As one of the fastest growing social networks, Instagram is home to over 2 million active monthly advertisers. With over 1 billion monthly active users, Instagram is a veritable-treasure trove for advertisers – especially since its ad revenue is set to reach $10.87 billion in 2019.
With numbers like these, Instagram is considered to be the go-to platform for visual advertising and content marketing. However, with so much competition, devising an effective ad campaign strategy can seem fairly daunting – at first.
In this post, we’ll explain how you can create effective and engaging Instagram ad campaigns to reach your target audience and convert them into warm leads!
Know Your Prospects
Before designing or launching your ad campaign, you have to understand what your audience is looking for. This involves monitoring your audience’s interests and engagement patterns, and using this information to create visuals that would get their attention.
Remember, effective campaigns are directed towards the audience, and are designed around one all-important question: “Will my audience connect with this message?”
Ad Stories, Not Just Posts
Full screen, vertical visuals which allow marketers and advertisers to reach and interact with their audience – that’s what Instagram ad stories are about. According to Instagram, at least one in five stories get a direct response from viewers.
Create Visually Appealing Ads
Typically, 94% of a first impression is based on visuals – not really surprising when you consider that over 65% of people are visual learns. What this means is that visually appealing content gains more exposure and engagement. Hence, bright and appealing ad designs are likely to gain more traction and engagement among your target audience.
Adverts with CTA’s
We all know that a well-designed ad with the right Call to Action can invite or urge your audience to take a specific action. So don’t forget to utilise the new CTA button format on Instagram – especially since it can potentially increase your click-through-rates by an average of 6%.
Use the Right Hashtags
Not only do hashtags help users categorise content, but they also boost engagement by up to 12.6%! However, using the right hashtags – and the right number of hashtags – is a crucial part of increasing engagement and ensuring that your ads are not getting lost in the scuffle. Simply adding top trending hashtags that have no connection with your product or brand could potentially hurt your campaign.
Pro tip: Add up to 9 hashtags with your ad, and instead of single word or generic hashtags like #love or #fashion, use longer hashtags as they tend to perform better.
Carousel Ads
Carousel Instagram ads deliver multiple images, videos, links and CTAs in a single ad unit. This makes them an excellent way for marketers to showcase more than one product – or create story arcs that resound with their audience. Pretty much a win-win!
Exhibit New Uses of Your Products
Good ad campaigns deliver a specific message to your audience. Great ad campaigns go a step further and showcase how your product is innovative. Translation: create ads that show how your products can be used in multiple ways. Instead of a sales-y advert, showing customers innovative ways of product usage will deliver the value customers require from your brand.
There you have it – some tips to ensure that your Instagram ad campaigns are an instant success!
