How to advertise on instagram without facebook

Instagram Will Enable New Advertisers to Create Ads Without Linking to a Facebook Page

An article from

Published June 22, 2020

Andrew Hutchinson Content and Social Media Manager

This seems like an interesting shift at Facebook.

As reported by AdWeek, Instagram will now allow new advertisers in some regions to create Instagram ad campaigns without having to link to a Facebook Page.

As per Instagram:

"You can now create Instagram ads without having a presence on Facebook. If you are promoting a post from your Instagram business account for the first time, you won’t have to connect to a Facebook ad account or Facebook Page."

The key proviso here being 'for the first time' - most Instagram advertisers have already connected their profile to Facebook Ad Manager, as has been required, and those businesses won't now have to option to disconnect their Instagram profile from their Facebook Page, and still have the capacity to run ads.

Businesses that do choose to run their ads on Instagram only obviously won't have the capacity to manage such via their Facebook ad account. Instead, they'll have to run their ad campaign, and track ad performance, on Instagram direct.

To promote your Instagram Post independent of Facebook, businesses will need to:

Go to your profile
Tap the post you'd like to promote
Below the post's image, tap 'Promote'
Fill in the details of your promotion by setting things like 'Destination' (where to send people), 'Audience' (who you want to reach), 'Budget' (how much you want to spend daily) and 'Duration' (how long you want your promotion to run). Tap 'Next' once you've completed these details
To complete your promotion, tap 'Create Promotion' under 'Review'

Instagram notes that the option will only be available to new Instagram advertisers in the US and Turkey at this stage.

Facebook has seemingly spent years working to ensure business Instagram and Facebook accounts are linked, and that any promotions are run through a centralized platform.

So why the change in direction?

As AdWeek notes, some have speculated that the recent backlash against The Social Network over its failure to address concerns around hate speech is behind this new update.

Last week, a coalition of civil rights groups in the US called on major advertisers to pause their Facebook ad spend in July, in order to send a message to the company that its lack of action is not good enough.

The North Face was the first major brand to join the cause - but as many commentators noted, The North Face didn't initially plan to also suspend its Instagram advertising campaigns in line with its commitment (it's since announced that it will suspend its ads on both platforms).

That highlights a potential reason for this split - if Facebook starts seeing backlash over its policy decisions, maybe Instagram doesn't have to lose out by association, even though both are owned by Facebook.

Instagram told AdWeek that this was not the reason for the change, noting that it's been in development for months.

Still, it's hard to imagine any other logic behind the option, especially, as noted, given Facebook has pushed advertisers towards linking their Facebook and Instagram presences for so long. There are significant benefits for Facebook in establishing such links, including improved data tracking, targeting benefits, integrated functionality, etc. Splitting them seems like a lot more back-end work - but then again, maybe Facebook is simply looking to ensure that it's able to maximize ad dollars by removing Facebook Page connection as a requirement.

Either way, it's only available in the US and Turkey, and there's no word on any further planned expansion at this stage.

Filed Under: Digital Strategy, Social Marketing

A 5-Step Guide to Using Instagram Ads

If you have a budget allocated for paid social, you should strongly consider running Instagram ads. Why?

27% of users say they find new products and brands through paid social ads, and Instagram ads can reach over 1. 2 billion people, or 20% of the world’s population over age 13.

In this article, we’ll give you a comprehensive overview about how to advertise on Instagram, including an easy 5-step guide to create your first ad in just a few taps.

What are Instagram ads?

How much do Instagram ads cost?

Types of Instagram ads

How to choose the best Instagram ad type

How to advertise on Instagram

Best practices for Instagram ads

Bonus: Download a free pack of 8 eye-catching Instagram ad templates created by Hootsuite’s professional graphic designers. Start stopping thumbs and selling more today.

What are Instagram ads?

Instagram ads are posts for which businesses can pay to serve to Instagram users.

Source: Instagram (@oakodenmark, @elementor)

Similar to Facebook, Instagram ads appear throughout the app, including in users’ feeds, Stories, Explore, and more. They look similar to normal posts but always contain a “sponsored” label to indicate that they are an ad. They also often have more features than a normal post, such as links, CTA buttons, and product catalogs.

How much do Instagram ads cost?

The cost of Instagram ads is highly dependent on a variety of factors – there is no average or benchmark price. Some cost factors include:

Your targeting
Competitiveness of your industry
Time of year (costs often go up during holiday shopping periods in Q4 such as Black Friday)
Placement (costs can differ between ads shown on Facebook vs Instagram)

The best way to evaluate your budget is to set up a draft campaign in Ads Manager and look for the Audience Definition and Estimated Daily Results modules, which will tell you if your budget settings will be sufficient to reach your desired audience within your desired duration.

Note that there is no “best practice” for how much to spend. You can get started by spending just a few dollars a day, and scale up from there based on success.

In order to control the costs of your Instagram ads, you can set either daily budgets or lifetime spending limits. We’ll explain this in more detail in our 5-step guide below.

Types of Instagram ads

There are many different types of advertising formats on Instagram, including:

Image ads
Stories ads
Video ads
Carousel ads
Collection ads
Explore ads
IGTV ads
Shopping ads
Reels ads

The wide range means that you can choose the best ad type that matches your specific business goal. Each ad format has its own selection of call-to-action options, which are listed below.

Image ads

Image ads allow businesses to use single images to advertise their brand, products and services.

Source: Instagram (@veloretti)

Image ads are best suited for campaigns with compelling visual content that can be conveyed in a single image. These images can be created from high-quality photography or design and illustration.

It’s also possible to add text to images. However, Instagram recommends limiting overlaid text as much as possible for best results.

Instagram Stories Ads are full-screen image or video ads that appear between users’ Stories.

Instagram Stories are a well-used part of the app, with over 500 million Instagram users viewing Stories every day. Engagement is often higher with Stories ads, as the format covers the whole mobile screen and feels much more immersive than in-feed ads.

The best Instagram Stories ads are ones that look and feel like normal Stories and don’t stand out as ads. When designing Stories ads, businesses can use all organic Instagram Stories features like filters, text, GIFs, and interactive stickers.

Source: Instagram (@organicbasics)

Stories ads can use still photos, videos, and carousels. The call-to-action is presented as a swipe-up link at the bottom of the Story.

Video ads

Similar to image ads, video ads on Instagram allow businesses to give users a closer look at their brand, products, and services.

In-feed video ads can be up to 60 minutes long, but shorter videos are usually more effective. Read more best practices for designing Instagram video ads.

Source: Instagram (@popsocketsnl)

Carousel ads

Carousel ads feature a series of images or videos that users can swipe through. They can appear both in-feed and within Instagram Stories, with a call-to-action button or swipe up link that lead users directly to your website.

You can use carousel ads to:

Showcase a collection of related products
Tell a multi-part story
Share up to 10 images or videos

Source: Instagram (@sneakerdistrict)

Collection ads

Collection ads are a combination between carousel ads and shopping ads. Collection ads showcase products directly from your product catalog.

Collection ads are best suited for ecommerce brands, as they allow users to purchase products directly from the ad. When a user clicks on the ad, they’re directed to an Instagram Instant Experience Storefront where they can learn more about the product and proceed to purchase.

Source: Instagram (@flattered)

Explore ads

Explore ads appear within the Explore tab, an area of the platform where users discover new content and accounts that are tailored based on their Instagram usage habits. More than 50% of Instagram users access Explore every month, so it’s a great place to gain exposure.

Instagram Explore ads do not appear in the Explore grid or the topic channels, but rather are shown after someone clicks on a photo or video from Explore. As the content in users’ Explore tabs is constantly changing, Explore ads allow businesses to be shown alongside culturally relevant and trending content.

Explore ads can be both images and videos.

Pro Tip: No need to design brand new assets for Explore ads. You can simply re-use existing assets.

IGTV ads

IGTV ads are video ads that play after a user clicks to watch an IGTV video from their feed. Videos can be up to 15 seconds long, and should be designed for vertical full screen viewing (more IGTV ad specs).

They are shown midroll (in the middle of the video), potentially with the option to skip.

IGTV ads are currently available to users with Instagram Creator accounts in the US, UK, and Australia, with more countries rolling out soon. Creators can opt in to having ads shown in their IGTV videos, and receive 55% of the advertising revenue generated from each view.

Shopping ads

With 130 million users tapping on shopping posts every month, it’s no wonder Instagram has been heavily improving its ecommerce features over the last 1-2 years. With Instagram’s newest Shopping features, users can now view and purchase products without ever leaving the app (limited to businesses with Instagram Checkout enabled).

Instagram Shopping ads take users directly to a product description page within the Instagram app. They can then purchase through your mobile website.

In order to run Shopping ads, you need to set up your Instagram Shopping catalog.

Pro Tip: Take advantage of Hootsuite’s integration with Shopify to access your catalog right from your Hootsuite dashboard.

Source: Instagram

Reels ads

With the successful launch of Reels, Instagram recently announced the ability to advertise within Reels.

Ads are shown in between Reels, with similar specs to Stories ads (full screen vertical videos), and can be up to 30 seconds. They should include sound or music to be well-integrated with organic Reels.

How to choose the best Instagram ad type

With so many different ad types available, it can be overwhelming to select one to use for your campaign. The good news: Ads Manager is well set up for experimentation, which means you can test multiple formats and see which one performs best before running a full campaign.

To narrow down the formats, use these questions to guide you.

1. What is my goal?

With your social media marketing strategy in mind, identify the most important outcome for your Instagram ads campaign. Do you want to:

Drive traffic to your website?
Get video views for a new product?
Increase brand awareness for a new business?
Drive ecommerce purchases, app installs, or email signups?

After clarifying your goal, you can choose some potential formats based on the supported objectives and call-to-action options for each ad type. For example, Stories, IGTV and Reels ads are better for driving video views, while Shopping and Collection ads will be best for driving ecommerce purchases.

Bonus: Download a free pack of 8 eye-catching Instagram ad templates created by Hootsuite’s professional graphic designers. Start stopping thumbs and selling more today.

Download now

2.

Who is my target audience?

Depending on who you wish to target with your Instagram ads, some ad types may be better than others.

Think about your audience’s habits and behaviors. Do they like watching lots of videos? Are they avid online shoppers? Do they spend more time watching Stories and Reels instead of scrolling through their feed?

Choose ad types with objectives and call-to-actions that match your audience’s natural preferences.

3. What has performed best on organic?

Chances are that your organic followers have lots of similarities to the audience you’ll be targeting with your Instagram ads. So, look to your organic feed to see what types of content have performed well, and that can give you a good indication of what paid formats might resonate with your audience.

How to advertise on Instagram

There are two routes for creating Instagram ads campaigns: promoting a post and Ads Manager. Promoting an existing post only takes a few taps and can be done right from the Instagram app, but lacks the customization options available in Ads Manager.

Below, we’ll walk you through both methods.

Source: Instagram

Instagram advertising method 1: Promoting a post in-app

The easiest way to start advertising on Instagram is to promote one of your existing Instagram posts. This is similar to Facebook’s Boost Post option.

If you have a post that’s performing well in terms of engagement, promoting it within the app is a quick and easy method to scale up the post’s success—and show it to new people who aren’t following you yet.

You’ll need to have a business or creator account on Instagram to do this. You’ll also need to have a Facebook Business Page connected to your Instagram account (here’s how to connect your Facebook and Instagram accounts in Facebook Business Manager).

Then, it’s as simple as clicking Promote on the post you wish to turn into an ad.

You’ll be prompted to choose your preferred audience, destination, budget, and duration for your ad to run.

Finally, tap Create Promotion.

That’s it! Your ad will be reviewed and approved by Facebook. Once it goes live, be sure to monitor the results of your ad in the Promotions tab of your Instagram profile.

Instagram advertising method 2: Creating Instagram ads using Facebook Ads Manager (5-step guide)

In order to get the most out of Instagram’s extensive ad targeting, creative, and reporting abilities, you can use Facebook Ads Manager to create ad campaigns (remember that Facebook owns Instagram).

Although it requires a bit more work, our 5-step guide will guide you through the process.

Step 1: Choose your objective

To start, go to Ads Manager and click +Create.

First, you’ll need to choose your campaign objective from the list below.

Here’s a quick breakdown of what each of these objectives aims to achieve.

Brand awareness: Increase awareness of your business or products among users who haven’t heard of you yet.
Reach: Show your ad to as many people as possible in your target audience.
Traffic: Drive clicks to your website, app, or any other URL.
App installs: Get users to download your app.
Engagement: Increase comments, likes, shares, event responses, and offer claims on your ad.
Video views: Get video views from users most likely to watch it.
Lead generation: Gather personal info from interested users (i.e. email signups).
Messages: Get users to send a message to your brand account.
Conversions: Drive sales or sign-up conversions on your website or app.
Catalog sales: Promote sales from your online store catalog.
Store traffic: Direct users to your brick-and-mortar location.

This video can help identify your objective:

[Instagram Ad Options video]

After selecting your objective, you’ll be prompted to name your campaign. Tip: Give it a specific name based on the campaign objective to help you keep track of your campaigns.

Finally, you’ll have the option to turn on Campaign Budget Optimization. This option allows Facebook’s algorithm to determine how to spend your budget across ad sets. AdEpresso has a full guide about if you should use Campaign Budget Optimization.

Step 2: Choose your budget and schedule

In this step, you’ll choose how much you want to spend and how long your campaign will run.

For your budget, you’ll have two options:

Daily budget: Set a maximum daily spend, useful for always-on ads
Lifetime budget: Set a maximum spend for your whole campaign, useful for ads with a clear end date

Under Ad Scheduling you can choose to run ads continuously (most common), or only at certain times of day (for example, if you’re a food delivery company and only want to run ads in the evening when your audience is most likely to place delivery orders).

As you adjust these options, you’ll see the Audience Definition and Estimated Daily Results modules in the right-hand column which will give you an idea of expected reach for your chosen budget. Try to choose settings so that your ad set falls in the middle of the green range.

Step 3: Identify your audience

The next step is to define your audience targeting. In this step you can either Create a New Audience or use a Saved Audience.

Saved Audiences are useful if you have your own custom audience data (i.e. past website visitors) or past audiences from previous campaigns that performed well. If not, you can create a new audience based on demographics, interests, and behavioral targeting.

During this step, you can also select Dynamic Creative. If you choose this option, you can upload separate visual assets and headlines, and Facebook will automatically create combinations that are optimized for your target audience.

Step 4: Select your ad placements

In the Placements section, you can decide where your ads will appear.

There are two options:

Automatic Placements: Ads will be shown to your audience wherever they’re likely to perform best.
Manual Placements: You can choose specifically where your ad will appear (and not appear). If you want to limit your ads to show only on Instagram (not Facebook), you can choose this using Manual Placements.

Here’s where you can select your manual placements:

While previewing placements, Ads Manager will display the technical requirements for each one. To ensure your visual assets are optimized for each format, see our guide to social media image sizes.

Step 5: Create your ads

Now it’s time to create the actual ad. Start by choosing your Facebook Page and corresponding Instagram Account. Then you can select your preferred ad format.

Then, proceed to fill out the rest of the details under Ad Creative:

Choose your pictures or videos (unless you’re using an existing post)
Input your ad copy
Select a payment option
Review your ad
Click Confirm

At this step you will also choose the call-to-action button and enter the URL where you want to send people who click on your ad.

If you want to track conversions from your ad, it’s important to select the Facebook Pixel in the Tracking section. Once connected to your website or app, your Facebook pixel will allow you to see insights about how your audience interacts with your business after clicking on your ad.

When you’re ready, click Confirm to launch your Instagram ad.

Best practices for Instagram ads

Now you have everything you need to know about setting up and launching Instagram ads. The next step is designing effective visual assets for your ads.

Here are some tips for how to design attention-grabbing creative for Instagram ads.

Design mobile-first ads

98.8% of users access social media via a mobile device, so it’s vital to design your creative for mobile viewing, not desktop.

Here are a few tips to design mobile-first ads:

When capturing video content, make sure to film in vertical (9×16) as this is easier to crop to 4×5 than from landscape
Minimize the amount of text in your ads
If you do add text, choose large font sizes that are easy to read on mobile screens
Add animations and motion graphics to videos to quickly engage viewers
Keep videos short (15 seconds or less)

Keep branding and messaging upfront

The first few seconds of your ad will determine whether a viewer will stop scrolling and watch the whole thing. That’s why it’s important to start your ad with the key message and showcase your branding within the first 3 seconds.

Use sound to delight

40% of users consume social media with sound off. As such, it’s important to design your ads for sound-off consumption, and to use sound to delight users who do have sound on. Here’s how to do that:

Use visual elements to tell your story and deliver your key message without sound
Add captions for any voiceover or scripted audio
Use text overlay to deliver your key message without sound

Pitch, play, plunge

Facebook recommends designing a combination of creative types that work together to grab attention and reward interest:

Pitch: Short assets that get the campaign idea across immediately and grab attention
Play: Assets that allow light exploration and interactivity for interested audiences
Plunge: Immersive assets that allow people to go in-depth into your campaign idea

Looking for more inspiration? Here are 53 examples of amazing Instagram ads.

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Bonus: Get the Instagram advertising cheat sheet for 2022. The free resource includes key audience insights, recommended ad types, and tips for success.

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A step-by-step guide to launching advertising on Instagram for beginners

Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social networks Facebook and Instagram, was recognized as an extremist organization by a court decision dated March 21, 2022, and its activities in Russia are prohibited.

Instagram is one of the most popular social networks. As of April 2020, Mediascope estimates its monthly audience in Russia at 61 million people, 28 million of which check the feed daily. This is the fourth most popular social network, users spend an average of 30 minutes a day on it.

72% of users have an average or higher income level, 10.5% work in managerial positions. Instagram ads are the right tool to tell these people about your products and services.

WEB-Index Mediascope about the audience of Instagram

Instagram belongs to Facebook, so you can run ads here in two ways: through the Facebook advertising account and through the Instagram application itself. If you run ads through the Facebook advertising account, then you will have access to all the features of this tool: retargeting pixel, dynamic creatives, detailed statistics. When launched through the application, there are fewer opportunities, but the interface is simpler and it will be faster to launch ads. In this guide, we'll take a look at both tools.

Content:

Preparation
How Advertising works on Instagram
Register Account
We Connect the Business Profile
We execute the Account

Run the advertising through the Instagram
Weem, we will fasten the history
Moving the history of
Facebook
Creating a campaign and choosing a goal
Setting up an ad group
Making an ad

Subtleties of advertising on Instagram

We will summarize

Running ads through the Instagram app

If you have connected a business profile, you can run ads directly from the app on your smartphone. It’s convenient — it’s just a few clicks before the ad starts. On the other hand, there are fewer options available than when working with the Facebook account.

You can only promote posts and stories through the app that you already have in your account. So first post all the content you plan to promote. Please note that you can't promote IGTV posts right now.

Promoting the publication

Destination

Open the publication that we will use in advertising and click "Promote". If you are running ads for the first time, the application will tell you more about where you can send traffic: to your profile, to a website, or directly to direct. The first option is suitable if you want to attract new subscribers. The second is if you are promoting the site. The third is if you want to immediately engage the audience in communication, for example, so that they request a catalog.

Ivan's is an online course for students and recent graduates. On his Instagram account, he publishes useful materials on the subject of the course: potential students sign up, get acquainted with free materials, gain confidence and then pay for the course. The account has both native posts with tips and life hacks and commercial posts promoting products.

Ivan connected a business profile and filled in the feed:

On the one hand, advertising on Instagram for Ivan is an account development tool. So when promoting native publications, he specifies the profile as the destination: users see useful content and subscribe to the account. On the other hand, it is a source of traffic to the site. So in commercial publications, he sends customers to a landing page: users see an interesting offer and go to the site.

If you select a website as a destination, the application will pull up the address specified in the profile settings. Here you can also edit the call to action if you are sending traffic to the site. By default, it is "Details", you can choose another one, to do this, click on the small "Edit" link in the "Your site" item.

Select the appropriate text on the button and click Finish. Then - "Next" in the upper right corner on the screen for choosing a destination.

Room

Let's move on to setting up the audience that will see your ad. You can trust the algorithms and select the "Automatic" option, then the social network will look for users who are similar to the account's current subscribers. This is a convenient option if you have an organic and active base that is interested in your products and services - in this case, Instagram understands which users to look for.

If you don't have many followers yet, or if they follow you because of contests and not for your content, it's better to set up the audience yourself. To do this, select "Create your audience". Here you can specify the geography, interests, and demographics of your audience.

Specify the geography of potential customers in the "Locations" section. In the "Regional" tab, you can specify all the cities or countries that you plan to cover. In the "Local" tab, you can specify a specific address and the radius around it, from 1 to 30 kilometers. Convenient if you are looking for clients for a local business, such as a coffee shop or a beauty salon. Or if you have a limited delivery radius.

In the "Interests" section, in free form, enter the interests for which you want to reach users. For example, "travelling", "cars", "raising children". Select the appropriate item, and the system will suggest similar interests.

Specify the age range and gender of the audience. For example, ads can be shown to women between 18 and 35 or men over 30.

Sometimes Ivan publishes entries that are aimed at readers from Moscow, and sometimes at those who live in the regions. When promoting different posts, it uses different geography settings. But interests usually do not change, its subscribers are actively interested in self-development, career, business.

"Places" is a mandatory section, "Interests" is an optional section. The application will tell you how many people match this set of descriptions. If the potential audience is small - usually less than 2500 users - the system will tell you that the potential reach is too narrow. Advertising in this case may be ineffective - few people will see it. To fix this, you can expand the geography and age range, or add additional interests.

Add a name and click "Finish" - the audience will be saved and you can use it for future campaigns.

Budget & Duration

Specify the daily budget for the campaign - from $80 to $20,000 - and the duration in days - from 1 to 30 days. low budget and short duration.

Ivan promotes each post from three to six days. He thinks so: less than three days is too short, the algorithm may not find the right audience. More than six days is a long time, the same people can come across the same post several times. And in the range from three to six, it is optimal: even if the algorithm shows campaigns to the same people, they will constantly see different content.

There are exceptions: if Ivan publishes a very important and viral post, or he announces a new product or event, then he runs the ad longer, up to 14 days. In this case, reach is important to him, and he does not worry about repeat impressions.

The campaign is ready to run. You can click "Promotion Preview" and see how users will see your ad in the feed, in stories, and in the "Interesting" section.

Add a PayPal card or account from which you will pay for advertising. Click "Payment", select a country and enter payment details. If you run ads from Russia, then keep in mind that the system will additionally charge VAT - 20% of advertising costs. That is, if the total campaign budget is 10,000 rubles, then in fact you will pay 12,000 rubles.

Click Create Promotion. The ad will go for moderation.

Promoting a story

Promoting a story works according to the same principle — select one of the published stories, indicate the platform to which we want to lead customers, describe the audience, set the budget and send it for moderation.

You can promote a story that you have posted within the last 24 hours, that is saved in your Instagram Highlights or is archived. Open the story, click on the three dots in the lower right corner and click Promote.

There are several restrictions when promoting a story:

You cannot promote stories with clickable elements: hashtags, polls, user marks.
Stories that may violate the rights of others, such as gifs or masks from the Instagram collection, cannot be promoted.
You can't promote stories that were published too long ago, the statute of limitations is about two years.

Tracking performance

You can track the results of your ads in the "Promotions" section of your profile page. For each promotion, the application will show the number of impressions, audience parameters, budget expenditure.

We launch advertising through the Facebook account

To launch advertising through the Facebook account, you need to set up a campaign, an ad group and the ad itself. At the same time, only Instagram must be specified in the placement settings of the ad group, then ads will not be shown on other sites. Let's go in order.

The subtleties of advertising on Instagram

Advertising on Instagram must comply with the same rules as on other Facebook sites. Here are a few more recommendations that the social network gives for setting up ads.

Use a separate image format for Stories ads

Don't use the same media for feed and story ads. Prepare a separate version of the creative with a 9:16 aspect ratio and use it for ads in stories. And for the ribbon, leave the standard rectangular or square image. Please note - if you promote the gallery through the Facebook interface, then the images in the feed can only be square.

Do not overuse text on creatives

Facebook has a negative attitude towards images, more than 20% of which are text. This can lead to the fact that ads will scroll more slowly and fewer users will see them. It is better to put the text in the description, and leave the image clean.

Consider the interface

If the image has text at the very bottom or top of the screen, the interface elements will overlap it: at the top - the profile icon, at the bottom - the call to action. To prevent this from happening, place them at a distance of 14-15% of the height from the top and bottom edges. If you are using an image that is 1600 pixels tall, back off 220-250 pixels.

Don't forget that the user can turn off the sound

If you decide to promote the video, don't forget that the user can view it without sound. If you plan to convey important thoughts with your voice, then duplicate them with subtitles so as not to lose such users.

Check your account statistics

See which of your posts get the most engagement: likes, comments, bookmarks. It is probably worth using such recordings for advertising - they resonate most with your audience.

Promote new products, services, and offers

Instagram promotion is a way to promote an upcoming sale, new product launch, or special offer. Advertising will help convey information about the new product to an audience that may be interested in it.

Don't delay when using video in Stories

A story is only 15 seconds long - don't put off showcasing your product or brand. If you use a long introduction, then some users may simply go to the next publications and not even figure out what you offer them.

Show, don't tell

Show users the product in action: how other people use it, what are the non-standard uses for it, tell how you work on it. Tell a story, not just describe the benefits of a product.

Let's summarize

Advertising on Instagram can be launched in two ways: through the Facebook advertising account and directly in the Instagram application.

Prepare your account for launching ads: add an avatar, description, website link, contacts. Post several posts that will help users get to know your offer better.

Switch your account to a business profile. To do this, you need to link your Instagram profile to a Facebook page. It will take just a few clicks, but additional features will open up: you can view statistics, add information about the company, and run ads through the application.

Only posts and stories that have already been published can be promoted through the app. Choose where you want to send potential customers, describe the audience, set budget settings.

When launching ads through your Facebook account, you will have more options: flexible budget settings, pixel, catalog, dynamic creatives. But the launch will be more difficult.

Author: Slava Ufimtsev

Illustrations, design and layout: Julia Zass

Thank you!

How to set up Instagram advertising: instructions for 2022

Instagram* has over 1 billion active users worldwide. In Russia, at the beginning of 2022, 59 million people used Instagram, and now this figure is even higher. And along with users, new advertisers also come here: more and more beginners are looking in search engines for how to launch ads on Instagram.

In this article, you will find two step-by-step instructions for setting up ads on Instagram, with nuances and pitfalls.

How to switch to a business account on Instagram

First of all, you need to transfer your profile to the status of a business account, without this it is impossible to run advertising.

Go to the desired profile on Instagram. Go to the settings, section "Account" and at the bottom find the item "Switch to a professional account":
Select the Business type and select a category.
Follow the on-screen instructions to connect your professional account to your Facebook Business Page*. To do this, you must have page administrator rights.
If there is no page yet, there are three options:
- create a Page directly in the Instagram interface, specifying basic data,
- skip this step - to do this, select the option "Do not link to Facebook",
- go to Facebook and create a Company Page there, and then link pages in settings:
  You can unlink a Page or link another one in the "Account" - "Linked Accounts" section.

Done , the status of the page will automatically change, and statistics will become available to you, the ability to specify contact information and, of course, advertising management directly from the application.

You can also link accounts in the Facebook business page settings. To do this, select the Instagram section in the menu on the left and enter your profile.

In addition to the ability to run ads through Ads Manager, after linking a business account to a Facebook Page, a couple more features will open:

Comments on Instagram posts will be stored in the Inbox section of FB and you can reply to them. This way you won't miss user questions.
You can edit your profile description on Instagram via FB.
The profile name in the advertisement will become active, users will be able to go to your account.

How to set up advertising through the Instagram interface

First, let's talk about simple things: how to launch targeted advertising using the social network itself.

Publish a post and then click the "Promote" button next to it.

You can also select any existing post in the Promotions section of your profile:

By the way, you can also promote Stories. To do this, open the desired story and find three dots in the lower right corner. In the list that opens, there is an item "Promote":

Or swipe up to go to the history statistics, and click on the arrow in the form of a graph.

Attention! There are restrictions on promoting stories: you won’t be able to promote old stories and those that use touch-enabled elements — polls, a timer, and so on.

Next you need to:

Choose a destination, it is also a target action - what the user should do after he sees your ad. Options:
- go to Instagram profile,
- go to the site via the link (here you can choose different names for the button),
- write a message to Direct.
Select an audience. The social network can automatically collect an audience, but we do not recommend doing this. For example, this is how manicure lovers from Perm see ads for salons from Krasnoyarsk - the audience is interested, but does not fit in geo, and the advertiser spends money. Therefore, select the "Create your own" option - indicate the places (by region or your geolocation), the interests of users and their age. Instagram itself offers options for interests, but not all of them are displayed on the screen - use the search.
Specify the budget and duration of the advertising campaign. Instagram advises launching a campaign for at least 3 days - during this time it promises to study your audience. You can set any budget, but the social network advises spending at least 200 rubles, otherwise the coverage will be small.

Done! Check your settings, add a payment method and click "Create Promotion".

This is how you run an Instagram ad in a couple of minutes. It will be shown in the feed and Stories of users, as well as in the "Interesting" section. But there is a catch: such targeting will not be very accurate, which means that the effectiveness of advertising will not be maximum. There are several reasons for this:

audience settings are very limited - you can’t accurately select an audience by interests or those who have already interacted with you, there are restrictions on geolocation, etc.,
Feed and Stories are different formats (in terms of image size and mechanics), but you cannot choose one,
you won't be able to test different versions of the same offer, otherwise you'll have to put them all in the feed.

Next, let's see how to run ads on Instagram through the Ad Center and Facebook Ads Manager. These methods are more difficult, but more accurate, and increase your chances of getting into the right audience.

How to run ads with Facebook Ads Manager: Simplified version of Ads Manager

If you've already migrated to the new Facebook 2021 interface, you now have Ads Center. Here everything is configured in the same way as in Ads Manager, but the interface is simpler and more compact - all settings are on one page. The main differences are that when running ads through the Ad Center, it is not possible to turn off Facebook placement, and some promotional goals and targeting options are missing.

The Ads Center is great for the first time you run ads, but you'll still need to figure out the Ads Manager interface later on. Otherwise, you simply won’t get to the main point settings like conversion optimization.

So, to get to the Advertising Center, select it in the business page settings or click + in your Facebook account and select "Advertising":

You will be prompted to select the promotion goal. If you manage several pages on Fb, select the one you need in the block on the right:

Promote publication . Select any published post on your Facebook business page and promote it.
Promote a post on Instagram . The same, only you need to select a publication from a business account on Instagram:
Increase the number of leads . This is an ad with a lead form, we talked about it in detail in the next article.

Get more messages . It's an ad with a "Send Message" button that takes the user to Messenger.
Promote your app . Format for those whose target action is to download an app from the App Store or Google Play.
Promote page . Suitable if you need subscribers.
Promote the company locally . Advertising will be shown only within the specified radius: from 1 to 80 km. from geopoint.
Attract visitors to the site . The target action here is a transition to the site.

Let's look at an example of setting up a campaign through the Advertising Center using the example of driving traffic to a website.

Unlike FB Ads Manager, the first step in Ad Center is to create ad creatives. Fill in the description, title, button name, link, upload an image and check how the creative will look in all placements. To do this, click "All Previews":

Then select the audience for showing ads. If you already have audiences created, they will appear in the list. If you don't have audiences yet, create one using the "New" button or the pencil:

In the settings, you can specify not only the gender, age, and geolocation of the audience, but also demographic interests, personal interests, and purchasing behavior. Advanced audience settings are available in FB Ads Manager.

Then select the duration of the advertisement and the daily budget you are willing to spend on it.

Then go to the final block:

Locations . By default, the ad will be broadcast on all Facebook platforms: on the social network itself, Messenger and Instagram. You can't turn off FB promotion in the Ad Center, but you can turn off Messenger and Instagram.
Facebook Pixel . Be sure to install it on the site, if you haven't already done so - it will record the actions of people who went to the site from advertising. This will give you more options for optimizing your campaigns. If the pixel is installed, but you don't see it in the list, then you don't have access rights - request them from the colleague who installed the pixel on the site.
Payment method . Link the card with which you will pay for advertising.

And then click "Promote" and follow the results in the statistics of the Ad Center. It can be accessed from the community menu.

Now let's take a look at a full-fledged Facebook advertising account.

How to set up advertising through Facebook Ads Manager

Log in to Ads Manager using the profile linked to the company's Fb page. If you use AdBlock or other ad blockers, add Ads Manager to the exceptions, otherwise the ad cabinet functions may not work correctly.

The hierarchy in the advertising account is arranged as follows:

the campaign is the goal (to get coverage, subscribers, clicks, etc.),
ad group is targeting, i.e. the audience we want to show ads to,
ads - several types of advertising offers.

You can use this by spelling names so you don't get confused which campaign is responsible for what.

Example: campaign: Traffic —> group: Men 25-34 St. Petersburg —> advertisement: 30% discount.

Now start creating a new ad campaign. Facebook will ask you to select an interface - choose "Help Mode", which is what we use in the examples below.

In general, the system may look different in different articles and webinars, but the content is generally the same.

Select the goal of the advertising campaign

It all starts with the goal: what exactly do you want to get from the promotion?

We will not describe the obvious goals like "Installing the app" and "Messages", but will briefly analyze those that are not always clear to beginners.

Coverage . Suitable for image advertising, when your goal is to make sure that as many people as possible see the ad. For example, such a goal is used in event advertising.

Brand awareness . Suitable if you are launching a new brand / product on the market, and you need the target audience to remember it. Facebook knows how many times it needs to show an ad to a particular user, at what point, and in what format for them to remember it. Unlike reach, brand awareness does not work on the number of people, but on their “quality”.

Traffic . Use when you need to get targeted clicks to the site.

Involvement . Choose if your goal is to collect comments, likes, subscriptions and other user reactions to your posts.

Lead Generation . The application form is being promoted, which the user fills out directly on Instagram.

Conversions . Suitable if the goal is some action on the site. To do this, you need to set up event tracking using the Facebook pixel. The pixel must be created in Events Manager and installed in the site code. It captures events - user actions on the site and transfers data to the Events Manager.

You can also automatically transfer call data from the site. For this to work, you will need not only a pixel, but also a call tracking service - it is he who is responsible for calls. It is important that call tracking can be synchronized with Facebook Ads*. For example, such a function is available in Callibri MultiTracking.

MultiTracking

counts calls, requests and letters from advertising,

shows what ads customers come from,

helps optimize advertising.

Try

Point attendance . Needed to attract users offline. For example, in a restaurant, shop or office of your company. Advertising is configured by geolocation - a suitable audience is selected within a certain radius from the point.

Messages . We can say that this is an analogy of the “Conversion” goal, but for those who do not have a website, and sales occur directly on Instagram. Your ads will be seen by users who are more likely to write messages in Direct.

You can send messages from Instagram Direct to Callibri MultiChat. This means that your operators will be able to respond to these messages, as well as work with requests from six social networks and instant messengers in one window, and for the client, the dialogue will still take place on Instagram.

After selecting a goal, enter a name for the campaign and ensure that Ad Budget Optimization is disabled.

Then you can set the budget and schedule manually.

Take care of billing

If this is your first ad campaign, after selecting a goal, Ads Manager will ask you to fill in information about your ad account. Specify the country for which you are going to show ads, the currency in which you will pay the bill, and the time zone - this is important for reports.

Set up the audience

Important: do not mix several target audiences in one ad group. If you want to show the same ad to different target audiences, create different groups for them. For example, if you sell subscriptions to a fitness club and you need to offer them to office workers, fit girls and girls on maternity leave, divide the groups. Otherwise, you will not be able to track which audience the post reached best and where it failed. The statistics will become unreliable.

What's in the audience settings:

For first-time ad set builders, there isn't much to build a custom audience out of yet, so we'll get back to that later.

First, fill in the basic data about your target audience.

Places . Specify the region (or several regions) in the field to be filled in and the radius to include in it. If necessary, exclude unnecessary places, to do this, switch to the “Exclude” mode.

Be sure to include the people you need to find in these places. These can be:

Living here or recent visitors,
"People living here" - local residents, only those who live in the selected region,
"Recent Visitors" - people who have been in this region recently,
"Travelers" - those who have recently been in this region, but their main place of residence is more than 125 km away.

Enter age and gender.

We go down below and move on to detailed targeting.

You can specify demographic interests (education, work, marital status, etc.), interests and behaviors (life events, online activities, etc.). The "View" button will help you figure out the options - it will show you approximately what you can choose from. Then enter all the necessary characteristics in the input field - after that the "Recommendations" button will become active, which will select interests close to those already indicated.

In the "Languages" block, indicate the language your audience speaks - for example, people of different nationalities live and go online in Russia, and they speak different languages.

Clicking on "Show advanced options" opens the "Connections" block.

Here you can select people who interacted with you on Facebook: liked your page, attended events, rated the app, etc.

Pay attention to the "Audience size" block on the right: if the arrow is in the green zone, there is enough audience. If it is in the red zone, get rid of some conditions, otherwise the coverage will be very small. If the audience, on the contrary, is too wide, add conditions.

At the end, you will see a Save This Audience button. Click it if you want to use matched people in the future. Here we return to the custom audience.

If you save the selected audience, the next time you can select it in the "Use the saved audience" block.

You can also create a custom audience. These are people who have been to your site, bought something, visited an offline store, been in an app, or performed actions on your Instagram or Facebook accounts.

Nuances

To collect an audience that has visited your site, you need a Facebook pixel.
You need a minimum of 1,000 unique contacts to create an audience of existing customers.

Once you've created your first custom audience, you'll be able to find people similar to it using the Lookalike Audience feature. Just specify the region and the percentage of similarity (the higher the percentage, the less similar audience you will get, but there will be more of it).

Select placements (placements)

Ads Manager includes all possible placements for the Facebook family of ads. Therefore, placements need to be clearly filtered. To do this, select the “Edit placements” item and uncheck all items except Instagram:

The system will automatically check the necessary checkboxes:

Landing Page. Specify Instagram Direct and placements will be determined automatically.

Only one placement can be left. To the right of the Placements list, Ads Manager displays recommended image and video sizes. You can design different images in the same ad group, but you can’t find out which worked better.

Also here, by clicking on the line "Show advanced options", you can select the types of devices to display, operating systems and specific models of smartphones and tablets. And set ads to show only if the user is connected to Wi-Fi:

Specify the budget and schedule of the impression

Select the desired ad optimization result in the "Impression group optimization" section, the options depend on the goal you selected at the beginning.

You can enter a daily budget or a lifetime budget. We advise you to choose the second option - it's easier to control the cost of an advertising campaign and you definitely won't get a surprise in the form of a multi-thousand bill because you forgot about advertising (it happens, we are all human).

In the advanced settings, you can specify a specific time for the ad to be shown to the user. For example, a coffee shop can show ads for breakfast strictly in the morning hours:

Create an ad

So, we got to the ad itself. You can select a post that's already in your feed (in the "Use an existing post" section) or create a new ad. Check that the correct Instagram account is selected.

There are three formats available for Instagram: Carousel, Single Image or Video, and Featured.

Single image

You can create up to six ads with a different image, video, or slideshow. Here you can also customize the ad for the feed or stories by selecting different images or cropping one.

Next, fill in the ad text and select a call to action (button). If you are taking people away from ads to your site, don't forget to add UTM tags to the link. So you can track the number of transitions.

Add a payment method

Link a card from which money will be debited. Usually, specialists allocate a separate card or electronic wallet for this so that funds are not debited from your personal account.

Enter your TIN - Facebook needs this information because we pay VAT. And then link the card.

Done! The ad will be sent for moderation. As soon as it is approved, you will receive a notification. You can find statistics on the results of an advertising campaign on the main page of Ads Manager.

To avoid moderation issues, please read the Community Guidelines beforehand. And then - a list of prohibited materials and types of prohibited content. In general, there is nothing supernatural in these rules - do not discriminate, do not advertise alcohol, tobacco products and gambling, do not publish nudity (at the same time, using works of art in advertising is possible, but this is fraught - moderation can still reject the ad and restore reputation it will be long and painful). The main rule is don't cheat. This is especially important if you are selling a subscription to a service.

Things to remember about Instagram ads

To recap:

Setting up ads in the Instagram interface severely limits your targeting options. If you want to find your audience more accurately and get more impact from your ads, set them up through Facebook Ads Manager.
Learn more

How to advertise on instagram without facebook

Instagram Will Enable New Advertisers to Create Ads Without Linking to a Facebook Page

A 5-Step Guide to Using Instagram Ads

What are Instagram ads?

How much do Instagram ads cost?

Types of Instagram ads

Image ads

Video ads

Carousel ads

Collection ads

Explore ads

IGTV ads

Shopping ads

Reels ads

How to choose the best Instagram ad type

1. What is my goal?

2.

3. What has performed best on organic?

How to advertise on Instagram

Instagram advertising method 1: Promoting a post in-app

Instagram advertising method 2: Creating Instagram ads using Facebook Ads Manager (5-step guide)

Best practices for Instagram ads

Design mobile-first ads

Keep branding and messaging upfront

Use sound to delight

Pitch, play, plunge

A step-by-step guide to launching advertising on Instagram for beginners

Running ads through the Instagram app

We launch advertising through the Facebook account

The subtleties of advertising on Instagram

Let's summarize

How to set up Instagram advertising: instructions for 2022

How to switch to a business account on Instagram

How to set up advertising through the Instagram interface

How to run ads with Facebook Ads Manager: Simplified version of Ads Manager

How to set up advertising through Facebook Ads Manager

Select the goal of the advertising campaign

Take care of billing

Set up the audience

Select placements (placements)

Specify the budget and schedule of the impression

Create an ad

Add a payment method

Things to remember about Instagram ads

Learn more