Part 1: free or paid instagram ads : all the techniques

Lately, Instagram has been able to position itself as one of the most promising social networks for e-commerce marketing. The statistics speak for themselves, on this network that has recently surpassed one billion users. With such an audience, entrepreneurs would be wrong to deprive themselves of Instagram advertising.

Instagram being well aware of these opportunities, the social network has recently multiplied the formats. So where do you start when it comes to advertising on Instagram?

In this guide to Instagram advertising we will cover the following:

Why advertise on Instagram?
How do I go about it?
What budget should you have for an Instagram ad?
How to analyze the impact of your Instagram ads?
Don’t miss out on this source of potential customers.

Why advertise on Instagram (and not Facebook?)

Why choose between Facebook or Instagram advertising when you can do both at the same time?

But first, because it’s easy: you can turn any Instagram post into an ad with the “Promote” button.

You can also be super specific, with advanced ads, thanks to Facebook’s Ad Manager.

And so also publish to Facebook and Messenger.

Instagram is primarily a visual platform. If you’re selling beautiful products, if you have elaborate branding, the Instagram universe will lend itself well to your marketing plan, but you can always do Facebook advertising on the side.

Instagram advertising is great for product placement.

Especially since Adam Mosserri, the boss of Instagram recently announced on Twitter the four major areas of development to come for the network.

In this list, we find the video and shopping.

So you already know that we’re going to sell on Instagram, more and more, and we’re going to do it through video advertising.

So it’s really time to open an Instagram store if you haven’t already, and think about relevant video content.

How to promote on Instagram?

When it comes to Instagram marketing there are two possible strategies:

1. Organic content.

Or how to advertise for free on Instagram. Organic content represents the category of content you post for free: photos, videos, stories and reels. These types of posts should be the core of your Instagram strategy, since it’s the best way to make sales over time, thanks to an interested audience. This is also known as social selling.

FitBit is very effective at advertising on Instagram: for example, by giving their followers bonuses like this Spotify playlist to listen to during their workout.

How do you share an Instagram post as a story?
Simply click on the little airplane under your post and choose “Stories”. Your post will then appear in your story as a sticker.

2. The different types of Instagram advertising

If you want to make direct sales and boost an Instagram post, Instagram ads are clearly the most effective method. The social network is increasingly developing its marketing tools, now offering a wide range of Instagram ad formats in various locations.

Regardless of the locations or formats chosen, a list of objectives will be proposed to you:

Brand awareness
Traffic
Interaction
App installs
Video views
Lead generation
Messages
Conversions
Visits to points of sale
And depending on that goal, different call to actions will be offered.

What locations are possible to advertise on Instagram?

Advertising on Instagram in stories
500 million daily users in 2020, Instagram stories are clearly an advertising spot to consider. Your ad will appear between two stories of people followed by the user.

You can as well make an image or video story, but we advise you to invest in video, which will therefore be increasingly highlighted on Instagram. In addition, there are other Instagram ad options for still images.

These ads incorporate a call to action in the form of a swipe up, at the bottom of the screen.

You will be able to choose between different templates, add text or change the background color.

Stories ads are a fairly new feature, but they’re quickly gaining traction over image ads, as indicated by Kenshoo’s quarterly report.

According to these numbers, the Instagram ad budget spent on stories doubled in one year, from 9% to 18% in 2019.

If, for example, you want to run an Instagram story ad to increase your conversions, here are all the call to actions offered:

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Yes, there are many different types of conversions!

However, if your goal is to increase visits to your store, we only offer seven call to actions.

Advertising in the Instagram feed in image or video

Instagram ads, are an Instagram advertising format that appears as images and videos in the news feed. A natural integration and incentive at the same time.

Instagram Explorer ads

Here’s another ad placement on Instagram that’s very recent and very interesting since it’s similar to how TikTok ads work. This is an ad that appears in the Explorer of Instagram.

The Explorer is what you access if you click on the little magnifying glass at the top right of the Instagram interface. The explorer is different for every user, as it is based on content preferences. Via the explorer, Instagram seeks to expose people to new content, which stays close to their interests.

The explorer first appears in the form of a grid. The ads never appear there. They will be displayed in the explorer feed, which can be accessed by clicking on one of the contents proposed on the grid.

Explorer ads are shown to non-subscribers. This makes this Instagram format a great way to reach a new audience.

The different Instagram ad formats
If you choose to advertise in the Instagram feed or in Explorer, you’ll have several formats to choose from.

The insta carousel ad format
The Insta carousel ad format works in the same way as the Instagram ads in the news feed, but it includes multiple images. It is possible to add up to 10 images or videos per carousel. The advantage of this format: each image can include a link to your site.

If you have a dropshipping store and do dropshipping in France for example, you can present several of your products and add a different link each time.