In social media for business, just as important as having your social media account(s) set up and putting out good content, is the advertising dollars you’re willing to put behind that content to get it out to the masses. Put your money where your mouth is, as they say.
Thanks to the all-powerful Algorithms, even people who like and follow your page or profile won’t necessarily see all of your content. On Facebook, this is especially true- a pretty small percentage of your page followers actually see your content pop up on their page. On Instagram, that percentage is higher, but still not all depending on how many accounts your followers are following.
And besides, if you think about it, your account followers aren’t your only target audience, right? If they were, you wouldn’t grow. You need to find new people to like your products, love your brand, and trust your company (and ultimately pay you for your goods and services). One fantastic way to do this is through paid social media advertising.
Creating an Instagram Ad
Thankfully, Instagram wants you to pay for ads. They want to make it easy for you to do this. And they want you to be successful doing it so you’ll see results and buy more ads.
So, in the Instagram app, when you create a post, it automatically creates a button right there to promote your post.
Once you touch that Promote button, it will lead you through a series of simple steps to create your ad.
When you get to the Audience Selection slide, we recommend that you always create a specific audience yourself and target the people that would want to see this content for best results. (Hello, marketing personas exercises!!)
Decide your budget, review your selections, and click Create Promotion. Easy as pie.
Okay – Let’s Talk Budget For Your Instagram Ads
Obviously, more is better. But most of the brands we work with, and I’m guessing your brand falls into this category, don’t have an infinite advertising budget. So, how much do you need to spend to see some good results?
We recommend starting with a budget of $10-$15 per post and see how your ads do. Because that’s another piece of the puzzle here, right? You can’t just do ads blindly and never even look at the data to assess if they’re working!
I have one client with great content that was seeing very little traction for her Instagram posts. We’re talking an average of 5 likes per post and rarely any comments. Once we started adding just $10 per post, she instantly jumped to an average of 80-100 likes per post and multiple comments. The engagement went through the roof.
** Disclaimer ** Of course we cannot guarantee similar results, but these results are typical with good content that just needs some exposure.
Get Cracking!
So, now that you know how simple it is to create an Instagram ad, and that you can do it with just a few dollars per post, get out there and start creating some ads.
Social media advertising is fantastic in that it is so low risk. Did you put $10 on a post and have it totally flop? It was just ten bucks, and I promise even an ad that seems like a flop is still more exposure.
Get in a groove, come up with a strategy (we can help with that), and just start doing it! After a couple of weeks, look back at your account insights and assess if your plan is working? What kinds of posts are doing well with which of your audiences? What’s not working? Want some help figuring out the details? Get in touch.
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