After covering how Facebook advertising could help your business grow online, Instagram has quickly skyrocketed to nearly 1 billion active users every month. Although it may still be behind Facebook in active users, it’s the organic marketing statistics that cannot be ignored and prove how powerful Instagram advertising has become and how it could help grow your small business.
If you’re looking for an affordable way to promote your business, increase engagement and reach more customers, Instagram may just be the alternative marketing platform you were looking for…
Inside our Instagram advertising guide, we will investigate if Instagram is right for your business and list 5 types of Instagram advertising you can try, before we dive into that, here’s a few statistics to depict why more and more businesses are turning to Instagram;
- Instagram images get an average of 23% more engagement than their Facebook counterparts.
- Brands see engagement rates 10x higher on Instagram than they do on Facebook.
- 70% of users look up a brand on Instagram.
- 80% of users follow at least one brand on Instagram.
Is Instagram advertising right for my business?
Instagram advertising is suitable any size business who want to increase brand awareness, create website engagement or increase sales, you just need highly visual, engaging content such as;
Visual Products: Do you sell products on your business website? Various Instagram ads such as carousels or videos are perfect to showcase a new product range
Tell a Story: For websites who sell tangible products/services, video or collection advertising provide your platform to tell your story in the form of a tutorial video or an introduction to your business. After all, 60% of users learn about new products through Instagram.
Target Audience: Do you believe your target audience will be on Instagram? Statistics prove the average age range varies between the ages of 18-29, and engage with content surround the fashion, beauty, food, tv/film and music industries.
5 types of Instagram advertising for your business
1. Stories Advertising
Instagram Stories is a feature that allows users to post photo and video content ads that vanish after 24 hours. Story Advertising will show up within the ‘stories’ section of a user account, and usually last around 15 seconds for a photo and up to 60 seconds for video stories.
Any user can post a maximum of 100 stories a day and any user can view your story as many times as they want before expiring within 24 hours. Story advertising is perfect for businesses who have limited time offers/promotions to create a timely response to prompt users to act with a more urgent feel than other Instagram advertising.
2. Photo Advertising
A picture is worth a thousand words, right? Photo Advertising tells your story through a clean, simple and beautiful creative format. Available in square or landscape format, photo advertising is the easy way to create advertising and test the waters.
If you have the time/resource, a single photo can tell your story such as promotional offers, new products/services or even get your brand out there!
Just like how photos appear in a random order on your timeline, photo advertising will appear completely random and will be based on the Instagram algorithm where it thinks you want see posts like this, not just the newest post first.
3. Video Advertising
Single video ads allow you to share video or GIF’s up to 60 seconds in length. Video advertising is perfect for businesses who to show a product in action or a video introduction to explain your business, products and/or services. This type of advertising allows businesses who may have more tangible products such as car insurance, so you can provide more context than you could with image advertising.
Although this may take more resource, user-engagement with is most successful with video advertising.
4. Carousel Advertising
Want to add multiple photo or video ads? Carousal Advertising provide an added layer of depth by creating a collection of two or more images or videos. With the possibility to add up to 10 images/videos, Instagram users can interact and swipe through to view all photos or videos within a single ad.
Typically, this type of advertising is perfect if you want to showcase a new line of products or simply want to introduce your business.
5. Collection Advertising
Not to be confused with carousal ads, Collection Advertising allow you to visually inspire and help your audience discover, browse or purchase your products. Users can create a collection of up to 10 images that will display on a slideshow loop where you can tell your story, you can even add music to create an engaging advertising montage.
This type of advertising is perfect if you do not have the time/resource to create video ad content but want to add some motion, test out multiple products or want to showcase a new range of products or your new business.
Instagram advertising web agency verdict
You simply cannot ignore the statistics; Instagram ads are a great way to get your business in front of prospects and potential customers with the most engagement over any other social media platform.
Are you thinking of Instagram for your business but not sure how to set it up? Contact untitled™ where we can go through your steps to make sure Instagram advertising is the correct platform to use and to make most of the features available.
Give us a call on 01565 653616 or head over to our contact form where a member of the team will get back to you as soon as possible. Want more tips on how to grow your website? Subscribe to our quarterly web grower newsletter