How to promote ad on instagram
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.
Get the most out of your Instagram advertising budget with AdEspresso by Hootsuite. Easily create, manage, and optimize all your Instagram ad campaigns in one place. Try it free today.
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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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How to Boost Instagram Posts and Reels
What is Instagram promotion (a.k.a. Instagram boost)?
How to promote an Instagram post
How to promote an Instagram post or Reel in Hootsuite
What types of Instagram posts can you boost?
Instagram post promotion cost
Benefits of promoting an Instagram post
5 tips for Instagram post promotion
Do you have a great Instagram post or Reel you want more people to see? Are you looking to boost engagement on your existing posts? If you answered yes to either of these questions, then it might be time to promote your posts and Reels.
Instagram promotion (a.k.a. Instagram boosting) is a great way to get your content in front of more people and rake in those precious likes, comments, and shares.
In this post, we’ll give you some tips on how to promote Instagram posts for maximum reach and impact. Plus, some top-secret industry tips you won’t get anywhere else.
Let’s get started!
Bonus: Download a free checklist that reveals the exact steps a fitness influencer used to grow from 0 to 600,000+ followers on Instagram with no budget and no expensive gear.
What is Instagram promotion (a.k.a. Instagram boost)?Instagram promotion is the act of paying to have your post seen by more people. When you promote or “boost” a post on Instagram, it will appear in the feeds of users who don’t follow you. Promoted posts can also appear in the Stories or the Explore tab.
Instagram boosts and promoted posts are a type of Instagram advertising.
You’ll have the ability to target your audience by interest, location, and more.
The benefit of promoting your post is that you can reach a larger audience and get more engagement on your posts, which can lead to more followers.
Promoted Instagram posts also give you insights into how well your content is performing and who is seeing it, beyond just your regular audience.
How to promote an Instagram postTo promote or boost an Instagram post, you’ll need to have an active Instagram Professional account. Once you have that setup, follow these steps. (And also watch our video, below!)
1. Go to your Instagram Feed and click the post you want to boost. Then, click Boost. Keep in mind, Instagram recommends only boosting posts with images smaller than 8 MB to ensure the best quality.
2. Next, fill in details about your ad like the Goal, Audience, Budget, and Duration. The goal is the results you hope to see from this ad while the audience is who you want to reach with your message.
The budget is how much you’re willing to spend on this ad per day. The duration is how long you want your ad to run.
3. Once you finish these steps, click Next. If you haven’t already connected your Instagram account to a Facebook Page, you’ll be prompted to do that now. Choose an existing account or click Skip to move on.
4. Complete your boosted post by clicking Boost post under Review.
From there, your ad will be submitted to Instagram for review and begin running once it’s approved!
Want to see the exact process? Just watch the video below:
Did you know you can also create Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns directly through Hootsuite? Follow this guide to learn more.
How to promote an Instagram post or Reel in Hootsuite
If you already use Hootsuite to manage your Instagram ads, you’re in luck! You can boost Instagram feed posts and Reels directly from your Hootsuite dashboard.
To boost an Instagram feed post, follow this step-by-step process:
- Go to Advertise, and then select Instagram Boost.
- Select Find a post to Boost to see a list of your organic Instagram posts.
- Choose the post you want to promote, and select Boost next to it.
- In the Boost settings window, select the ad account you want Meta to charge for the boosted post, and select Save.
- Enter the rest of your Boost settings.
- Choose an objective (engagement, video views, or reach). Meta uses this information to show your post to people who are likely to take the action you want.
- Choose your audience.
If you want to customize the audience, select Edit and specify which attributes to target, like location, gender, age, and interests. - Choose whether you want Meta to promote your Instagram post on Facebook, or just Instagram.
- Set your budget and the length of your promotion.
- Select Boost on Instagram.
You can review the performance of your boosted Instagram posts in Hootsuite at any time by going to Advertise, and then selecting Instagram Boost.
- Select an ad account from the list to see all Instagram Boost campaigns associated with it. From here you can see reach, amount spent, and engagement for each campaign.
You can also boost Instagram posts and Reels from Streams:
- In an Instagram Stream, find the post or Reel you want to boost
- Click the Boost post button below the preview of your post or Reel
- Enter your boost settings
And that’s it!
Pro tip: You can also boost Instagram posts from Composer and Planner.
See the detailed instructions in our Helpdesk article.
Start your free trial. You can cancel anytime.
What types of Instagram posts can you boost?You can boost any type of Instagram post, including:
- Photos
- Videos
- Carousels
- Stories
- Posts with product tags
Boosted posts will appear in the Stories or the Explore tab. If you have an Instagram Professional account and Promote is available, you’ll see Boost Post as an option when you upload a post to your Feed.
Bonus: You can also boost Instagram Reels with a few clicks using Hootsuite. Watch our video below where we go over how you can promote your Instagram Reels:
Instagram post promotion costOne of the biggest benefits of IG promotion is that the cost is completely up to you.
Promoted posts can cost as little as $0.50 per click, and you can set a daily budget so you never spend more than you’re comfortable with.
If you’re unsure what kind of budget to use for your promoted post, try setting up a draft campaign in your Instagram Ads Manager. Here, you’ll be able to see Audience Definition and Estimated Daily Results metrics which will give you an idea of whether your budget settings will be sufficient to reach your target audience.
Benefits of promoting an Instagram postInstagram is one of the most popular social media platforms with over 1 billion monthly active users. Of those users, 90% follow business accounts, which gives you an opportunity to reach a highly motivated audience.
On top of that, Instagram has high engagement rates with posts averaging around 1.94%. By contrast, Facebook and Twitter have engagement rates of 0.07% and 0.18%.
Promoting your content on Instagram can help you reach a larger audience, get more engagement, and encourage people to take action on your posts.
There are a few reasons you might want to promote an Instagram post:
- To increase brand awareness: If you’re trying to reach new people who are likely to be interested in your products or services, promoting a post is a great way to do that.
- To get more engagement: Promoted posts can help you get more likes, comments, and shares, which can lead to organic reach and new followers.
- To drive traffic to your website: If you’re promoting a post with a link to your website, you can track how many people are clicking through to your site. Promoted posts can also lead to more sales or sign-ups.
- To reach your target audience effectively: Instagram’s targeting lets you choose who sees your promoted post. You can target by location, age, gender, interests, and more to better reach more interested customers.
- To collect data on marketing strategies: Every boosted post will come with data on how well it performed. You can use these metrics to see what’s working and adjust your strategies accordingly.
5 tips for Instagram post promotion
It’s easy to promote Instagram posts to get your content in front of more people. But as with any paid promotion, there are a few things to keep in mind to make sure you’re getting the most out of your investment.
Here are a few tips for promoting Instagram posts.
1. Use Instagram-specific featuresWhile Instagram made its name as a photo-sharing app, today it’s so much more. Promote Instagram posts using all of the platform’s features, from Stories to Reels to Live.
The more you make use of Instagram’s features, the more chances you have of ranking in its algorithm. Not only will this help you reach more people, but it will also help you build a more engaged following.
Bonus: Download a free checklist that reveals the exact steps a fitness influencer used to grow from 0 to 600,000+ followers on Instagram with no budget and no expensive gear.
Get the free guide right now!
2. Think about your target audienceOne of the benefits of boosting Instagram posts is that you already have a built-in audience. But that doesn’t mean you should take them for granted.
Before you promote your Instagram post, take a step back and think about who you’re trying to reach.
- Who are you speaking to?
- What are their interests?
- What kind of content do they respond to?
If you don’t know the answer to these questions off the bat, try digging into your Instagram analytics to see how your previous posts were received. If you notice your Reels get the highest engagement or that carousel posts have the most shares, promote those first.
Your Hootsuite dashboard contains all the information you need to tailor your promoted Instagram posts to your audience.
Use Hootsuite Analytics to figure out what time of day to promote your post and measure the impact after its live.
Research has shown that carousel posts increase engagement rates on Instagram. Static carousel posts can boost engagement by as much as 5%! Add a video to that carousel, and you’re looking at an almost 17% increase.
To make the most of this format, try creating a carousel post of 8-10 images or video clips. On the first slide, ask your audience a question or include a powerful call to action. This will entice users to swipe left to see the rest of your content.
Don’t forget, you can create Instagram carousel ads quickly and easily with Hootsuite! Plus, track, optimize, and grow your Instagram presence directly from your dashboard.
4. Make use of product tagsIf you’re set up for Instagram Shopping, you can promote Instagram posts that feature product tags. Doing this will drive people directly to a product details page on Instagram, where they can learn more about the product and make a purchase.
This is an especially effective way to promote your products if you’re running a promotion. Promote Instagram posts with product tags to let your audience know that there’s a special deal going on, and make it easy for them to take advantage of it.
Learn how to set up Instagram shopping here.
Source: Instagram
5. Promote your best postsImage and video quality is an important part of the Instagram user experience—and it’s also a major ranking factor in the Instagram algorithm.
That means, if you want your content to be seen by more people, you need to make sure that the images and videos you’re promoting are high quality. Promoting your best posts will ensure that, not only is your audience seeing your best content but that it’s well-received.
When you’re looking for posts to promote, consider the following:
- The quality of the image or video
- The engagement (likes, comments, shares)
- The overall reach (how many people saw it)
Pick your best posts and share them with the world!
Manage Instagram alongside your other social channels and save time using Hootsuite.
From a single dashboard, you can schedule, publish, and boost posts, engage your audience, and measure performance. Try it free today.
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How to promote content on Instagram using the promotion tool
2 min.
Introduction
If you've decided to promote your business on Instagram, the easiest place to start is by promoting your post. You can start the promotion from the Instagram app. This is an effective way to reach people who are more likely to be interested in your company. In addition, promotion will increase the number of potential and existing customers who will want to visit your website or company.
In this course you will learn:
- how to create an ad based on an Instagram post;
- how to increase your reach and attract new customers.
Promoting content on Instagram to attract customers
People come to Instagram to discover something new and get inspired, so promoting content on this platform is a great way to attract new customers. Instagram advertising allows you to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time.
Promote a post on Instagram
The promote tool allows you to start promoting a post on Instagram in a few easy steps. To access this tool, you need to create an Instagram business account.
You can create such an account from scratch or convert your existing personal account to it. Learn how to set up an Instagram business account.
Getting started
- Your phone must have the Instagram app installed.
- Must be logged into the company's Instagram account.
Ready? Now you can set up a budget and start promoting your content through the Instagram app.
To create a promotion, click the Promotions button in your business account or the Promote button in an existing publication. In the promotion tool, you can configure the necessary parameters, for example, specify the advertising budget.
Start promotion from company account
Promote an existing post
Watch the video below to learn how to use the Instagram promotion tool.
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Learn more
When creating an ad, you can customize your promotion by selecting your business goal, target audience, budget, expiration date, and more.
The promotion tool currently supports three destinations for your ads:
- Your Profile
- Your Website
- Your Direct Messages
For other advertising purposes, use Ads Manager.
To learn more about Ads Manager, see the sources listed in section What's Next? below.
What's next?
More resources on the promotion tool
Learn more about promoting content on Instagram in the Help Center articles below:
- How do I set up an Instagram business account?
- How to display ads directly from Instagram?
- How much does it cost to promote a post on Instagram?
- What does a post promoted through the Instagram app look like?
- Who can see the promoted posts I create on Instagram?
More resources on using Ads Manager to create ads
If you're interested in other Instagram ad delivery options, check out Ads Manager. Ads Manager is an advertising platform used by Facebook apps and services. It gives you access to additional ad objectives and placement optimization.
Learn more about creating ads in Ads Manager in the Help Center.
- Creating Instagram Ads with Ads Manager
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Step-by-step guide to launch 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.
Subtleties of advertising on Instagram
We will summarize
Read also:
Promotion on Instagram yourself
Complete guide on how promotion on Instagram 9000
This means that you describe the target audience - its interests, geography of residence, demographic characteristics - and the social network looks for such and users and shows ads to them, and not to everyone in a row. 
Enter the verification code, create a password, and enter your date of birth. 
Then link your Facebook account and specify the business page that your Instagram profile will be linked to. If there is none, you can create it here. 
And the founder of the Generation Z online school develops a personal brand and tells why it is worth subscribing to. 
The design of the profile in this regard works like a good landing page design - it does not convince by itself, but helps the visitor make a decision in your favor. 
On the other hand, there are fewer options available than when working with the Facebook account. 
The account has both native posts with tips and life hacks and commercial posts promoting products. 
Then - "Next" in the upper right corner on the screen for choosing a destination. 
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. 
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. 
At the same time, in the placement settings of the ad group, you need to specify only Instagram, then ads will not be shown on other sites. Let's go in order. | Follow |
If you haven't run ads on Facebook yet, first create an account. On any social network page, click on the arrow in the top bar and go to the "Facebook Ads" section. On the new page, click "Create an ad" in the top menu and accept the non-discrimination policy. After that, the "Manage ads" item in which your account is located will become available in your menu.
Click "Create" in your advertising account. During the launch of the first advertising campaign, the social network will ask you to specify additional parameters: your country of residence and time zone, the currency in which you will pay for advertising, and details of your PayPal card or account, QIWI wallet, Yandex.
The money from which you will pay.
Creating a campaign and choosing a goal
The first step to launch an ad is choosing a goal. There are three categories to choose from: Awareness, Considerations, and Conversions.
Awareness is fine if you just want to talk about a new product. For example, Coca-Cola can announce a new flavor of soda in this way: they don’t so much need the user to go to the site, but so that he remembers the new label and remembers about it in the store.
"Consideration" is suitable if you want the user to become interested in the product and somehow interact with the advertisement: watch the video, go to the site, like it, install the application that you are promoting.
"Conversions" is suitable if you want users to perform a specific action on the site: register for an event, put an item in a cart, leave a request. For ads to work effectively, you will need to set up the transmission of events from your site to your ad account.
The logic of the algorithm depends on the goal you choose — which user it will show ads to. For example, if you select the "Traffic" objective, then the algorithm will show the ad to those users who are more likely to click on a button or link. It works like this: the system will show ads to the first group of users and mark those who take the desired action. And then, according to various parameters, it will look for others who are similar to them in profile and behavior and will also follow the link with a high probability.
Alexey has an online flower shop with a pickup point on Taganskaya. Instagram for him is a way to attract customers to the site, talk about products. Alex uses the "Traffic" objective to get as many clicks to the site as possible. Let's see what other settings he uses for promotion.
Add the name of the campaign. For campaigns, ad groups, and ads, it's best to use names that you can refer to in the future. If all campaigns are called "Advertising", then to find the right one and fix something in it, you will have to make a lot of clicks.
Use a clear description in the title, such as "Outreach campaign in Moscow, August" or "Traffic to the site by interests / Regions".
Please indicate whether you will conduct an A/B test as part of the campaign. If yes, then you will be prompted to create different ad groups that may differ in design, placements, and audiences.
Specify how you plan to manage the budget: at the level of the entire campaign or each individual ad group in this campaign. That is, set a general limit for all groups at once, or a separate limit for each group. If you choose to optimize the budget of the entire campaign, then specify the daily or total campaign budget and the bidding strategy you want to use.
If this is your first time setting up ads, click the "Set up ad account" button. Facebook will ask you to enter your country, currency, and time zone. If you have already created advertising campaigns, click "Continue".
Set up the ad group
The next step is to set up the ad group. Ads in the same group will have the same audience and placements. If you want to create ads for a different audience segment, you can create a new ad set within the same campaign. For example, one ad group for school supplies might be for students and another for their parents.
Enter a name for the ad group. Choose where you plan to send traffic: to a website, to an app page, or to a conversation in Messenger or WhatsApp.
You can check "Dynamic creatives" if you have multiple options for images and accompanying text. The advertising system will show users different options and determine the most effective ones.
Specify the parameters of the audience to which you want to show ads: their geo-, demographic characteristics. Click "Edit" next to "Detailed targeting" to specify additional parameters: interests, education level, marital status, devices used, and others.
In the block on the right, the system will show what audience size you can potentially reach.
Aleksey knows that his main clients are women from Moscow who are already thinking about home comfort and are interested in gardening and interior design. Alex uses this information to set up audience settings.
In the "Placements" section, select the "Manually select placements" item. In the block that opens, uncheck the "Facebook", "Audience Network" and "Messenger" platforms. You can then choose where on Instagram you want your ads to appear: in the main feed, Explore feed, or Stories.
If you didn't select budget optimization at the campaign level in the previous step, then in the "Budget and Schedule" section, specify a daily or total budget and bid strategy. For some purposes, for example, "Traffic", you can specify a control price - this is your expectation of a price per action: click, install, button click. The final cost may vary, but the system will take into account your expectations when selecting places to display your ad.
Click Continue.
Making an announcement
Enter the name of the ad. In the "Company identification" block, select on behalf of which page you place ads. If an Instagram account is linked to this page, you can select it in the "Instagram Account" section. If not, then you can promote ads from a Facebook page.
If you have specified an Instagram account, you can select one of the publications existing in it or create a new one. If you create a new post, it will not be reflected in your account - this is convenient if you do not want to show sponsored posts in your profile feed.
You can use the "Carousel" format, which consists of several objects and captions, or "Single image or video".
Upload media objects: pictures and videos. Click "Add Media" and choose from already uploaded media or add new ones. If you plan to advertise in Stories, upload a separate image with an aspect ratio of 9:16 for this purpose.
Add ad text, provide a link, select a call to action to be displayed in the ad.
If you chose the Carousel format, then add them for each card.
Please note: if there are two or three cards in the gallery, the user will see all of them when advancing in stories. And if there are more cards, then the user will see the first three, and the "Open story" button will appear in the interface. A person will see the rest of the cards only if he clicks on it. The link is invisible, so some users may not see other creatives.
Aleksey uses a gallery for advertising: this way you can show more plants and some of them will surely interest a potential client. He adds a short description to each image: what kind of plant it is, who will like it, what interior it will suit. For example: “Unpretentious, but spectacular: suitable for owners who are not ready to spend a lot of time on care, but want to please the eye every day. It will fit perfectly into a bright, spacious interior.
If you have an online store on Tilda and a product catalog is connected, you can automatically generate a gallery from it.
Select whether you want to collect information about users who see and interact with ads using the Facebook pixel.
Click Confirm. The ad will be sent for moderation.
Promotion with the help of the Facebook advertising account provides flexible opportunities for experimenting with advertising. We talked about them in a detailed guide to advertising on Facebook, pay attention to:
Pixel. It will help to save information about users who have already seen your ad and interacted with it or performed a certain action on the site.
Catalog. It will be useful if you have an online store and want to promote your products.
Dynamic creatives. The tool will be useful if you have a lot of ideas for advertising design, but you don't know which ones will work best.
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 that 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 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.
To 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.
