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By Farzin Andrew Espahani | Solution21 | VP of Growth and Marketing |
Advertising campaigns on Instagram can be incredibly effective when done right. Here are a few tips and tricks to get you started on the best practices involved and how to make your Instagram campaign a success using AdRoll!
Segmenting your audience list. By segmenting your audience into new and existing customers, you can target certain individuals according to their particular interests. A new customer can see general awareness advertising and current customers can enjoy special offers for loyalty. If someone has viewed specific products, you can segment even further and provide advertising best suited for these items and the customers interested in them.
Make use of offline data. AdRoll on Instagram gives advertisers the opportunity to upload a customer list and develop segments using phone numbers, email addresses, and other offline data. MailChimp and Marketo lists can also be used to target specific audiences through Instagram marketing campaigns, making it easy to create loyalty specials, deals, and discounts for longtime customers.
Use Facebook and Instagram advertising together. When developing an AdRoll campaign on Instagram, take advantage of Facebook as well. This ensures that the advertising you are offering is optimized for high performance at an economical rate. Ad space on both channels together gives higher click rates at a lower cost.
Facebook ads perform well on Instagram. Consider using your best, most effective Facebook advertisements on Instagram. If they are hitting the KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) on Facebook, they will likely do well on Instagram, too.
Make use of AdRoll Dynamic Creative. This Instagram option helps target the right customer with the best product. This dynamic advertising campaign analyzes browsing history and the customer’s purchasing behavior and in many cases, increases the CTR (click-through rate) by 150% while decreasing the CPA (cost per acquisition) by 50%.
Use Facebook knowledge for Instagram. It can take a lot of time, effort, and energy to optimize and test a new channel for an advertising campaign, so take the knowledge you’ve learned with Facebook and apply that same information when working with Instagram’s AdRoll. This knowledge can ensure effective performance on both platforms for a successful campaign.
Review ROI regularly. It is important not to ignore your return on investment, or ROI, and monitor it regularly. The ROI can change every hour, so review it at least every week to see how it is performing, The AdRoll dashboard offers an in-depth performance analysis to show marketers how their campaigns are working over the course of time.
User-generated content rocks! Today’s millennials remember and actually trust user-generated content when compared to more traditional means of media. This encourages marketers to essentially outsource their creative development to current customers and fans of their products and services. Regularly search Instagram to find organic posts that are directly related to your product and ask these customers if you can use their Instagram photos in your marketing campaign.
Interact with your customers regularly. Customers who are tagged and commented on by big name brands and companies will feel “internet famous.” It gives them a chance to feel as though they have made a personal connection with a company and therefor improve the chances of loyalty and trust. Engagement with customers is key to generating more purchases, so tag customers, share their photos, and build that relationship with the audience to make them feel special!
Build customers with discounts. A great way to build a customer base in any advertising campaign is to offer special discounts. Use the Instagram platform in the same way. Studies have shown that 70% of Instagram users search for their favorite brands on the site, and 40% stated they would follow, or already follow, brands that offer special access to savings and discounts.
Know your metadata. Location tagging and hashtags are a great way to engage your audience with interaction. Continued research reveals that 88% of posts by companies and brands include at least one hashtag and therefor have about 13% more interaction than posts that do not. Location tags on posts also increases engagement by 79%.
Create effective captions. There is no character count limitation on Instagram like there is on other marketing platforms like Twitter. Create captions for your posts but don’t worry about the length. Include extra words in your post that are appropriate and may help in search results. Also, don’t be afraid to tag a few followers. Including user handles in your posts can boost engagement by over 50% versus posts that completely ignore this marketing feature.
Avoid over-filtering. While AdRoll allows you to segment your audience, don’t over-segment and filter out your potential customers until you have a good grasp as to how your Instagram uses interact with your company and brand. Leverage your AdRoll segments currently in place and then make adjustments over time as you narrow in on what makes each of your customers “tick.”
Consider the full funnel. When it comes to performance marketing campaigns, many advertisers have a tendency to put too much value on the bottom of the funnel. Use Instagram’s AdRoll Prospecting to target those upper-funnel customers and create a campaign that serves ads to prospects who have not been interacting with your brand through this platform.
Close a sale by eliminating confusion. There are many CTA buttons available on Instagram which include Contact Us, Book Now, Learn More, Download, Watch More, Donate More, Sign Up, and Shop Now. These buttons are a great way to close a sale, but if a customer is too confused, it will drive them away. Guide your prospects through these controls to help them along the way with their final purchase.
Native advertisements have some flaws. It’s important to understand that Instagram metrics are different from other channels and the passive scroll is typical behavior on this particular platform. It is not common for an Instagram user to utilize buttons and links in the same way they do on Facebook, so focus less on click-based metrics and more on interaction between prospects and your advertisements.
Avoid the pushy sales techniques. Forcing a sale can turn prospects away. Avoid a hard sales pitch and know that friendly interaction will be more likely to turn a sale than a high-pressure sales tactic used in other situations.
