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Due to its unheralded effectiveness, video content marketing has surpassed traditional advertising boundaries and perfused every other aspect, including but not limited to social media.
The numbers underscore this phenomenon. Video grew by 258 percent between 2016 and 2017 alone.
Instagram is fully a visual platform, making it's content more agreeable to your brand’s audience. This puts it a mite above other social media marketing platforms like Twitter and Facebook, where a significant portion of the content is text-based.
Additionally, Instagram makes for an attractive video content marketing tool. This is because the network boasts over 1 billion users signed up. The platform has 800 million monthly active users and 500 million daily users, per Statista.
Marketers have already taken charge to leverage these numbers, making the social medium a vital part of their content strategy. Post opening the platform to businesses in 2015, Instagram hosted more than 1 million advertisers within the subsequent two years.
Therefore, it would be prudent for you to pump more resources into your Instagram advertising strategy.
In this article, we’ll highlight a few Instagram advertising tips. But first, let’s talk about the finances involved in running Instagram marketing campaigns.
What does it cost to advertise on Instagram?
There isn’t a blanket fee covering your Instagram advertising cost. Several factors govern how much you’ll shell out to push your marketing strategy on the platform.
The different factors affecting the amount needed to advertise on Instagram include:
the demographic you’re targeting
the day of the week or time of year
the area of the Instagram layout you want to place the ad
the ad type or format you wish to run
The platform also has bidding models for cost per click (CPC) or CPM, the cost for every 1000 impressions.
On average, Instagram charges anywhere between $0.70 to $1.00 per click. However, you could pay more or less depending on the factors we mentioned earlier.
For instance, you’ll pay more if your target demographic comprises 18 to 24, 25 to 34, and 35 to 44-year-olds. This is because this generation is tech-savvy, making them very adept at engaging in online shopping.
Additionally, if your brand targets female customers, you’ll pay more because they use Instagram more than their male counterparts.
Because of the high competition for this demographic across all sectors and industries, Instagram charges premium fees to businesses looking to advertise to these people.
How to start advertising a business on Instagram
Advertising a business on Instagram requires you to present sponsored content before your target audience for a price. However, this is all worth it because of the diverse make-up of the users hosted on the platform.
You can pinpoint your ideal buyers and introduce your brand or products. Being a platform where social media’s viral nature thrives, your brand acquires exposure that’s unheralded when using other forms of marketing.
Additionally, you can discover entire market sections that you didn’t know your brand could corral. After all, 60 percent of people say they discovered new products on Instagram.
1. Link Facebook page and Instagram account to Facebook Business Manager
To advertise on Instagram, you need to create a Facebook Business page and profile. You must have a Facebook Page to run ads and create a free Business Profile on Instagram.
You will also be required to connect your Facebook Page and Instagram account to Facebook Business Manager.
If you already have an Instagram account and switch it to a business account, it automatically creates a Facebook Business Page.
2. Set your objective
Your brand can have different goals for each ad campaign you run; various video forms enable you to pass on separate messages.
You might want to spread awareness about your brand. On the other hand, your brand is already well-known, and you want to improve conversions.
Regardless, you need to know why you’re implementing your Instagram advertising strategy.
Here are the overall objectives you might be trying to accomplish:
brand awareness
increased engagement with the target audience
increased traffic to your website
generate leads
With your objective set, you can move on with setting up your campaign.
3. Select your target demographic
Advertising a business on Instagram is significant because you can easily reach a highly-specified target audience. This is especially possible because of Facebook's (Instagram’s parent company) vast user base and its ability to sort them into any group.
Therefore, you can select the exact demographic you wish to target, enabling you to speak directly to your ideal customers.
4. Select where to place the ad
Here, you can choose which platform your ad will run on. You might want to feature on Instagram only or Facebook as well.
Furthermore, you can select where on Instagram you want your ad to appear. It can appear in the audience’s organic feed, or you can place it in the Stories section.
Also, Instagram allows you to have more control over where and when your ad runs with the manual placement option. With automatic placement, the algorithm determines the best time and place to run your ad.
5. Set a budget and schedule
We talked about Instagram advertising cost earlier. If you’ve selected the video ad type to run and the demographic to target, you know how much you’re going to have to dish out.
Define your budget. It can be a daily budget or one that covers the campaign lifespan.
Depending on your objective, the Facebook ads manager will try to get the most out of your budget using the lowest cost bid strategy.
You can also control when you want the ads to run. It can be a continuously daily run or specify when the date to start and the date to end.
6. Craft your ad
Now that all is in place, you can create your ad.
The platform offers several types of ads to marketers. If your brand is looking at video content marketing, these are the formats to advertise on Instagram:
video-feed ads
video story ads
carousel feed ads
canvas story ads
All these ad forms require a high-quality video if you plan to engage your audience and sell your brand as a legitimate outfit.
Instagram advertising tips to put into practice
The above are the steps you need to get the ball rolling. However, it would be best to optimize your Instagram advertising strategy to ensure that you get a significant return on your investment.
Here are a few ways to ensure that your audience receives your video content as you intended, keeping them intrigued and engaged.
Make your videos engaging: Instagram allows you up to 60 seconds for an ad. Therefore, you need to ensure that you use that precious time wisely.
Competitors are clamoring for the same audience. Consequently, they’re packing their videos with top-quality content to catch the consumer’s eye.
Your videos should play to the audience’s emotions. In other words, they can be funny, enthralling, and entertaining. This enables your target market to consume the small-form content and still gain enough from it.
Use hashtags: Hashtags are a great way for your target to find you. Even if these individuals aren’t aware of your brand, they can follow hashtags and come across your post.
Gather and analyze data regarding your target demographic and gain insight into what they like in your niche. Use these insights to inform you about the wording you should use for your hashtags.
For optimal engagement, add more than one hashtag. The ideal number is around 11 hashtags, although the average is about 3.
Post at the right time: Certain times are ideal for attracting engagement with your audience. Therefore, you have to set your posting schedule to align with these times and days.
The ideal day and time for posting depend on your brand industry or niche. For B2C businesses, early morning, lunchtime, and after work are the ideal posting times. For B2B, the ideal time is lunchtime and in the evening.
Test and optimize: Despite all these tips, there isn’t a cookie-cutter set of Instagram advertising tips for all businesses.
It would be best if you found what works best for you. To do this, you need to test, measure, and optimize every feature you put into practice. Keep what works and discard or tweak what doesn’t.
In a nutshell
Your brand’s short-form video content can catapult your operation to dizzying heights when marketed properly. It’s particularly effective when you advertise a business on Instagram.