How to Become Profitable with Instagram Ads

Author: Neil Patel / Source: Quick Sprout

I’m sure by now you recognize the importance of staying active on social media to promote your business.

Your Instagram marketing campaigns need to be a priority.

If you’re not using Instagram to reach your customers, there is a good chance your competitors are doing so. In fact, more than 70% of businesses in the United States are using Instagram.

Furthermore, 70% of hashtags on this platform are branded.

That’s why it’s so important for you to leverage your Instagram profile to connect with your current customers and target prospective consumers as well.

Believe it or not, consumers want to interact with brands on social media. We know that 80% of Instagram accounts follow at least one business profile.

If you’re getting lots of followers, that’s great. However, you need to learn how to convert your social media followers into customers, or your efforts won’t pay off.

But what about the consumers who don’t follow your business on Instagram?

They might be interested in your products, services, and content, but they won’t see any of your promotions if they’re not following your profile.

That’s where Instagram ads come into play.

Buying ads on Instagram will help give you a huge advantage over your competitors who aren’t willing to spend the money.

That said, any time you’re spending valuable marketing dollars, it’s important to make sure those efforts yield a high ROI. You don’t want to blindly buy ads without making sure they’re profitable.

If you’re new to Instagram ads or if your current ones need improvement, you’ll benefit tremendously from this guide.

I’ll explain how to drive sales with your Instagram marketing strategy, get more followers, and expand your reach. Here’s what you need to know.

Determine your marketing objective

Instagram is owned by Facebook. You’ll be using the same platform you used to generate leads with Facebook ads.

The first thing you’ll need to do is select your marketing objective:

• awareness
• consideration
• conversion

Truthfully, there is no right or wrong answer here when it comes to making this selection.

Any choice can lead to profits. For example, if your goal is to generate website traffic, that traffic can eventually lead to conversions.

If you are trying to increase your brand awareness, extend your reach or generate leads, those campaigns can end up creating sales in the future.

But if you’re trying to get instant sales, you’ll want to select conversions, catalog sales, or store visits as your marketing objective.

These types of ads will have actionable CTAs to drive sales. But we’ll discuss that in greater detail shortly.

Again, your ads will be effective no matter what you choose. Everyone’s brand is different. Don’t expect your goals to mirror those of other companies.

If you have the budget, you can even run multiple campaigns with different goals to see which ones are the most beneficial for your business.

Then, you can continue running the most successful ones.

Identify your target audience

Next, you’ll need to determine the audience you want to target.

There are different approaches to this step, depending on the overall marketing goals of your company and each campaign.

• location
• age
• gender
• language

Again, this will change based on each campaign. For example, let’s say your brand sells sports equipment to consumers in the United States.

That doesn’t mean all your ads will be relevant to every location.

An ad that promotes a sale on surfboards won’t appeal to someone who lives in Colorado. Ads for women’s golf clubs should be seen only by, you guessed it, women.

I know this sounds basic, but you’d be surprised how often I see businesses make such simple mistakes. They try to target as many people as possible, which isn’t a profitable strategy.

Another cool feature you should keep in mind when you’re selecting your target market is the ability to create a custom audience.

This allows you to set your ads to reach users who have interacted with you before.

For example, a person who doesn’t follow you can still see one of your posts on the Instagram “explore” page, also known as the “popular page.” That’s a custom audience you could target.

You can also set a custom lookalike audience. These ads will target users similar to your current followers.

Set a budget

I don’t recommend spending every dollar in your marketing budget on Instagram ads, especially if this is your first time using this strategy.

Get your feet wet before you dive in head first.

Everyone’s budget is different. But let’s keep things simple for now and say that your company has allocated $5,000 to spend on Instagram ads.

That’s great.

However, it doesn’t mean you should dump all $5,000 into one campaign. Mix it up.

As I said before, you’ll want to experiment to see which types of ads benefit your brand the most based on your goals.

Try running five campaigns at $1,000 each.

Don’t run them all simultaneously. Not everyone who sees your advertisements will convert. But if they see three ads over the course of a couple of months, it might get the job done.

While it’s important for you to spend within your means, it’s worth noting that even small business owners are planning to increase their Instagram marketing budgets.

As you can see, Instagram is second only to Facebook in the list of all social media networks small businesses plan to spend more money on in the coming years.

If you don’t have the funds to spend much money on Instagram ads right now, you should budget accordingly for the future.

The last thing you want is to let your competitors beat you to new leads. Or even worse, lose…

Click here to read more