How to sell ads on instagram


Unleash the Power of Instagram Ads: A Complete Guide (2022)

The business case for learning how to make money on Instagram is strong. Not only does Instagram’s engagement demolish Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn, but, for brands, it even outperforms Facebook by a factor of 10. It kind of makes you wonder why more brands aren’t on Instagram, right? In this guide you're going to learn how to sell on Instagram and setup Instagram ads.

If you’ve ever posted anything on social media as a small brand, you know how often it feels like you’re talking into a void. Too often, no one responds. No likes, comments, retweets—you get the idea.

Not so with Instagram. No matter how small your audience, your posts probably still receive at least a few likes and comments—especially if you use the best Instagram hashtags. And with more than a billion users worldwide, it’s an enticing marketing channel. To leverage this massive audience, check out our guide on how to get followers on Instagram.

Start advertising and selling on Instagram today 📈

Shopping on Instagram

Instagram is now partnering with Shopify to take things a step further and offering product tagging and a Shop tab directly inside the Instagram interface.

Shopping on Instagram provides a seamless customer checkout experience for anyone who discovers your products in their Instagram feed.

Add products to your Instagram posts and stories

Start tagging products in your posts and turning engagement into purchases with the shopping on Instagram sales channel.

Learn more

How do Instagram ads work?

Since 2015, anyone has been able to learn how to create Instagram ads through Facebook’s self-serve advertising platform. With it, you have total control over your ads, how they appear, and who sees them. And unlike sponsored posts and paid partnerships, your ads get posted directly from your own account.

The advantages to this method of Instagram advertising include:

There are two options to create Instagram ads. You can turn any post into an ad with Promote, which is similar to Facebook’s Boost button. You only have to decide where to send people when they click your ad, who should see it, and how much you want to spend.

Or you can create campaigns with Facebook Ads Manager, which is an all-in-one tool for launching ads across Instagram, Facebook, and more.

Instagram ads can have a significant impact on people’s buying behavior. It’s shown that Instagram helps 80% of users decide whether to buy a product or service. So whether you are a big or small business, you can create an affordable campaign that finds new customers and increases sales for your business.

Read more: From Likes to Dollars: Learn How to Sell Your Products on Instagram in 2021

How much do Instagram ads cost?

Research by Revealbot shows the average cost of Instagram ads are:

Source: Revealbot

But average cost-per-click also differs by campaign objective. As you can see below, Instagram ad CPC can range between $.50 and $7.50, depending on your objective.

Source: Revealbot

Average CPM also changes depending on your campaign objective. The study by Revealbot shows that CPM can range between $2.50 and upward of $35 per thousand impressions.

Source: Revealbot

Overall, good results depend on who you are targeting, your industry, and the ads you use. There’s no one true benchmark. It’s also important to note that Instagram ad costs can depend on how expensive your product is. Chances are, if you are selling a $50 product, it’ll be less expensive to acquire a customer than if you are selling a $1,500 product.

Consider two things about your Instagram ads: how much you want to spend on a campaign overall, and how much you want to spend for a result. This way, you won’t be surprised by unexpected costs and can test campaigns to get the best results.

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Types of Instagram ads

Some common types of Instagram ad you can run are:

1.

Photo ads

A photo ad is one simple photo in landscape or square format. These are the simplest in terms of visual asset needs, since you just need a single image. Here’s an example of a photo ad from jewelry brand Clocks and Colours that takes Instagram users to a landing page to claim their military discount for use in-store.

Source: Facebook

2. Video ads

Instagram used to have a 15-second limit for videos, but it has since lifted that rule. Now, videos can be up to 60 seconds long and shot in landscape or square format. Pura Vida uses the video ad format in its Instagram advertising to promote its new Jewelry Club.

Source: Facebook

3. Carousel ads

An Instagram carousel ad can have anywhere from two to 10 images and/or videos that users can view by swiping through.

Source: Facebook

4. Collection ads

Collection ads are similar to video ads in that they appear as a video in a user’s feeds. These ads, however, are made up of a series of still images that play as a video, much like a slideshow. You can add text and audio to your slideshow ads.

Source: Facebook

5. Stories ads

Instagram Stories ads are one of the newest kinds of ads available to businesses on the platform. Instagram Stories are similar to Snapchat in that they allow users, and brands, to share self-destructing photos and videos.

Brands can also advertise on Instagram Stories with photo or video content. Online jewelry brand Pura Vida has used Instagram Stories ads with much success to build brand awareness and ad recall.

Source: Facebook

Learn more: How to Advertise on Snapchat: A Complete Guide

6. Reels ads

Instagram recently expanded its Reel ads beta to Canada, France, the UK, and the US. Reel ads are a full-screen, vertical experience, similar to Stories ads. They appear in between a user’s Reels and last up to 30 seconds. Instagrammers can like, comment, save, share, skip, and view them.

Source: Adweek

Instagram ad campaign objectives

When advertising on Instagram, you can choose from several campaign objectives. These are potential goals for your Instagram ad campaign that you select from a list. Don’t neglect this choice; it will influence how your Instagram ads are optimized and how you pay for them. For example, if your goal is to get people to watch your video, you probably don’t care how many users click on your link.

You may already be familiar with campaign objectives from creating Facebook ads. Options include:

  1. Brand awareness
  2. Reach
  3. Traffic
  4. App installs
  5. Engagement
  6. Video views
  7. Lead generation
  8. Conversions

1. Brand awareness

This objective is for when you want to drive awareness of your business, product, app, or service when advertising on Instagram. The objective formerly called awareness is now a part of this objective. The brand awareness objective supports image ads, video ads, carousel ads, slideshow ads, and Stories ads.

2. Reach

With a reach objective, you can also drive awareness of your business, product, app, or service. The objectives formerly called local awareness and reach & frequency are now parts of this objective. The reach objective supports all Instagram ad types. Reach is different from brand awareness in that it allows you to reach a larger audience, whereas brand awareness is a bit more targeted to users who are more likely to recall your ad or brand.

3. Traffic

You can use the traffic objective to drive visitors to your website. If you have a mobile app, this is also effective for driving app engagement. The objective formerly called website clicks is now a part of traffic. You can also use this objective to create an offer for your audience. The traffic objective supports all Instagram ad types. The Mountain Collective, which sells ski passes and packages, has used photo ads to drive users directly to its online store.

4. App installs

Unsurprisingly, the app installs objective is ideal if you’re trying to get users to download your app. You can use any Instagram ad type with the app installs objective. Here’s a carousel ad example from Poshmark that drives users directly to its respective app store to download its mobile app:

5. Engagement

Engagement is another objective you can use to promote offers. It’s also effective at promoting your Instagram account and posts. Image ads, video ads, and slideshow ads are your options under the engagement objective.

6. Video views

If you’re running a video ad, carousel ad, slideshow ad, or Stories ad, you can use the video views objective to promote the video. This is an effective objective to drive awareness for your brand and products.

7. Lead generation

Instagram ads with a lead generation objective are great for collecting information from users, like their email addresses, so you can market to them in the future. This objective supports all Instagram ad types.

8. Conversions

The conversions objective is a great choice for ecommerce businesses that want to drive sales. The objectives formerly called website conversions and dynamic ads both are a part of the current conversions objective. If you want to optimize for people completing a specific action in your app and you have the Facebook SDK installed, you should use conversions as your objective.

💡 Note: In order to use this objective, you need to have the Facebook pixel installed on your website. If you don’t have one installed yet, you’ll get a message letting you know.

How to create Instagram ads

  1. Link your Instagram business profile to your Facebook page
  2. Create an Instagram ad campaign
  3. Create an Instagram ad set
  4. Analyze and optimize your Instagram ads

Let’s dive into exactly how you can create your first ad on Instagram.

Step 1: Link your Instagram business profile to your Facebook page

The first step to creating an Instagram ad is to link your Instagram account to your Facebook page. You only need to do this once.

Visit the Page Settings for your Facebook Business page and click on Instagram in the left column.

Next, click Connect Account. Toggle “Allow access to Instagram messages in Inbox” on or off. When turned on, it will allow you and anyone else who manages your page to respond to Instagram messages. Click on Continue.

Fill in your Instagram login credentials or click on “Login with Facebook.”

Keep in mind that if you are connecting a personal Instagram account to a Facebook page managed in Business Manager, you will need to switch your Instagram account to a business or creator account.

Step 2: Create an Instagram ad campaign

After you’ve linked your Instagram account to your Facebook page, it’s time to head over to the Ads Manager and create your first campaign. If you already create Facebook ads, much of this process will be familiar to you.

In the Ads Manager, click on the Campaigns tab and then the + Create button near the top left corner of the screen.

Next, choose your campaign objective. Remember, only brand awareness, reach, video views, conversions, app installs, lead generation and traffic objectives are compatible with Instagram Stories ads.

Step 3: Create your Instagram ad set

On the Ad Set page, you’ll be able to choose Purchase as the type of conversion you want to optimize for under the Conversion Event breakdown.

You can also choose to add an offer, which will help drive even more conversions on your ad.

When figuring out how much you want to spend when you advertise on Instagram, start low. You can always increase the daily or lifetime budget later if your ad is performing well.

Next, define who you want to see your ads. All the same targeting options are available for Instagram ads as for Facebook ads.

If you have any Custom Audiences already created, you can select them for targeting with your Instagram ad at this point.

Next, select your ad placements. You’ll see the option to run your campaign on Facebook and Instagram, as well as on Audience Network and Messenger. Deselect everything except Instagram.

When you’re finished choosing what to optimize for, how much to spend, who to target, and which placements to show your ads on, click New Ad in the breakdown on the left or Next on the bottom right of the screen if this is the first campaign you are creating.

On the next screen you’ll see an option to choose your Instagram ad format. Once you’ve decided, scroll down to upload your images or videos.

After you’ve uploaded your visuals, scroll down further and you’ll see an option on the left to add text and a call to action to your ad.

Finally, to the right of the text editor, you’ll be able to preview how your ad will look on Instagram. Here’s how an example ad would look on Instagram feeds and Stories.

Once everything looks good, click Publish on the bottom right. Otherwise, go back and make changes.

Step 4: Analyze and optimize your Instagram ads

Your work isn’t complete after you’ve launched your first Instagram ad campaign. Once it’s running, you’ll want to monitor its performance and test ideas to find the most effective messaging, creative, and targeting.

Within Ads Manager, you can edit your Instagram ad to incorporate split testing, change the targeting parameters, and view analytics for the performance of your ads.

The first Instagram ad is always the hardest. Once you’ve conquered it, it’ll be much easier the second time around!

Instagram ad and selling tips

Use advanced targeting techniques

Instagram ads have all the same targeting options as Facebook ads. These include targeting based on location, demographics, interests, behavior, lookalike audiences, and automated targeting (i.e., let Facebook decide).

Even better, if you have Custom Audiences, you can target them on Instagram. Custom Audiences are groups of people who have already connected with your brand in some way. This could be by visiting your website, engaging with your posts on Facebook, using your app, or sharing their contact info with you.

Test different ad formats

Testing different ad formats helps you uncover what ads work best for your audience. For example, if your target audience responds better to Stories ads than regular image ads, you’ll want to put more money into Stories ads. This will help you generate more business and get better results for less money.

Optimize your budget

Use Facebook’s campaign budget optimization to optimize the distribution of your budget across a campaign’s ad sets. This option lets Facebook continuously find the best opportunities for results across your sets, and moves your budget automatically to get those results.

It’s a tactic that Trilce Jirón Garro, CEO of TBS Marketing, uses when running Instagram ads for her clients.

Run several ads within one campaign to see which performs better. Then nuke the expensive variations so that way there’s no guessing which creative performs best. Try several variations and stop running ads that underperform.

Trilce Jirón Garro, CEO of TBS Marketing

When setting up your Instagram ads, toggle Budget Optimization on in your campaign budget.

Try Instagram automation

Sometimes when ecommerce brands or influencers run ads on Instagram, they get a ton of comments or messages in their inbox. Often, they don’t have time to respond to all these people manually.

In response, brands are using Instagram automation to save time and turn comments into customers. With a tool like ManyChat, you can create Instagram Stories ads that engage users automatically with keyword automation.

Source: ManyChat

 All someone needs to do is type in a pre-designated keyword from your Story and you’ll start an automated conversation inside Instagram Messenger. From there, you can collect viewers' contact information, deliver a coupon code or lead magnet, or do anything else that will help you meet your business goals.

Getting the most from your Instagram marketing strategy

“Link in bio” tools, which allow you to create custom landing pages and URLs, are one way to help promote your products and online store from your Instagram bio profile. There's also no doubt that Instagram ads can help marketers and business owners get great results. Using Ads Manager, it’s easy to create ads that match your brand style and find your target people in the Instagram app. You can also choose your daily budget and control ad spend so you’re never caught off guard by ad costs.

Start today by running a small campaign for your business. By selling on Instagram you'll be leveling up your sales in no time. Take the time to get comfortable advertising on this social network and build your skills. You’ll soon see how Instagram marketing can find relevant, targeted customers and impact your bottom line.

Illustration by Rachel Tunstall

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Instagram Ads FAQ

Are Instagram ads worth it?

Instagram ads have a potential reach of over one billion people. Instagram has advanced targeting options, and the platform influences customers’ buying decisions. At an average cost of $1.17 per click, Instagram ads are worth it if you want to advertise on social media.

What’s the difference between an Instagram ad and an Instagram Story ad?

An Instagram feed ad looks much like a Facebook ad. It has the brand's Instagram handle, an image or video, a call to action, and a text box to explain what you’re advertising. An Instagram Stories ad happens inside a viewer’s Stories and is a more immersive experience. Viewers can swipe up on the screen to act on the ad.

How to advertise on Instagram?

  1. Link your Instagram account to your Facebook page.
  2. Create an ad campaign in Facebook Ads Manager.
  3. Create your ad set.
  4. Analyze and optimize your Instagram ads.

How to Sell on Instagram in 5 Steps

Instagram hit one billion monthly users—almost an eighth of the world’s population—in June. It is a wildly popular platform, and its growth trajectory is showing no signs of plateauing. Unfortunately for advertisers, the same can be said about the amount of money businesses are currently spending to promote their products and services in the name of selling on Instagram. Ad spend jumped 177 percent year-over-year in Q2 of this year. Impressions grew by 209 percent, and CPMs (average cost per thousand impressions) fell by 10 percent. Advertisers are spending more money than ever in the photo-sharing app, and they’re getting better at doing so. Competition is high.

That said, about two million advertisers use Instagram every month—this is still a very small percentage of one billion. And even though not all of Instagram’s user base is in the market for new products and services, let alone your particular product or service, there is still an abundance of opportunity to leverage the platform to sell your pretty things.

I’m here to tell you how to do it right! Follow these five steps to make money and move units on Instagram, and you’ll soon be selling on Instagram like a wily veteran.

Step 1: Convert to a business profile

Nothing novel here, but a shocking number of small business owners I talk to want to start selling on Instagram without first completing this simple step. Converting your standard Instagram profile to a business profile gives you access to a number of indispensable selling and reporting options. Before we get into those, here’s how to make the switch.

  1. Log into your account and tap the cheesburger-looking button at the top right of your dashboard.
  2. Tap Settings at the bottom right.
  3. Scroll down to “Switch to Business Profile.”

Boom! You’re done. If you ever want to switch back (you won’t), just head back to the same spot and tap “Switch Back to Personal Account.”

Now! Some highlights of the features available after you’ve made the switch:

There’s no shortage of useful data here, and when you switch to a business profile, it’s all conveniently accessible through the app on your smartphone. Under the Activity tab, you’ll find metrics like profile visits, website clicks, reach, and impressions. In the Content tab, you can take a more granular look at the performance of each post or story, including the profile visits and engagements of each. In the Audience tab, you can track the locations, ages, and genders of your followers, as well as the days and times of days they’re most active—all super useful information when we get to Step 3 on this list.

Step 2: Buoy your organic campaigns with hashtag research

Another thing that happens whenever I take over a business’s Instagram account: business owners are desperate to reach more people, and they have no idea how. If you’re a serious business owner you might look at a hashtag and think, That’s a frivolous thing I want nothing to do with. But the fact is, hashtags are the biggest way to make an impact with your organic Instagram campaigns. Switching to a business profile gives you the ability to see, on a post-by-post basis, how many impressions come via hashtags, and how many of the accounts that you reached weren’t following you when they saw your post. When you get smart with hashtags, both of those numbers will skyrocket.

“Hashtag research” is a bit of an ostentatious thing to say, but it sure does sound good to a client, and it sure is effective in practice. The actual process is quite simple. Head to Discover > Search >Tags and search for terms related to your niche. You’ll then see how many posts have used that hashtag. When you use that hashtag in your post, you add your post to the Discover queue.

You want to use a combination of hashtags that have both high posting volume and comparatively lower posting volume. The reason is that the “comparatively less” variety can often be just as, if not more, relevant and using them gives your post a good chance to be seen and engaged with by a high-intent crowd.

Settle on a unique messaging flavor (one that is distinct from your other platforms) and use a tool like Hootsuite or Sprout Social to set your organic social schedule weeks in advance, leveraging Instagram Insights to schedule posts at peak hours. Instagram is a great place to be playful and highlight the personality behind your brand while showcasing thumb-stopping product creative. Include “link in bio” CTAs in your copy and make sure to change that link frequently to match specific promotions and areas of focus.

Step 3: Start running ads

Another thing I hear a lot of: I have a very slim budget and want to make the most of it. A lot of business owners think having a small budget takes them out of the running for Instagram ads, and that couldn’t be further from the truth. If you execute effectively, you will get more for your money running low-budget paid Instagram campaigns than you will creating and running organic campaigns. And I know what you’re thinking—Unless I’m paying someone to do it for me, aren’t organic campaigns free? Yes. But Instagram ads represent the potential for insane ROI, so if you do it right, you’re going to get your money back with plenty of interest.

To really get the most bang for your buck, you’re going to want to resist the urge to just tap “Promote” within the Instagram app. Your interest and demographic targeting is going to be super limited, and you won’t have access to Custom Audiences, with which you can remarket to Instagram users who have taken specific actions on your website and get them to buy that widget they never bought.

Run your ads in concert with Facebook ads, or edit your placements to only run them on Instagram. But take the time to set up your campaigns in Ads Manager.

Doing so means you’ll have access to Facebook’s sophisticated suite of targeting options, as well as the Reach and Brand Awareness campaign types, both of which allow you to get your ads in front of a monster number of users on the cheap. You can use the traffic and engagement you accrue from these campaigns in concert with RLSAs to convert prospects in Search later on; or, as I mentioned, you can use them to create remarketing lists within Ads Manager and run conversion campaigns on Facebook and Instagram.

Step 4: Use Instagram shopping if you’re moving physical products

Instagram shopping is dope. The only caveat is you can’t use it if you’re selling services. If you are, feel free to skip to the next step. But if you’re an e-comm vendor, Instagram shopping is your best friend.

A brief explanation of how it works, and how to get set up. Shopping posts look like organic posts, with the exception that when users “tap to view products,” product names and prices are revealed.

And when they click on the tags that pop up, they’re taken to a product details page containing a description of the product and a CTA. From there, they click through to a landing page.

Set up is a matter of making sure you have a product catalogue ready to go in Facebook and enabling product tagging. For an in-depth rundown on that process, check out our post on using shopping in Instagram stories.

When you run Instagram shopping posts as ads, you’re equipping yourself with both the intent-wrangling capacity of Google Shopping and the sophisticated audience targeting of Facebook. Manual targeting (Demographic, Behavior, Interest) lets you reach a very broad base of net new prospects; and the ability, through product tagging in Instagram shopping, to show those prospects all the relevant details of your product—mainly, what it looks like and how much it costs—ensures that anyone who engages with your ad is highly qualified once they land on your website.

As an added bonus, your Instagram shopping posts reach even more users on the newly-created Shopping channel in Instagram Explore.

Step 5: Partner with influencers

Influencer marketing has been on the rise for a while now, but it’s especially prominent on Instagram, and it’s especially prominent as a means of promoting physical goods. Why? Because putting your product in the hands, or draped on the shoulder, or in the stomach (if, say, you’re selling a juice) of an influencer lends it credibility with an expansive and wholly new audience.

There is a glut of millennial Instagram influencers right now who grew up using the app and have an inherent understanding of how to leverage it to accrue and maintain a loyal following. There are thousands of these tiny pockets of stardom on the app, and for a very reasonable price—most influencers charge by the follower, at $5-$10 per 1,000 followers—you can leverage them to put your product in the limelight.

That means that, say, if you only wanted to spend $100 on an influencer campaign, you could afford an influencer with about 10,000 followers. That’s 10,000 people that didn’t know about your product before. And again, because your paying for credibility as well as reach, this can be a more effective strategy than, say, spending $100 on an Instagram ad campaign that reaches 10,000 people.

Selling on Instagram is all about buy in

To really reap the rewards Instagram offers—to get users to buy what you’re trying to sell—you first have to buy into the platform at large and commit to it as a profitable channel. Do not let a small budget deter you committing the up-front spend to run ads, buy influencer posts, or even pay for organic campaign management. Used in concert, these five steps can help make you some serious money via Instagram sales. Get to it!

How to write an offer to a blogger about advertising

Advertising with popular bloggers is a marketing trend of recent years. Native influencer advertising is much more effective than traditional promotion channels. But not everyone has appreciated the benefits of working with bloggers. Many consider popular influencers out of reach or simply do not know how to write a proposal to a blogger. Let's take a step-by-step look at how to propose cooperation and build an effective communication strategy with a blogger.

How to choose a blogger to collaborate with

The key to working with influencers is choosing the right blogger for you. The topic of the blog should be relevant to the USP of the brand, and its audience should correspond to the portrait of a potential client. Here are a few more basic criteria to evaluate the influencer you like: