By Deepika Patel, Social Account Manager
Instagram’s no longer something to watch if you’re a digital marketer. With more advertisers on Instagram than Twitter and the targeting power of Facebook in its sails, it’s made a strong case for you to get on board now.
But before you make the jump, plan out these five steps.
- First, know your objective and whether it’s available on Instagram. Instagram is currently offering 6 objectives: Clicks to Website, Mobile App Engagement, Mobile App Installs, Page Post Engagement, Video Views, and Website Conversions (with more likely to come). Determine which objective is priority, focusing on one before launching multiple objectives.
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- Begin with successful audiences you have already determined and verified through your Facebook advertising. All Facebook targeting capabilities are available to Instagram, which allows for a seamless transition. Instagram essentially acts as another placement that is accessed and managed through Facebook’s Ads Manager and Power Editor, making it a natural way to expand reach. You can see the option for the additional placement on the ad set level.
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- Instagram’s demo tends to skew younger, therefore you should start with audiences who have shown success with younger age ranges on Facebook. The available audience sizes per platform are shown when plugging in your ideal targeting criteria. Here is an example for Desktop News Feed on Facebook and Instagram:
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From these estimations, the potential reach across Instagram is larger, which could mean longer-term success for your objective and the ability to access more users than what you may currently be reaching through Desktop News Feed. I would like to note that while Mobile New Feed may provide a larger reach than Instagram when comparing the two placements, performance can differ. Many different users may be available between both platforms, so it’s always best to test.
- Use top creative from existing Facebook campaigns. Single image, carousel and video ads are now available on Instagram, making it simple to re-purpose current assets to begin advertising on Instagram.
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These options are available within Power Editor in addition to tools that assist in cropping existing images to fit Instagram specs.
- Ensure your tracking is in place. The same tracking is available to use across Facebook and Instagram, which makes this an easy task to accomplish if you are already advertising on Facebook or requires less developer work/resources if looking to begin conversion tracking across Facebook and Instagram. All events are able to be measured across placements and are available to you via normal Facebook reporting capabilities.
The main takeaway is that Instagram is essentially an extension from Facebook advertising that allows you to reach more users. Today, users across different age ranges spend their browsing time differently between apps, and Instagram helps increase the potential to reach people who may not be accessible on Facebook due to their natural browsing patterns.
