When it comes to ads, the platform matters. Every social media site has strengths and weaknesses so it’s important to diversify where your ads are being seen. Utilising Instagram ad campaigns can help you reach a new targeted audience and achieve your business goals - whether it's generating leads, increasing website traffic, or driving sales!
Here's our step-by-step guide on how to set up an Instagram ad campaign.
- Set up a business account on Instagram
If you don't already have a business or creator account on Instagram, you'll need to set one up. To do this, go to your profile settings, then click the “Account” tab, scroll to the bottom and then select "Switch to Professional Account''. Because Facebook and Instagram have merged, all your ads can be managed using the Facebook Business Manager, and here you’ll also need to merge your Instagram account with your existing Facebook Business Page.
- Determine your campaign objective
The first step in creating an Instagram ad campaign is to determine your campaign objective. This will help you decide what type of ad to create and how to measure the success of your campaign.
The end goal of almost all social media ad campaigns is to attract more leads to your website, so to find out more ways to generate leads for your side beyond Instagram, read our complete guide below.
- Choose your target audience
Next, you'll need to choose your target audience for the ad campaign. You can target your ads based on factors such as location, age, gender, and interests. You can also use Instagram's "Lookalike Audience" feature to reach users who have similar interests to your existing followers.
- Create your ad
Once you've determined your campaign objective and target audience, it's time to create your ad. Instagram offers a variety of ad formats, including photo ads, video ads, carousel ads, and stories ads. Choose the ad format that best fits your campaign objective and target audience and if you have trouble figuring this out, read our blog “What Type of Marketing Content Should I Create?”
- Set your budget and schedule
Next, you'll need to set your budget and schedule for the ad campaign. You can choose to set a daily budget or a lifetime budget for the campaign. You can also set a start and end date for the campaign, or choose to run it indefinitely.
- Choose your placements
Instagram offers a variety of placements for ads, including the Instagram feed, Instagram Stories, and the Explore page. Choose the placements that best fit your campaign objective and target audience.
- Review, publish, and promote
From here you have two choices on how you can proceed, you can either create your ad within the Instagram app or use Facebook Business Manager.
Within the Instagram app to turn any of your existing posts into an ad, simply click the Promote button and select your audience, location, budget, and duration.
If you’re using Facebook Business manager - which we recommend for the sake of continuity and increased customisation - once you've created your ad, review it to make sure it looks and sounds the way you want it to. Then, click "Publish" to launch your ad campaign!
- Monitor and optimise
This step is often the most underappreciated. Once your ad campaign is live, it's essential that you monitor and optimise it to ensure that it's performing well. You can do this by analysing the campaign's performance using Instagram's analytics tools. If you notice that the campaign isn't performing as well as you'd like, make adjustments to the ad or target audience to try to improve its performance.
From start to end you should now know how to create your very own Instagram ad campaign. If you have any more questions, feel free to reach out to one of Sydney’s leading social media agencies Drum Digital today and receive trustworthy advice.
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