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7 Minute read

How To Advertise Your Business On Instagram (Full Guide)

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Written by

Kristian F.

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Published on

Jan 29, 2021

Instagram is easily one of the most effective and profitable forms of online advertising available today, and we will cover some of the most effective ways to take full advantage of it and get more leads, customers, and sales.


When it comes to advertising, what used to work last year or even last month isn't necessarily what's working today, a lot has changed and continues to change very quickly.


This is why when it comes to creating profitable Instagram advertising campaigns or any advertising campaign in general, it's really important to not only stay current and up to date with the latest trends, and all the tactics that are working today, but to also apply proven marketing principles that have stood the test of time.


And that's why we will share with you our pick for the most effective Instagram advertising strategies.


Jump to a topic:


- Facebook

- Where to put your ad

- Feed ads and story ads

- Video Content

- Split Testing

- Funnel



Facebook


Why Facebook?


Well, what's really important to understand is that Instagram is owned by Facebook, so we have to start there.


When It comes to running Instagram Advertising, its entire dashboard is set up through Facebook Ads Manager, so if you want to run an Instagram ad, you need to create it through Facebook Ads Manager, and that's why it's important to get friendly with Facebook.



Basically, every single part of the Instagram ad is done in the Ad Manager including targeting, campaign objective, traffic, video views, engagement, conversions, the budget limit, scheduling, and even placement options (deciding if you will run feed ads or post ads).


Also, a key piece of the puzzle when it comes to running effective Instagram advertising campaigns is making sure that you have Facebook Pixel installed across all of your online properties like your website, landing pages, or each step of your online funnel.


The reason this is so important is that the Facebook pixel is going to enable you to decide which Instagram ads are giving you the best results when it comes to generating those leads and sales.



Where to put your ad?


Alright, now that we got all that covered, and essentially understood that Instagram ads are run through the Facebook ads manager, the next thing you will need to understand is that if you are going to run Instagram ads, it's really important to go in there and manually select where the placements of the ads you want to appear are going to be.


Basically, if you pick all placements through the Facebooks ads manager it's going to show your ad across pretty much anything that Facebook has available, but if you only want to dial down on Instagram, you need to go in there and manually select just Instagram, and from there, you also need to choose if it's just the feed or just the story.


Now, this part is really important, If you are just starting out and you really have no idea then all placements can work fine, but if you know for a fact that your market is on Instagram and you really want to double down on Instagram ads, then its really important to go in there and manually select that.


The creative is significantly different for Facebook ads vs Instagram ads and also within Instagram between feed ads and story ads.


Every different placement is going to have its own style, different design, and different formating. Click here to see all of the correct formattings for every ad design.



Feed ads and Story ads


You will need to choose if you are going to run just the feed ad or just the story ad, and obviously, they are going to have different designs and different specifications.


One of the biggest mistakes advertisers make is simple creating one ad and just blasting it across all different placements and really not changing it at all, which means it's going to come out looking funny, or part of the image is cropped off or it's going to seem out of place with what you're trying to get across.