How to start advertising in "Instagram"? Overview and instructions

"Instagram" is one of the leading platforms of visual content. In June 2016, the number of active users exceeded five hundred million people, more than eighty million new posts are published every day. The service gives users the ability to instantly transfer data and has a lot of advantages over other platforms. In the context of advertising, the platform is useful because the content in Instagram has a very high virality in comparison with other networks.

Advertising campaigns are effective here due to the huge size of the audience, so the inclusion of this social network in any marketing strategy will be an excellent business solution. This article is a detailed review of how to launch advertising in the "Instagram".

The target audience

Opportunity to launch advertising appeared on October 1, 2015. In Russia, the audience of users is nine million, the bulk of which are young people (15-25 years). The number of men and women is approximately the same. Before launching targeted advertising in "Instagram", it is worth taking into account the main feature of this platform - the opportunity to share beautiful photos with users and motivate their discussion. This format of advertising is especially useful for online stores, restaurants, furniture stores. In short, everyone who has good-quality graphic content.

Types of ads

For those who want to launch targeted advertising in Instagram, the instructions on the site will tell you what you need to know about the types of ads. There are two of them: static and dynamic ("carousel"). A static ad is an ordinary post, and a dynamic one will allow an advertiser to create a ribbon from photos that the user can navigate.

Goals and objectives

How to start advertising in "Instagram" and make it work? It is necessary to set certain tasks and clear goals. For example, it can be the formation of brand recognition, increased sales, attracting visitors to the site, campaign leads, additional conversions on the site, stimulating interest in products, promoting the catalog, likes and sharing, increasing the number of application settings, video views, community attendance and events .

How successful the targeted advertising in Instagram is is depends only on the advertiser himself and on his ability to properly build promotion work. You need to know how this platform works, but with the exception of this, you need a fresh idea, which can be a decisive moment in the success of the entire campaign. In addition, before you start advertising in the "Instagram" via Facebook, you should put the site in order and assess the odds, make sure that there is everything you need. The presence of a brand or service, quality design, Facebook account (you can create advertising only from this social network).

Customize

Now let's talk about how to step-by-step launch advertising in the "Instagram." Work begins with registration in the business manager of Facebook. This allows you to create a PR campaign and open access to it even for those who do not have an account on Facebook. Then you need to register through the business manager account in the "Instagram" and link it to the advertising project through the function "Assign advertising accounts." After this, it becomes possible to proceed to create an advertising campaign.

In the settings you need to specify one of the goals that this advertising pursues: clicks on the site, video views, installation of a mobile application. You can then change other primary settings, such as the name of the ad, the group, and so on. Next, a window appears for entering detailed information. At the campaign level, you specify a budget - the amount that will be spent on a specific PR campaign. In the ad groups, you specify the expense for each of them, and you can register not only the daily expense for the entire group, but also planned stops and starts.

When getting acquainted with the settings, many users have a question about what an audience pixel is. This term hides a special JavaScript code that can be placed on the site. It collects data about visitors to the site and sends information about the actions of users directly to your account on Facebook. Will the audience pixel in the tracking after the launch of advertising in the "Instagram" via Facebook? More than! This tool will allow an advertiser to show ads only to those visitors who have performed a certain action on the site or visited the necessary pages. You can also view the statistics of your site right in "Facebook".

The basic settings are made, but before you start advertising in "Instagram" yourself, you still need to determine the parameters of the target audience. The interface allows you to select existing groups of audiences, which makes the task much easier, especially if there are many ads or campaigns, but the settings are flexible, you can create a new group that is more suitable for the campaign objectives.

How to determine the target audience? The advertiser should clearly understand who will be interested in the proposed product. The simplest method is to create an image of a "typical buyer", after which the question of the parameters of the audience will not be raised. For example, who will be interested in the proposal for targeted advertising in Instagram and instructions on how to launch it? Such an audience can be very broad, but the announcement will not be of interest to people who do not have their own business, sell groups or hobbies that generate income. Such a behavioral trait is worth pointing out.

The settings of the auditoriums are very flexible, in addition to the location, interests, age and behavior are indicated. Let us give one more example.

Location: Moscow and Moscow region.
Interests: computer servers, computer network, remote administration programs, intrusion prevention system, information security, small business, computer security.
Behavior: owners of small businesses.
Age: 23-45 years.

This is one of the default settings. All saved groups can be viewed in the "Tools" tab. Do not rely on any one group, test different audiences to identify the most effective strategy. Create several ads for different audiences: practice shows that narrow targeting and creative message will be the key to the success of advertising in Instagram.

How to start and how much is it?

After determining the audience, you can choose a payment model. For most cases, an optimized CPM model is appropriate. The price of a specific ad will depend not only on the type of ad chosen, but also on the content and its quality. "Facebook" makes certain requirements for graphic content. The image size is recommended 1080 x 1080 pixels, and the format is one to one. The image should not include more than twenty percent of the text.

Next, you need to set the action button and select the purpose of the campaign. It can be generated in the "Conversion pixels" menu. UMT-labels are necessary for all advertisements, otherwise it will be impossible to follow the advertising campaign in analytics from Google and Yandex.Metrics. To view the report, go to the "Traffic Sources" section.

By the way, do not forget that a lot of tips on how to start advertising in the "Instagram", the instruction for setting and prices are on the platform itself, so you can refresh everything in memory right away while creating an advertising campaign.

In the photo below is an example of advertising from the brand of vegetarian food.

Common mistakes

Having learned how to start advertising in the "Instagram", many are surprised why the ads did not pass the moderation? Usually, moderators report on certain violations that are present in this announcement, but their elimination at the earliest stages will significantly shorten the time. Even the smallest violation of the rules can be the reason for rejection, since the moderators carefully and manually check each ad. It should be borne in mind that the time for such a check can take up to twenty-four hours and even more.

The most frequent reason for rejecting ads is the extra text in the images. As mentioned above, the text in the picture should not occupy more than twenty percent of the volume. Of course, the introduction of textual information makes the announcement more informative, but at the same time it reduces the overall attractiveness and quality. The requirement applies absolutely to all kinds of advertising posts, even to miniature videos. To find out whether the ad meets the requirement, use a grill tool.

Also, before launching an advertisement of a review, channel or site promoting an age-restricted product in "Instagram", you should check that the selected audience clearly complies with these restrictions. For example, moderators will not be allowed to publish an advertisement about tobacco or alcohol products, if the age of the audience chosen for the show is less than eighteen years.

How to launch advertising in "Instagram" via "Facebook" with the correct "links"? Some ads require an advertiser to refer to Facebook, and in order to comply with this rule, remember that the name should be indicated in the original, that is Facebook, in English and with the capital F. The word must have the same font size Letters and writing style, as in the surrounding text, should not be highlighted in bold.

You can not use a logo instead of a signature, and also change the word in any way (for example, put it in the plural or cut it). If instead of the original in the announcement will be a modified version of the logo, such advertising will also be rejected.

Paid services

In any case, there are nuances, and it happens that there is absolutely no time to understand them. In this case, the easiest way is to trust professionals who are promoting communities in social networks. Of course, such services also appeared for Instagram, one of the most popular services is InstaPlus and Aitarget.How to launch advertising in "Instagram" without turning off Adblock or antivirus? Unfortunately, when working with such services, you will have to disconnect almost all protection. They warn in advance.To fear this or trust third-party software is a personal matter for every user.

Testing

Specialists Hubspot (service of popular software, which has a large selection of tools for Internet marketing) conducted their own tests of advertising in the "Instagram." Below is a diagram of this test and the results.

Hubspot tested photos, text and media types. Evaluation of the effectiveness of advertising is carried out using special metrics, such as the number of clicks and likes, CPC, clickthrough rate (CTR), cost of lead, CPM (cost per thousand impressions), cost of viewing. The test involved text and three types of media content in advertising (carousel, static image and video).

Among the photos there were six different types: a picture with a clear call to action, stock photos, bait for clicks (cute photos, for example cats that are not related to the advertised product), images containing some of the information that the user will receive after going through the ad. Also in the test participated natural looking photos, which the user could easily put in his personal "Instagram" and images with a statement or quote.

As a test of text content, too, several types of text were used to describe advertising. Let us give some examples.

Title: "How to start advertising in" Instagram "for business." The title is a text that is addressed to the reader, which explains what benefit it will receive when downloading or migrating.

As a call to action, the text of such content can act: "Check the data from this article on personal experience, start advertising in" Instagram "and pump your business."

Often among the ads there are also joking, entertaining texts, which are only partly related to the advertised product.

In the Hubspot test, the same image was used for all texts.

Obtained data

The results were as follows. The cheapest type of advertising is images with clear calls to action, they are 45% cheaper than stock photos, but they have a high CTR (twice as much as advertising with stock photos).

Stock photos have the lowest CTR, but the highest CPC. Advertising with images has the highest price per click, and ads with "photo baits" are the cheapest in the price for the likes.

conclusions

Advertising "call to action" is one of the most effective in terms of price / quality ratio. In the test, it showed itself to be the least expensive and scored the most clicks compared to other types of advertising. Specialists concluded that users of "Instagram" like ads with a clear call to action, because they clearly imagine what they will get after they go to the link.

"Instagram" meticulously refers to the quality of advertising content, so that the platform looked natural.

Stock photos are practically not interested in web users, they should not be used in advertising.

Natural photos, which look like regular posts in Instagram, also did not show themselves well in advertising, although Hubspot specialists assumed the opposite. Perhaps, the matter is that simple photos on the platform are not clickable, and users simply did not notice the click button at these advertising posts. Proceeding from this, the advertiser must make the announcement in such a way that the visitor immediately understands what is offered to him.

"Lures for clicks" - cute photos that have nothing to do with the main content do not have shown themselves in two ways. On the one hand, they recruited four times as many likes as ordinary ads. On the other hand, it can scare off part of the audience.

The results on the texts are such that a clear call to action here also showed the best result. Before deciding how to start advertising in the "Instagram", the marketer must spend time thinking over the phrase that motivates the user to click on the advertisement.

This test is only one of many. Perhaps in some other audience he would show other results, so he can be taken into account, but not orientated as an absolute truth. The best option would be to independently test the strategies and identify the most effective for a given audience and this product. However, in any case, the quality of content and unobtrusive advertising play the most important role.