Key concept
How to create ads on Instagram through 9 steps
Recommended 12 tricks for mobile ads
Creating an ad on Instagram is easier than it may seem. A plus is that you don’t even need to have an account on this platform as you can use Facebook Business to place your ad on Instagram.
Here are the 9 steps to create an efficient Instagram ad:
Connect your Facebook with your Instagram - this will help have both platforms post your ads simultaneously.
Make sure you have and set-up a business manager account on Facebook - create it or make sure the one you have is configured properly (for the Ads section).
Have clear your marketing objectives - what is it that you want to achieve? Do you want more traffic, interaction, download of materials, clientele, views to the web etc.? The objectives are mainly divisible in 3 categories: brand awareness, reach or video reproduction.
Select the locations where your ad to be seen - you can get recommendations or you can select the area (country, region, city) where to be shown.
Select the proper types of ad - with photos (requires to be very creative), with videos (the most successful), sequences (carousels), collections (profiles with catalogues), with video/presentation (up to 10 slides).
Select the format of the ad - feed, post or publication (1080x1080, 1:1, square) or stories (1080x1920, 9:16, vertical). You can make a mixture of images-photos as mentioned in the types before.
Select the target group - bear in mind to whom you are addressing: cold traffic (they know nothing about you), warm traffic (they have interacted with your accounts before), hot traffic (regular clients, they follow you frequently and know you). Direct therefore the ad in accordance to the type of traffic you want to reach and adjust the message-content consequently. You can personalise the audience with various segments (location, age, profession, interests etc.), use audiences of similar pages you own on Facebook, or create a new one from scratch.
Set the duration - 7 days is the most recommended timeframe, especially in the beginning when you test to see what’s functioning and what’s not. Any adjustment you make to the ad while it runs, restarts the metrics, so let it run for a while and see how it flows.
Analyse and optimise -the Facebook Business Manager allows you to revise, analyse and make adjustments to your ad in order to reach its objective efficiently. You can check the reach (how many viewed it), impressions (how many times it appeared in the feed), frequency (how many times it was viewed by the same person), CTR (how many viewed it and clicked on it - the best to measure the success of the ad), CPC (cost per click), views of the link (how many opened and loaded the destination web).
12 tricks for mobile ads
Add your logo to the images - increase brand awareness;
Have a coherence between message-image; make it easy to understand for everybody;
Inspire and call for action;
3-seconds rule - grab their attention instantly;
Animate the text and make it stand out and be read;
Use simple animations - the movement ads grab more attention than static ones;
Length of maximum 15 seconds - if it’s longer you may lose attention and be skipped;
Make it accessible for everyone - if you talk, put subtitles;
Mind the format - 1:1 square for posts, vertical 9:16 for stories;
Be memorable to be remembered;
Create instant experiences with full-screen views when clicked;
Use Creative hub on Facebook to see how your ad is viewed in various locations and configure them.
Instagram is a very active, highly moving app so you need to adapt your content to it in order to have success on it.