Hook clients with great photos: setting up Instagram targeting

Imagine the sea. What image arose in your head when you read this phrase?

An endless, undulating blue surface? Or the sound of the surf and the cry of seagulls?

Or maybe the feeling of a warm wind and salty spray on your skin?

If you chose the first option, congratulations! You are a visual person, like 60% of the population of our planet.

This means that you absorb any information primarily through sight.

Sometimes it seems to me that this very fact explains the stunning popularity of Instagram.

Most people love with their eyes and peck at beautiful photos, and in Instagram advertising there is plenty of such goodness:

Although, of course, you need to understand that you can't get by with just a picture, even if it is very good.

The success of an advertising campaign will also depend on the text, as well as on the quality of audience selection and, of course, the technical settings.

WOW, TRAFFIC! What, you need it too? Then look at what SEOquick offers here

No time to explain – right now we'll quickly set up context advertising on Google AdWords for you, and clients will come pouring in. And not just any, but targeted ones!

We'll help you choose advertising relevant to your business with a high return-on-investment rate.

Clients are already tired of waiting for you to announce yourself!

Book a call

How to handle all of this? I'll tell you in the article.

But first I'd like to say that no matter how perfect the advertising is, it will be useless if your profile is poorly set up.

About what an ideal business profile looks like, see here.

There are two ways to set up advertising on Instagram:

Does the process seem too complicated to you? In fact, it is not.

Read on and you will learn about all the nuances of setup – step by step and with illustrations.

If you want to order targeting setup on social networks, please fill out the following form:

Instagram or Facebook: which to choose?

Let's figure out how to set up advertising on Instagram better and more simply.

The usual way – through the app?

Or with the help of the Ads Manager advertising cabinet?

No, I haven't gone crazy now and haven't mixed up topics; we are still talking about setting up targeting on Instagram.

It's just that for this task there are 2 ways to solve it: through the mobile app itself or through Facebook's advertising cabinet, which is called Ads Manager.

Which of the paths will suit you? Decide for yourself.

Setting up advertising through the app is simpler; a little further in the article you will find instructions – even a child can handle them.

Setting up advertising through Ads Manager is a little more complicated, but it offers more opportunities to reach potential clients.

I will also provide instructions and recommendations.

I recommend studying everything and then making a decision.

Promoting posts inside the Instagram app

We use the Instagram app to promote posts.

Catch the instructions on how to do it in 5 minutes.

In detail about each stage – in this section.

I'll start with the method that is simpler.

When working inside Instagram, you can only use an already published post as an ad.

This is called a "promotion." Before launching it, edit the text if needed, and then:

1. Click the "Promote" button.

2. Choose where you will drive traffic: profile, site, or Direct messages. The call to action on the button depends on what you choose.

3. Set up the audience for showing the ad. Here there aren't many options; you can limit the search by geography, age, gender, and also by interests. You can also set up the automatic collection of those who are similar to your followers. We use this option if you have real, not bought-up, people in your profile.

4. Specify the duration of impressions and the budget. The ad can run for 1-7 days, a week, 10 days, 15 days, or a month. The payment form is only with a certain amount charged for impressions per day; there is no pay-per-click form.

5. Check everything. In the final section you will see the payment method used or a button to connect it, and you will also be able to learn how your ad will look in the feed and in stories, how the audience for impressions is chosen, and the budget. If everything is OK, click "Create promotion."

After this, your post will appear in the "Promotions" section; in the updated Instagram profile you can get to it right from the main screen:

To see the statistics, you need to go to this section and open the promotion.

There you'll find information on the number of clicks, reach and impressions, followers, and also on expenses.

In exactly the same way, you can set up post promotion in stories:

Recommended reading:

1. 5 Instagram ad formats: choosing the best one so as not to waste your budget
2. Instagram business account: 4 simple steps to set up + 4 promotion tips

Creating Instagram advertising through Ads Manager

A method of promotion for advanced users.

Launching advertising on Instagram through Facebook's advertising cabinet called Ads Manager.

We have prepared instructions on how to use it.

As I already said, this option is for more advanced users, but it also gives more opportunities.

Here are the instructions.

1. Choose the objective of the advertising campaign.

All options are suitable except the last two items.

The objective will determine the parameters for optimizing your ad campaign, so don't poke at random; take what corresponds to your task.

There are hints in the interface, read them carefully.

2. Set up the audience.

The audience can be narrowed to hit potential clients more precisely.

For example, we want to show the ad to moms who are not married and whose children are between 1 and 2 years old:

3. Set up the placements.

Or the display platforms. If you are only interested in Instagram, choose the corresponding items in the list:

You can make a separate campaign for the feed and a separate one for stories, so that the impression statistics are more accurate.

4. Set the budget.

Expenses can be at the level of the entire campaign or at the level of the ad group.

There is a daily-spending format (a certain amount you specify will be charged daily) and a format of spending for the entire advertising period (for example, you set $200 for a week, and this amount will be charged evenly over 7 days).

You can pay per click and per impression, depending on the objective you specified in the first item. Here we also set up the schedule, if necessary: in what period the ad should begin broadcasting and stop.

5. Create the ad

For Instagram, there aren't all that many formats.

If we're talking about the main feed, it can be a photo + text, video + text, or a carousel.

For images, the recommended size is 1080 × 1080, but you can use images with a rectangular orientation (for the ring/carousel – only square ones).

Video up to 1 minute long – the recommended formats are MP4, MOV, or GIF.

Resolution: at least 600 pixels wide, weight no more than 4 GB.

For stories, you can use either a photo with a 9:16 orientation, size 1080x1920, or a video up to 15 seconds with the same orientation.

Here we also provide a link to the landing page and don't forget to specify UTM tags, so that you can later correctly track the impression statistics in Google Analytics.

The text on the target-action button can be adjusted depending on what you want from users: buy, sign up, download, book, etc.

As soon as the ad is fine-tuned, you can send the ad for moderation.

You first click "Save draft," and then "Publish draft."

Review usually lasts no more than 2-3 hours; in rare cases it can stretch over the whole day.

If your ads do not violate any rules, impressions will start automatically.

A few more important recommendations

The success of advertising depends not only on the correctness of the technical settings.

Want to know what else is important to observe?

The details – in this section.

As I already noted above, the high effectiveness of an advertising campaign is a sum made up of several terms.

First, it is important to select the audience well.

I have already told you about the opportunities to reach potential clients in the two ways of setting up advertising.

Second, you should pay attention to the technical points: payment form, impression schedule, UTM tags, correctly chosen placements.

We also talked about this. And finally, third, without a well-composed ad you won't get anywhere.

So far I've only given information about formats; catch a few more tips:

1. Creative visuals are your hook.

It is precisely the photo or video clip that has decisive significance in whether your ad will hook a person.

Most of us are visual people, which means we react to what is happening with our eyes.

When a beautiful, eye-catching, bright, non-trivial picture is chosen, this is the first step toward the user performing the target action.

But creativity differs from creativity, as they say. You shouldn't overdo it either:

I don't know about you, but this ad evoked bewilderment in me rather than a desire to cooperate.

Ideally, your photo should correlate with the business topic or with the offer you are making in the ad.

2. The text should hit the client's pain point.

A person will become interested in a product or service only if it solves some problem of theirs.

So don't be shy about clearly and concisely explaining how you can be useful to your audience. Here's an example:

Right away, even without the text, it's clear who the advertising is aimed at and how the service can be useful.

3. Brevity is the soul of wit.

While in ordinary Instagram posts you can and sometimes even should allow yourself to ramble, ads, especially if they are commercial in nature, you should try to make concise.

Everything clear and to the point, the advantages and benefits right off the bat.

4. Be appropriate.

It's understood that obscenity, crude comparisons, and profanity should in theory be cut off at the moderation stage, but since this is a partially automated process, sometimes such "masterpieces" make it on air:

In my opinion, this is disrespect toward the target audience, not creativity.

Therefore, I don't recommend stooping to the level of a market hag when creating advertising. :)

Conclusion

Let's sum up everything we discussed in the article.

You can set up advertising on Instagram in two ways: through the app itself and through Facebook's Ads Manager advertising cabinet.

The first option is suitable for complete beginners who are poorly oriented in the topic.

It has fewer opportunities to reach the target audience, you can't create an ad from scratch in it, but the launch process will take 15 minutes at most.

The second option is for users who want to build work with the audience more subtly.

It will take more time and will most likely fray your nerves, but the results may turn out to be cooler.

When working with advertising, it is important to clearly understand who your client is and to think through the path to them using targeting tools.

But at the same time, don't forget that the main weapon in advertising is a good ad: with a catchy image and a short text that is relevant to the client.

Recommended articles on the topic

2 SECRET WAYS TO USE INSTAGRAM FROM A COMPUTER: UPLOADING PHOTOS, VIDEOS, STORIES

135 MOST POPULAR HASHTAGS: HOW TO SEARCH FOR AND USE THEM (FULL GUIDE)