Instagram Ads: Grow Your Audience through Paid Advertising

Now that you’ve established an Instagram account for your business that engages your audience and maintains followers; how do you continue to grow your Instagram presence? The simple answer is paid advertising. Successful social media marketing is becoming increasingly pay to play– your posts will get minimal impressions and engagement if you ‘re not strategically putting money towards promoting individual posts or running an ongoing ad campaign. Read on for all the information you will need to start creating your own ads on Instagram. For more in-depth Facebook Ad info please refer to our previous blog post.

Getting Started with Instagram Ads Through Facebook

Make sure your Instagram is connected to your Facebook business page. To do this, go to your Facebook business page and click on “Settings” at the top of the page. Once in “Settings” you will see “Instagram” under the bolded “General” section on the left. Use your credentials to log into your IG account. Once connected, your Instagram will be automatically converted to a business account.
To set up your ad(s) you will want to head over to Facebook’s Ad Manager. You can find Ad Manager on the right-hand side of the home page of Facebook under “Explore”. We would recommend getting comfortable with understanding how Facebook Ad Manager works, head over to our other blog here for more information.
Once you’re creating your ad through Ad Manager the first step is choosing your marketing objective, I’d recommend focusing on one of the following:

Brand awareness
Reach
Traffic
Engagement

Name your Ad Campaign. Facebook automatically names your campaign after your objective but you can edit it to anything that makes the most sense to you.
Consider the radius of your location and narrow in on your audience.
Edit your placement. This is where you can make sure your ad is going to Instagram! You can also choose to advertise the same ad on Facebook at the same time.
Determine your budget and schedule. Decide how much you’d like to spend for your ad and schedule out the duration of time your ad will run. We suggest using around 25 dollars for your first ad and running it for about three days.
Now for the creativity! You’ve reached the part where you can create your own ad. Write the copy and choose an image or multiple images. You can even make a video, too.
Finally, publish your ad. Facebook will review your ad and let you know once it’s scheduled out to go live, or if you need to make changes to your ad before it can go live.

You also have the option of promoting a post. Promoting a post on Instagram is the easiest way to advertise your business since it simply consists of putting a little money towards one of your existing posts. If you want to go with this advertising approach instead of running a whole ad campaign you can get started by opening up the Instagram app on your mobile device. Go to the photo you’d like to promote from your profile, click promote, and fill out the details. Similar to Facebook ads, Instagram will review your ad and then let you know if you need to make any tweaks before it’s good to go!

In an ever-competitive market, advertising your business on social media is becoming increasingly important. Organic growth won’t happen if you don’t have a fanbase already established, so for a business that’s relatively new to social media, you will need to pay to build recognition. Our team is here to help, so feel free to contact us with any questions you might have about Facebook and Instagram ads.

—Jennie Rogers, Social Media Specialist 2, Sesame Communications