Did you know that the number of Instagram users is still increasing every year? And that, in addition to young people, adults also register on Instagram? Unsurprisingly so, as Instagram fits perfectly within the visual world we live in nowadays. So it is an important channel, which should not be missing in your online marketing strategy. But how do you set up an Instagram campaign and what do you need for success? With this 5-step guide to using Instagram ads, we’ll help you get everything sorted and get started quickly!

Step 1 – Choose your objective

The first step is often overlooked. A campaign is quickly set up and as soon as it is live, it is unclear how the success of the campaign is measured. It is therefore important to determine a goal in advance. For example, do you want to introduce new users to your brand in the awareness phase? Or do you want customers to buy your product or service in the conversion phase? Instagram offers various objectives on which a campaign can optimize, such as awareness, lead generation or conversions. In addition, make the objective measurable for yourself, so indicate how much reach you want and what maximum costs is allowed.

Step 2 – Select your target audience

The next step is to determine the target audience. Instagram offers several options to compose your target audience. In addition to location, age, gender and language, you can also use some more specific targeting options:

• Detailed targeting: This is broken down into 3 options:
  • Demographic: here you can select (or exclude) users based on lifestyles, professions and education.
  • Interest: Select the interest of users. Based on page likes, interest and related topics.
  • Behavior: Provides the ability to target users’ activities.
• Custom audience: if you have the Facebook pixel installed, you can also retarget your website visitors. With custom audience you can also reach people who have engaged with your page, posts or events. You can also upload a list of customer data. These are all forms or remarketing.
• Lookalike: Target an audience similar to your existing customers.

Step 3 – Choose an ad type

Each ad type has its own selection of call-to-action options and therefore fits best within certain objectives in the funnel. So make sure that the ad type and CTA match the objective that you selected in step 1. Let’s go through all ad types:

• Image ads: As the name suggests, a single image is deployed. This can be supported with an accompanying text. Suitable for any stage, but important that the story can be told with a single image.

• Story/reel ads: Images or videos that are viewable in full screen are Stories. In general, the engagement with Stories is higher than with images. The goals for these ad types also include all stages in the funnel and different CTAs are possible.
• Video ads: video ads also generally work better than image ads, because they attract more attention from the user. Your video should be no more than 120 seconds long. This advertising format can also be used for the entire funnel because there are various CTA options.
• Carousel ads: multiple images can be shown in one ad here. The user can then scroll through this. This can be used to promote different products via one advertisement.

• Collection ads: show a coherent story with a focus on a lifestyle for the awareness phase and focus on a product for the conversion phase.

Step 4 – Set the budget

You may have allocated a fixed budget for this Instagram campaign, but it can also be interesting to use Instagram’s estimate of the reach of your selected target group. Those insights in combination with the cost to generate 1000 impressions (CPM) help determine an adequate budget.

A small example

Instagram indicates, after selecting your target group, that the reach is 10,000 users. A benchmark of the CPM in your country and industry is €5. That means that with €50 you have a nice budget to reach all these users once. 10,000 / 1,000 * €5 = €50.

Step 5 – Measure campaign performance

Once the campaign is live, it is important to keep an eye on the cost of advertising and the budget spent. If you do not achieve the desired results that you determined in step 1, you can experiment with different ad texts, colors, content or CTAs. Always keep optimizing your campaigns to achieve the desired results or to achieve growth.

Do you need help starting an Instagram campaign or would you like us to take a look at how we can optimize your current Instagram campaigns? Please contact us.