Jonathan Chan — October 9, 2017 — October 9, 2017
Wokandapix / Pixabay
Did you know Instagram has over 600 million users, 100 million of which are daily active users? Within those 100 million users you’ve got men and women of all different ages with a variety of interests from food and homeware to sports, beauty, pets and beyond.
How do you reach that massive audience if you only have a handful of your own Instagram followers? By running Instagram ads!
Instagram ads are low cost and have no minimum budget requirements. More importantly, they have robust targeting options so you can reach the right users within that 600 million audience.
To get started with Instagram advertising, read through these five tips for setting up ads that generate exciting results!
1. Keep Your Caption Short and Interesting
When writing your Instagram ad captions you’ll want to keep them short. While the social network technically gives you up to 2,200 characters to get your message across, the recommended number of characters is only 125.
If you use more than 125 characters you risk your caption being truncated because anything after the third line of text (generally around the 125th character) will be hidden behind a “more” link.
There is no way to guarantee that a viewer will click your “more” link to view your whole caption, so it’s best if you put your strongest message forward in as concise a way as possible. Once the viewer clicks through to your site you’ll be able to present a more in-depth message.
Remember: an ad is there to pique someone’s interest. The landing page is where the selling happens. There is no way for someone to check out on Instagram, so it’s best to keep your copy short and earn that click to your site!
2. Share a Limited Time Offer
When putting together your Instagram ad campaign you’ll want to promote an exciting offer if you can. Even better if your exciting offer is only available for a limited time as this creates a sense of urgency.
You can use the following phrases to create urgency:
- Limited time
- Only a few left
- Hurry, act now
- While supplies last
Sometimes phrases like this can seem a little bit too harsh for brands that want to project a playful and fun personality. In those cases it may be best to imply a sense or urgency.
For example, leading into Spring (in the Northern Hemisphere), PetCube began running a campaign called the Spring Forward Sale offering $ 50 off their PetCube Play product.
While the ad doesn’t specifically mention a deadline for this offer, it’s easy for a viewer to infer this offer exists for a limited time (leading up to or during spring) due to the words “spring” and “sale.”
Don’t be afraid to get creative with your offers and see what works best for your brand!
3. Use Awesome Adjectives
You could run an ad with a clear call-to-action and call it a day. However, you could also use an adjective to really appeal to your audience’s emotions.
Let’s take a look at this Instagram ad for the San Francisco marathon as an example. Right there on the image we see the word Unforgettable and the caption also describes every mile as being unforgettable.
The word unforgettable here describes an experience that appeals to the emotions. It automatically makes the viewer think about the personal challenge of running the SF marathon being unforgettable. It also implies that exploring the city by foot will be unforgettable and that running with your peers will be unforgettable.
All of that makes the race seem so much more appealing than if the caption simply read, “Race the best course in San Francisco.”
Best is a pretty boring adjective on its own because it’s used too often by so many different companies. It’s not a bad adjective but it’s common.
Is there some other way you could describe your product or service in an ad other than using “best”? If so, go that route to differentiate your ad from all the others out there that claim to be the best.
4. Take Advantage of Carousel Images
What’s better than one ad image? Two or more!
Instagram Ads allow you to create a carousel of images to show off your product from multiple angles or to demonstrate multiple use cases. You can also show off a variety of different product colors, shapes or types if that’s your thing.
Bucketfeet is using Instagram ads to show off different shoe designs knowing that the same design won’t appeal to everyone.
You can tell that these images are part of an Instagram carousel ad campaign because of the dots in the bottom right corner. That tells you which image number within the carousel you’re looking at. You and your audience can then scroll right or left to get a better visual understanding of the product(s) being sold.
5. Work with an Influencer to Launch the Campaign
One easy way to get your audience excited about your ad campaign is to feature an influencer in your Instagram ads. Here is an example of Adidas featuring Meagan Kong in their ad for the Ultra Boost X.
Meagan is “Instagram famous” meaning she has a lot of followers who are interested in the products she’s using and the brands she likes. She’s what we call an Influencer in marketing terms because she has the power to influence sales in a positive direction.
Anyone who follows Meagan and sees the Adidas ad featuring her will get that warm fuzzy feeling you get when someone you know does something cool (like get featured in an ad)!
That gives the brand positive sentiment and also increases their likelihood to get a click-through, one of the major goals of any Instagram ad campaign like this.
Getting Started
Now that you are armed with tips to help you kick off a successful Instagram ad campaign, it’s time to get started.
Don’t let fear stop you from getting started today. One of the awesome features of Instagram ads is that there is no minimum budget, so you can start with $ 5 and see how it goes. If you follow the tips in this article I have no doubt that you’ll be generating exciting results and will want to spend way more than $ 5 though!
Have fun and get creative!
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