How to Advertise on Instagram  

If you are a business looking to sell products and promote your brand on Instagram, you’ll find it quite easy to advertise. To make things even better for business, Facebook owns Instagram, so you can advertise on both platforms without any extra work. If you want to advertise but aren’t sure how to get started, keep reading while we provide a step-by-step guide and explain some available options so you can have a better experience running ads.

Advertising on Instagram

Sign Up To Instagram

Advertising on Instagram is not difficult, but you must have an Instagram account to get started. While not necessary, it’s better to convert your personal account into a business one or create a special account for your business that you can convert. Converting to a business account allows you to see real-time analytics about your posts and share contact information so potential customers can start a relationship with you and get answers to their questions. Best of all, it allows you to sell your products directly on Instagram.

Convert to a Business Account

To switch to a business account, sign in to your Instagram account and navigate to your profile page. Tap on the symbol of three dashes to open another menu with several options, including Settings and Privacy, which you should tap, and on the next screen, you can select “Switch to Business Account.” Then, choose a category that best describes your business. Some options include a personal blog, product or service, health and beauty, and more. Once you select your business type, tap Done and OK to confirm. Then, you must add contact details and follow the steps to connect your business account to your Facebook page. Set up optional steps and tap X in the upper right corner to return to your profile and enjoy your business account’s benefits.

Boost a Post Using Your Smartphone

1. One of the easiest ways to advertise on Instagram is to boost a post. You can boost any post you make at any time, even months or years after you originally post it. It’s a good choice for a beginner or someone looking to get a few extra views or followers, but it isn’t as fully featured as the next option we will look at. To boost a post, follow the next few steps:
2. Choose a post you want to boost on your smartphone. You can boost photos and images, and if you have an Instagram store, you can boost posts that contain pictures of your products. When you tap the post, you should see an option to boost it right below the image or video. Tap that button to get started.
   After tapping the Boost Post button, you must select a goal for your ad, including more profile visits, website visits, or messages with people interested in your business.
3. If your chosen goal is to get more profile views, you can skip this step, but if it is to get more website views, you will need to enter the website address you want to send people to and include a call to action button, which can include learn more, shop now, contact us, sign up, and more. If you choose the more messages option, you must enter your contact information and select a call-to-action button, like contact us or send a message.
4. In the next step, you will select your target audience. You can choose the automatic option to let Instagram use its algorithms to choose which users see your ads, or you can choose to create a new audience.

Creating a New Audience

Audience Name

When creating an audience from scratch, you must name it to make it easier to reference the result later. It also allows you to use the same target audience options later if you need to.

Locations

The first option you must choose after selecting a name when creating a new audience is the locations where you want people to see your ad. You can choose cities, regions, and countries. Selecting several is a good idea to see where you get the best results. The locations should relate to your product if possible. For instance, choose cold-weather states, like Maine and North Dakota, if you are selling winter wear.

Interests

The next thing you will choose when creating your target audience is the interests of your potential customers. These interests should relate to your product. For instance, choose personal or home security if you sell security cameras.

Age and Gender

Next up is the age and gender of your target audience. A slider makes it easy to choose an age range, and there are checkboxes to determine if you want to include males and females.

• Once you choose or create an audience, you will move to the budget and duration screen, where you will use a slider to set how much money you will spend per day, and you will use another slider to input how many days the ad will run, or you can choose to run it until you pause it.
• The final step in boosting a post from your cell phone is reviewing your choices and inputting your payment details before tapping boost on your phone, which will send it for review. Instagram will review the post and set it to run live within 24 hours.

Boost a Post Using Your Desktop or Laptop

While boosting a post from your smartphone is getting better, boosting your post using your desktop or laptop offers a few more options because you can use the Meta Ads Manager to allow for cross-platform advertising, which can increase visibility and sales.

1. To get started, go to business.instagram.com, read over the possibilities, and tap create an ad when you are ready.
2. Tapping on the button to create an ad will send you to the Meta Business Suite, and you will begin to see some of the advantages of this advertising option. You will see a section for getting used to the Meta Business Suite, a To-do list of things that need your attention, a calendar to schedule upcoming content, and more. Below the calendar is the option to create a new ad. Tap that to continue.
3. Once you tap the button to create a new ad, you will see several options, including looking at your old drafts, creating a new ad from scratch, boosting your Instagram content, and boosting your Facebook content.

Boost Instagram Content

• If you choose to boost Instagram content, a new page will show you your recent posts so you can select one to boost.
• Selecting a post will take you to a page with several options, similar to boosting a post from your smartphone. The first option is to choose a goal that can include getting more messages, profile views, or website viewers. The page will automatically update depending on the choice you make.
• You will need to select if you want Instagram to deliver different ad creative variations to people automatically if it can help improve performance, choose a button option, input your website if you are hoping to get more website views, and select if your ad belongs in a special ad category.
• You will then need to create an audience by choosing the gender, age, and location of the people you think are most interested in your product. You can also create detailed targeting by choosing your potential customers’ demographics, interests, and behaviors.
• Once you target your audience, you will need to schedule when you want your ad to run and determine how long you want the ad to run and your daily budget.
• Finally, choose your payment method, then click Boost Post Now to send your ad in for review.
• In less than 24 hours, your ad will be live.

Create a New A New Ad

• Creating a new ad will take you to a page with several options in two categories: traffic and sales. In the traffic category, you can choose to get more website viewers, promote your page, or promote your business locally. You can get more messages or leads in the sales category, and your choice will set up the next page.
• Once you select the type of ad you want to run, you will start creating your ad. If you didn’t like your choice on the last step, you can change it at the top of the page.
• Next, you will create your ad by choosing how it looks in the Ad Creative section. You can use a previous post, write a new description, and add a custom image or video. You will also select your button with options that depend on your goal.
• In the next step, you can use Facebook data to improve ad performance, select if your ad belongs in a special ad category, and define your audience, like we did for smartphone advertising and boosting an Instagram post. You can also select to target people in your local area.
• Next, you will schedule when the ad runs and for how long and input how much you want to spend each day.
• Finally, you will decide what platforms your ad will run on, if you want to use your Google Pixel to track stats and set up your payment information before clicking Promote Now to send your ad in for review.
• In less than 24 hours, your ad will be live.

Summary

Running ads on Instagram is not difficult and only requires a few steps, no matter if you are running them from a smartphone or laptop. Most users will likely have a better experience boosting a post or creating a new ad from the desktop or laptop using the Meta Ads Manager because you can get into more detail with ad customization, and you also get better information about how your ads are doing. No matter how you run your ads, converting your personal account to a business one is an important first step that will unlock important key features like the ability to run ads and access to analytics.