, develop viral content.

Promoting a business on Instagram is a path with many roads, where each business chooses its own route. Develop an individual marketing strategy and move according to the plan. And if you are still in doubt and you need more detailed instructions, check out this article. nine0003

Updated: 09/29/2022

How to promote a post on Instagram: promoting a post through the "Promote" button

This material is for those who want to learn how to promote a post on Instagram directly from the application or through the Facebook advertising cabinet.

In this article, we will show the nuances of promoting a post on Instagram, give recommendations on choosing a photo or video for promotion, and also answer frequently asked questions related to errors in the operation of the “Promote” button. nine0003

Advertising: 2VtzqwCpaPT

Read also : How to promote an Instagram account from scratch

What does the “Promote” button mean and how does it work

If you need a quick launch of an advertising campaign, then promotion of an Instagram post is exactly what you need. The "Promote" button below the posts will appear when you switch to a professional account: a business profile or an author account.

What does the "Promote" button mean? nine0066 When you click on the "Promote" button, an advertisement is automatically created with the selected post. This function can also be called, raise a post or bring a post to the TOP, because it will be shown one of the first in the feed.

The button looks like this :

How does it work? This feature allows you to create and run ads through Instagram without using Facebook Ads Manager.

At the same time, promotion will not be available for some posts, in this case the “Promote” button will be displayed, but will be inactive. nine0003

It's interesting : 10 best target courses

How to promote a post on Instagram: step by step instructions

Step 1:

you decide what you need to promote with the help of a topic

post and what would be the best solution. Here are 3 types of content that can be promoted:

  • regular post with a photo - suitable in most cases; nine0094
  • video - if you want to get coverage;
  • gallery - for the presentation of several products.

If the goal is to attract customers, prepare a sales post for Instagram, if the goal is to get feedback, then make an engaging post. After selecting a publication, open it and click the "Promote" button below.

Tip: Prepare your promotional publication in advance. Use an image that catches the eye easily or post a photo with a caption. nine0126

The most important thing in the text is the first line. This is what the user sees when scrolling through the feed. Try to interest from the very beginning, and end with a call to action: leave a comment, go to the site, register.

Step 2:

Select the promotion goal

Next, you need to select the promotion goal: site visits, profile transitions, or Direct messages. Let's choose "More site visits" - suitable if your main sales go through the site. To set the desired address, click edit and specify the desired URL. nine0003

Select the action that suits your ad campaign. If you want to attract new subscribers, then we select transitions to the profile. If you need more contact with customers - messages. If advertising is the first stage in an auto funnel, then send traffic to a lead magnet or give a checklist as a gift.

Step 3:

Action button

Depending on the target of the ad post, different call to action buttons will be displayed:

  • More profile visits target - Go to profile button.
  • The More Posts target is the Write to Direct button.

For the button that will accompany the advertising publication leading to the site, you can change the inscription on the button. Options available: Learn More, Shop, View More, Contact Us, Book and Register .

When choosing an action button, rely on what you are promoting. For events and online services, the "Register" button is suitable, for hotels, cafes and restaurants - "Book". nine0003

Step 4:

Audience creation

You can leave automatic audience selection, select a previously created audience or retargeting audience, or set it up manually. Consider the last option - click "Create your audience".

We come up with a name for the audience and set up targeting: location, interests, age and gender.

To properly target, first create a portrait of your target audience. nine0003

Step 5.

Budget and duration

To begin with, it is worth setting a small budget for a short promotion period.

To change the budget and duration of an advertising campaign, simply move the slider left or right. At the same time, you will be shown the approximate coverage that you will receive.

Step 6:

Checking the publication

At the final step, see how the promotional publication will look in the feed - the "Publication Preview" button. Check if all options are set correctly. nine0003

Here we set up payment. Click "Payment", a section opens where we replenish the advertising budget from an already linked card or add a new one.

Finally, click "Promote Post". The advertisement will go to moderation, upon completion of which you will receive a corresponding notification. How long does it take for a post to be reviewed? Usually results come within a day.

Advertising publication statistics

To view statistics on the promotion of a publication on Instagram, go to the advertising publication — click "View promotion" and then "View statistics". nine0003

Since our advertising campaign has not yet started, there are zero indicators here. When the statistics data is updated, it will be possible to calculate the cost of a click, the cost of one application or registration.

Instagram post promotion via Facebook

Similarly, you can set up Instagram post promotion via Facebook. If we compare this method with the method described above, then setting up through Ads Manager gives more options. For example, launching a promotion from a computer and more accurate targeting. nine0003

We will not describe the whole process in detail, we already have a corresponding article: Setting up advertising on Instagram through Facebook. Start setting it up.

Next, when creating a creative, you need to select "Use an existing publication".

Then click the "Select a post" button

In the window that opens, switch to the "Instagram" tab and select the post that we will promote.

After selecting the publication, you will need to select the action button and provide a link to the site (if selected as the goal). nine0003

At the end, click "Publish" and the advertisement goes to moderation.

If the “Promote” button on Instagram does not work or there is no permission for advertising, then ...

There may be several reasons:

  • No administrator access to the Facebook page to which the Instagram account is linked. Solution: ask the page owner to give you admin rights;
  • account is not linked to a Facebook page;
  • Facebook glitches. On the territory of the Russian Federation, the Facebook advertising account in conjunction with Instagram does not always work stably, so the problem with the “Promote” button can literally arise out of the blue. Solution: from a business profile, go to a personal profile, and then connect the business account again;
  • there is no "Promote" button - you have not switched to a professional account; nine0094
  • if none of the above helps , but you need to run ads from your phone, install the free Facebook Ads Manager app and run ads from it.

    Learn more