Instagram Advertising is the next best thing to Facebook Advertising. In fact, if you have the budget and the creatives, you should utilize both.
If you are convinced that Facebook Advertising is a powerful way to boost your reach, get leads, and run campaigns for conversions, Instagram advertising is just as good (or maybe better, for a variety of reasons).
Boasting of more than 800 million monthly active users, Instagram is a perfect destination for your ads to show up while it’s not as crowded as it can get on Facebook today.
The ads are almost always a complete visual riot of an experience, so to speak. Meanwhile, you can use Instagram advertising to:
- Increase awareness of your brand (reach, reach and frequency, brand awareness, and local awareness)
- Drive website clicks and video views
- Drive website conversions, mobile app installs, and mobile or web app engagement
- Get leads (conversions) throughout.
If you’ve ever set up a Facebook ad before, you are about 80% of the way there already with Instagram advertising since you’d use the familiar Business manager for Facebook or the Instagram for Business app to launch your Instagram campaigns.
Never considered Instagram ads before? Here are a few solid reasons why you really should now:
Instagram Is Engagement Country
Let’s just say this: People on Instagram are a passionate bunch. Instagram is all about self-expression and about the ability to go visual. They come back to the app every day and share what’s important to them.
Most of what people share is in the form of photos and videos. As a result, Instagram makes for a very engaged, visual, and video-rich environment available to everyone off of their mobile phones (and also desktop).
Imagine what kind of company your brand can be in with 800 million people scrolling, swiping, zooming, and re-scrolling through their feeds and Instagram stories almost all day long on Instagram?
You have a Chance on Instagram
At the time of this writing, Instagram is still an uncharted territory when compared to Facebook. For one, it’s not that crowded on Instagram compared to Facebook.
Second, the audience set on Instagram is different from the kind of audience you get on Facebook. Finally, the costs of Instagram advertising are low compared to Facebook ads and Google Adwords.
Adespresso picked up data from over $100 million on ad spend in 2017. The average cost per click on Instagram turns out to be $0.80 (but this really depends on a lot of factors, markets, types of audiences you target, time of the year, and so much more).
You might be left out Soon
As of Jan 2021, Instagram had over 1 billion monthly active users.
From the biggies like Qantas, Lowe, Whole Foods Markets, and Glossier to the smallest of the businesses are all on Instagram experimenting with various ad formats, engagement, interactions, and building powerful communities around their brands, products, and services.
South By Southwest (SXSW) had Instagram in full force inspiring businesses and individuals to take a look at Instagram as it offers a fresh, immersive way to experience a brand and/or product unlike anywhere else
Instagram Has Facebook’s Powerful Targeting
One of the fundamental reasons why Facebook advertising is so popular is purely due to the granularity with which you can target your potential customers. Instagram has its own unique user base but it shares the targeting and audience targeting power that Facebook already has.
Using Instagram, you can target people based on location (Countries, cities, and regions); demographics (age, gender, and languages); Interests (apps they use, other Instagram accounts they follow); behaviors (activities based on and off Facebook and Instagram); custom audiences; lookalike audiences; and even automated targeting (just in case you don’t want do lift weights).
If you’ve used Facebook, you know how powerful this is. Using Instagram, you can ride on the same train.
Video Is Powerful, and Video Loves Instagram
According to Instagram, Time spent watching videos on Instagram is up more than 80% year over year, while the number of videos produced per day has increased by four times from last year.
The total time people spent watching video on Instagram went up by 40% in the last six months alone (as on April 2018).
Instagram videos come with the option of videos with the sound switched off and can help brands connect to audiences almost immediately while allowing businesses to experiment with various video formats (and also A/B Testing).
Talking about Instagram video (there’s IGTV and there’s also Instagram Reels). Then, there’s Instagram Live. Thought this is the end of the list? Hello? Instagram has cousins. Facebook video, Facebook Live, Facebook Stories, and more.
Ooh, that’s a lot of video.
Instagram Advertising’s Unique Ad Formats
Apart from the fact that your regular Facebook ads can show up on Instagram, you’ll also have access to certain unique Instagram advertising formats that you’ll not find elsewhere. Take Instagram Stories ad format, for instance.
Lowe took the Instagram stories format seriously and created a flipbook like an experience using 50+ micro clips exclusively for Instagram stories. Also, Yoox — an Italian online retailer — used Instagram stories to become the top-of-the-mind destination for fashion-conscious, stylish shoppers (which the average Instagram user is).
Finally, there are creative tools such as Layout, Boomerang, and Hyperlapse that can turn your regular product images into immersive video or animated experiences such as stop-motion ads and more for your potential customers.
Now, you also have full-screen ad experiences (similar to Collections and Canvas on Facebook) to help you create even more compelling ad experiences to further your brand’s message for your customers.
Instagram is full of opportunities for your brand. The question is this: Are you out there yet?
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