How to advertise on Instagram | opportunities with little investment

More than two million advertisers around the world use Instagram every month. It is a social network that continues to grow and the number of active users is increasing. As a consequence, it has become one of the best social networks to reach the desired audience with little investment. Furthermore, as Facebook and Instagram use the same advertising platform, Facebook Ads, it is possible to use joint segmentation criteria between them.

The objective of this post is to explain the advantages of using Instagram Ads , but, above all, to show you why it is one of the best options if you want to achieve commercial opportunities with little investment.

What is Instagram Ads?

Instagram Ads , or advertising on Instagram , is the advertising platform in the form of videos or images on the platform to reach a target audience using different pre-established segmentation criteria when creating the ad.

The goal is to invest a certain amount of money, which you can also set, to offer certain content to people whose interests are related to it.

The way to make ads on Instagram Ads is the same as Facebook, since the same platform is used, Facebook Ads , which has made it one of the largest ad management platforms, with millions of active users.

Advantages of Instagram Ads

Facebook Ads

As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, following the acquisition of Instagram in 2012 by Facebook, both platforms began to manage their ads jointly through Facebook Ads . The main advantages of this merger are:

• The possibility of launching simultaneous omnichannel campaigns on both social networks.
• Collect data on the same platform.

Take advantage of the audience , both on Instagram and Facebook, to segment and optimize well-categorized campaigns.

Advanced segmentation

Since Instagram Ads has the same advanced targeting options as Facebook, we can use criteria such as age, gender, location, position, interests, etc. to direct us to the perfect profile.

In addition, the Facebook pixel can be used to create similar or lookalike audiences, that is, with behaviors or characteristics similar to people who have already interacted with our website or competitors’ audiences.

High engagement level

Instagram is one of the platforms with the highest engagement today. On average, posts get 4.21% engagement, 58 times more than Facebook and 120 times more than Twitter. Taking this data into account, we can expect a good return from the campaigns we carry out compared to other platforms , as long as we carry out good segmentation and our ad is attractive to our target audience.

Other interesting facts about Instagram Ads

But this is not all. Instagram Ads is a very powerful tool, and below I will tell you some information that I am sure you will find more than interesting:

• 61 % of organizations have invested in Instagram , which is also the network in which they invest the most.
• 58% of companies increased their advertising investment in Instagram Ads during 2020.
• It is the social network that grows the most year after year , especially among those under 40 years of age. In fact, Instagram is the social network most used by Generation Z and the second most used by Millennials.
• Instagram, along with WhatsApp, is the most frequently used social network, snatching the second position from Facebook.
• It is the third most used social network to search for information before making a purchase , preceded by Facebook and YouTube.
• It is the platform most used by users to follow influencers . 
• Instagram is the platform best rated by users, with an 8.8 out of 10, according to the IAB Estudio RRSS study.

 

How much does it cost to run campaigns on Instagram Ads?

The price of advertising on Instagram Ads depends on the budget we are willing to spend. The platform allows us to establish a daily budget so that, once the limit is reached, the ad is no longer displayed, or to create a budget for a set of ads to be displayed for a set period of time.

It must be taken into account that the real price , that is, what Instagram will charge us for each result obtained, will depend on different factors: competition, audience segmentation, promoted product or service. That is, according to the objective of the campaign . Based on these factors, it will be more or less difficult for us to achieve the objective we choose for the campaign, which is mainly divided into the following:

• Recognition objectives:
  • Brand recognition
  • Scope
• Consideration objectives
  • Traffic
  • Interaction
  • App downloads
  • Video plays
  • Lead generation
  • Messages
• Conversion goals:
  • Conversions
  • Catalog sales
  • Traffic

• Competence. Depending on the sector, there may be other advertisers trying to position or sell a product similar to yours . If this happens, the cost per objective (traffic, interaction, video playback, app downloads, etc.) is likely to vary.

Segmentation . It is one of the points that can most influence the price of ads on Instagram Ads. Segmentation allows us to specify as much as possible the audience we are targeting. The more accurate we are about the profile we want to reach, the more likely we will be to achieve our goal , but the price of each impression will also be higher. Many people make the mistake of creating a more generic audience to obtain greater reach, with the risk of impacting people who are not interested in the ad.

\Image: Hootsuite

How much to invest in Instagram Ads?

As I mentioned before, the amount of money to invest in Instagram Ads depends on your budget and different factors that can influence the price of your campaigns . It will not be until you activate the campaign that you will be able to know how much it costs you to meet the set objective.

For example, if your ad pursues the objective of driving traffic to a page , you must divide the cost of the campaign by the number of visits obtained to your page through the campaign. Or if your goal is to obtain downloads, you must divide the cost of the campaign by the number of downloads. This way you will know the average amount you need to allocate to achieve your goals .

Other most used metrics are cost per click (CPC), cost per thousand (CPM) or cost per lead (CPL), among others.

Therefore, it will be necessary to carry out tests to determine how much our Facebook Ads campaign will cost us based on our objective.

Let’s see it with an example:

Imagine that you have a landing page in which you offer a demo of your product and you discover that, after carrying out a campaign to obtain registrations on said landing, the price per registered person is €3. Furthermore, out of every 100 registered people, 5 end up purchasing the €150 product after doing the demo:

• 100 people registered x €3 for each person obtained→€300
• 5 people buy the product x €150 product price → €750

In this case we see that we are investing €300 to obtain enough records so that, taking into account the final conversion (5/100*100=5%), we obtain benefits: €750 – €300 = €450 profit.

 

Tips to improve your Instagram Ads campaigns and reduce the cost

Use geolocation

Posts with geolocation obtain 79% more engagement , according to a Simply Measured study in which more than 6,000 posts on Instagram were evaluated. Therefore, it is advisable to use the location if it provides relevant information for the publication.

Use hashtags

Hashtags are another element that, used properly, helps organize and promote content . In fact, 7 out of 10 hashtags are branded, that is, they include the name of a company or one of its products.

Photos or videos?

We are used to the fact that, in recent years, audiovisual content has become the king of publications . Regarding this, an analysis carried out in 2019 showed that photos achieve 28% more reach than videos . Along the same lines, according to the Instagram Intelligent Report prepared by Olapic and L2, static images obtained 36% more likes compared to videos. However, The Instagram Report conducted another study whose data positioned video as the best format for generating engagement.

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It is true that videos require a greater degree of involvement and that Instagram was born as a platform for sharing photographs. Therefore, in this case it is better to carry out tests with both formats to assess which of the two fits best with the audience we are impacting and, based on the results obtained, decide which one to enhance.

When to publish?

There are many studies from different sources that point out different times of the week in which to publish posts or activate campaigns on Instagram Ads. In Spain, the best days to post on Instagram are Monday, Sunday, Friday and Thursday . Regarding hours, it is recommended from 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. and from 9:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.

Even so, the best way to know when to publish on Instagram is by accessing the “Audience” section within the platform’s statistics . For this it is necessary to have a company profile. This way you will get a graph with the days and hours in which your users are most active, to have an idea of ​​when to impact your target audience.

Conclusion

The digital world changes rapidly and social networks are susceptible to these changes. In recent years, Instagram has become one of the most used platforms and is currently the one most advertisers rely on. However, new social networks are created every year and, sometimes, some capture the attention of users, causing a change in the percentage of people who use the app (as was the case with Snapchat).

Therefore, we can say that Instagram is currently one of the best platforms to carry out online advertising , but we must always be aware of changes in the active audience (age, sex, interests) to ensure that our target audience is in the social network in which we invest.

Regarding the price of Instagram Ads campaigns , it is important to take into account the factors mentioned above:

• Choose the right social network
• Create good segmentation
• Perform tests and apply adjustments to optimize campaigns
• Choose the objective that best suits our needs

And, ultimately, taking advantage of the different formats and different functionalities can have a direct impact on the performance of our ads on Instagram Ads and, consequently, on the price. And you, how much money do you invest in Instagram Ads? Are your campaigns on this platform profitable? I would love to read your experience in the comments.