So you have decided to run an Instagram ad campaign for your business. That’s great news for your business with 83% of Instagram users discovering new products and services on the platform.
With it’s 1 billion + monthly users and platform with the highest level of engagement and huge returns on ads. Instagram is one of the best social media platforms to run your ad campaign.
Instagram is the second most logged-in social media site for daily use after Facebook.
Either you are a B2B or B2C SaaS company, you can reach and engage with your target audience with an effective Instagram ad campaign strategy. Stats revealed that 90% of accounts follow at least one business on Instagram.
There’s a vast majority of small businesses on Instagram and individuals who use SaaS products.
Why Run Instagram Ads?
Here are some of the top reasons, why you must run Instagram ads:
- Running ads is the fastest way to reach your social media marketing goals.
- Organic growth is getting more difficult with the constant changes in algorithms.
- The major benefit of Organic growth is that it’s cost-effective but Instagram ads are way better if you think of the benefits it can bring to your business.
- You can easily target your potential customers.
- You get to analyze and track your ad’s performance.
How to Start Your First Instagram Ad Campaign
1. Define Your Goals
There are different types of Instagram ads, knowing what you want to achieve will help you narrow and focus on using the options that will lead you to get those goals.
As a SaaS business, your goals might involve increasing your brand awareness, getting people to start using your products, or downloading your apps.
Getting specific on what’s most important for you at this point will clarify your strategy and cost of investment.
2. Define Your Target Audience
You need the demographics of your customers to create the right message for them, it will also help you navigate your budget.
Knowing the type of content your audience engages with and their expectations will make your ad campaign more effective.
Look at your previous content, and see the level of engagement, which type of content got the highest level of engagement?
This will give you insights into your customer’s preferences.
Also, take a look at your competitor’s Instagram campaign, how do their audience reacts or interact with their content? Who are their audience, their likes, and dislikes?
All of these will enable you to really know your target audience.
Use tools like Owlmetrics and Iconosquare to measure and track your content performance and audience interaction.
These tools can find new followers or target audiences that have similar interests in your brand niche with tools so that you can reach and promote your products to them.
This will give you insights on the expectations of your audience so that you can provide great content they can engage with.
3. Define Your Strategy
Which process or strategy do you intend to follow to accomplish your Instagram ad campaign goals?
Do you want to run a contest or leverage UGC campaigns?
Which type of Instagram ads do you want to use? If it’s videos, the concept for it, how is the video going to be shot?
If you plan to use Influencers for your campaign, how are you going to approach them? Which influencers are you going to work with and how are they going to promote your products?
Take the help of your marketing team to plan these questions because you should not go into this with no predefined strategy.
4. Define The Length of Your Ad Campaign
How long do you want this campaign to run? Set the timeline for your ad campaign, this way you have an end both you and your team can work towards.
It will ensure that most things are done beforehand and help you with planning your budget.
You will also know when to check the results of your overall campaign and manage your expectations.
5. Define Your Budget
You will have to clearly define your budget, how much are you willing to invest in this campaign? How much does this campaign mean to the growth of the business?
To set your budget, you will have to be aware of the cost of Instagram ads which will be discussed below.
As you will see in the cost of Instagram ads explained below, your audience demographics, timing, and other factors will come into play in how much you are going to spend.
6. Create Your Message
It’s important to know how you want to communicate with your audience and match your content to their expectations.
How do you want your brand to come across to your audience? How do you want to be perceived? Your message should mirror your brand personality.
Let your message strike a chord with your audience, the tone, voice, and angle you take should be planned and prepared beforehand.
If you just go with the flow or wing it, then you are heading for a disaster because you won’t be catering for your audience.
Also, your message won’t be felt strongly or easily understood and relatable to your potential customers.
Give your audience a reason to care about your brand, make this campaign bigger than your brand, it should feel like it’s beyond brand promotions and more about human causes.
Do you want to be entertaining, casual, friendly, or professional?
What angle do you want to adopt? Is it achieving their goals, letting go of their fears, is it about maximizing their value and productivity?
Answer all these questions and plan the concept and angle of your campaign message to the world.
7. Create a Landing Page
Marketing on Instagram doesn’t just end in Instagram, Instagram is a means to an end, you are using Instagram to create more awareness for your brand and encourage its users worldwide.
So, where do you intend to drive traffic? You have to customize your traffic destination.
A landing page will help you advertise your product fully, showcase all the details, the features, and benefits of your products.
This is where you will convert your visitors from Instagram to customers, this custom page will be used to convince your potential customers why your products are right for them.
This page should really showcase your brand personality, style, and USPs.
Your landing page should also give out similar vibes and aesthetics of your Instagram page, to create a sense of familiarity.
8. Create Your Campaign Hashtag
Hashtags are one of the major languages of Instagram, so don’t underrate them. A hashtag boosts the engagement rate of an Instagram post by 12.6%.
Having a Hashtag for your ad campaign will give its identity and easily spark up familiarity.
Your hashtag will make it easier for people to understand your campaign message and motivate them to strengthen their interest in your brand.
It will also make it easier to gather UGC, track, and quantify your content for a successful ad campaign.
Come up with a hashtag that actually works and promotes your brand not just any hashtag.
Here are some Hashtag tips:
1. Make it interesting: Your hashtag should be something that spikes up interest and gives an Instagram user a reason to be captivated.
2. Keep it short and sweet: For example, between #blueferrymoletap or #myferrytap, which of these will be easier to use, search, type, and remember? Obviously the latter.
Make your hashtag short, simple, sweet, and easy.
3. Easy to Recall: Your hashtag should be easy to remember, and make a statement in people’s memory, this way your hashtag can go viral or be more popular.
It should represent your campaign message and give a sense of a bigger purpose.
Your audience should be able to relate and connect to the hashtag.
4. Unique: Having a hashtag that is used for another purpose is a nightmare, so you want to make your hashtag distinct and different.
Abstain from using famous Niche words, or a theme of phrases that can be connected to something else other than your brand.
Put your brand twist to it.
For example, the hashtag for one of Adobe’s campaigns was called #Adobe_Incolor, the hashtag was about diversity. Their followers were promoted to share their stories about diversity with the hashtag.
This hashtag was interesting, short, easy to recall, and unique. They had their company’s name embedded in it, imagine they said, #In-colordiversity, it will be generic or #Adobeincolorthemediversity, it will be too long, you get the drill.
8. Working With Influencers
Influencer promotion has proved to be highly effective and useful for brands as 49% of consumers depend on influencer recommendations.
Including Influencers in your ad campaign can skyrocket your ad reach and returns, especially on Instagram.
Research shows that influencer marketing campaigns earn $6.50 for every dollar spent, now that’s huge.
One of the main selling points of Instagram is its an array of Influencers and Influencer marketing popularity.
Tips on Working with Instagram Influencers
1. Find Influencers in your niche and approach them, working with generic influencers is not going to be effective for your brand because you will be targeting nobody and marketing to the wrong people.
But approaching your niche influencers will help you reach the right people and be able to make your collaboration seamless because these influencers know where you are coming from.
You can find influencers by researching influencers that your competitors have worked with before or using influencer platforms like Klear and NeoReach to help you manage your Influencer marketing.
2. Collaborate with influencers that match your budget, there are different types of Influencers from Nano, Micro, Macro to Mega, whichever is best for you.
3. Target influencers that have a high level of engagement, and remember that a large number of followers does not equal large engagement. Work with those that have built a great community with a good reputation.
4. Approach influencers that might have used your product in the past or are willing to make use of your product.
Cost of Instagram Ads
Depending on your campaign, industry, and timeline, your costs will vary. The average CPC for Instagram is $1.28 and above cents which makes it more expensive compared to Twitter and Facebook.
But totally worth it, given the potential and level of engagement rates it promises.
You can pay in the range of £0.10 to £1.50 per click or roughly £5.00 per 1,000 impressions, these are all dependent on your bidding model.
Your CPC fluctuates for a variety of reasons like age ranges, time of the year, etc.
A study revealed that brands are spending more on Instagram at x4 the rate of Facebook.
The user base of Instagram keeps growing at a consistently high rate with no signs of declining any time soon.
It’s also becoming the favorite hang out spot for businesses, millennials and gen zs.
Instagram also makes you creative with your ads, enables you to create attention-grabbing visuals for your audience.
The engagement rate for Instagram is 1.22% in contrast to Facebook with 0.09%, this shows the higher engagement rate of Instagram.
Types of Instagram Ads
Instagram ads are of the following types:
- Stories ads
- Photo ads
- Video ads
- Carousel ads
- Collection ads
Instagram requires the creation of high-quality visuals to be able to stand a chance at gaining attention and connecting to your target audience.
1- Stories Ads
With 500 million daily users, stories have become one of Instagram’s most powerful, widely used and engaging features,
With its several elements and filters to create engaging visuals, including CTAs and instant swipe up links to drive traffic, stories are definitely a type of ad you want to invest in.
96% of US marketers surveyed plan to continue using Stories ads in the next 6 months.
Images and videos can be posted on stories, one-third of the most-watched Instagram Stories are from businesses and advertisers and one out of every five Stories encourages a DM from viewers.
As a SaaS business, you can show off your software features with visuals or the benefits of using your products.
2- Photo Ads
This is the standard and OG of the posts on Instagram that appear on your feed, you can post an image here that speaks to your potential customers with a caption that describes your product, your caption is like your ad copy.
You get to have a CTA at the bottom of the image to drive traffic to the intended destination like your landing page.
3- Video Ads
This time instead of posting images you post videos, you get to post at a length of 60 seconds to grab the attention of a scroller.
Videos have proved to be engaging on the platform than other forms of content.
Sponsored Instagram videos to generate 3x more comments than sponsored Instagram photos.
So, you want to make sure you leverage this type of content to showcase what your software is all about and why people should use it.
You also get to include a CTA and copy to increase click rates.
4- Carousel Ads
Carousel ads contain a series of images or videos that users can swipe and view horizontally, so you can use this to illustrate major features of your software and the benefits for users.
5- Collection Ads
Just as the name suggests, you get to showcase a collection of your products on a single ad for your potential customers to browse through and be directed to the sales page.
They are probably the most engaging type of Instagram ads because it lets the users get options to checkout and make a decision.
It is mostly used by e-commerce brands, but SaaS businesses can also leverage it by displaying the different types of software they offer.
This type of ad provides direct response marketing.
These ads don’t just appear on users’ feeds but also on the explore feed where you can reach more people.
50% of Instagram users use explore to discover new content and 83% of its users admit to finding new brands, products, and services using the platform.
How to Setup Instagram Ads
There are two ways to create ads on Instagram:
1.Through Facebook manager.
2. Promote posts on Instagram.
1- Through Facebook Manager
Instagram ads are integrated with Facebook ads manager, so if you have run FB ads before, this should be a breeze.
You are going to run and manage your Instagram ad campaign in the Facebook ad manager.
If this is your first time, ensure you create an FB ads account and connect to your Instagram page, then just follow the steps below.
1. Select Your Campaign Goal
Login to ads manager and click create,
There are 11 options available for you to choose from, depending on what you have planned is best for your business and your marketing goals.
- Brand Awareness: To widen your overall brand awareness, and get people to know more about you as a brand and what you offer.
- Reach: Depending on your budget, you get to show ads to your selected maximum of people in your target audience.
- App Installs: Drive users to download your apps through the direct link to either the Apple store or Google play store, this increases your app visibility and downloads.
- Traffic: increase the number of people who visit your site or any other platform to convert visitors into customers.
- Lead Generation: Acquire more leads for your business by encouraging sign-ups on your website and have them on your radar as part of your customer mapping journey.
- Messages: Skyrocket the opportunities to engage in personal conversations with your potential customers to connect with them through messenger.
- Engagement: Are you more interested in having users to engage with your page through follows, likes, shares, and comments. And offer claims
- Video Views: Do you want to drive users to your videos that you believe will convert or help your business grow.
- Conversion: This drives users to take intended actions, make purchases, register, download, or any other CTA you prefer. This option will increase the likelihood of people taking action.
The remaining two are Catalogue sales and store visits which is not valuable for SaaS businesses and more for e-commerce brands.
Selecting an objective while creating your Instagram ad campaign will lead Instagram to make your ads more effective by advertising to the relevant users. You will be able to target your audience better with a specific objective.
Just choose whatever makes perfect sense for your business at the moment and match your goals.
2. Define Your Audience
So, who do you want to view your ads? Who is more likely to take action when they come across your ads?
With Facebook integration, you can get access to the massive wealth of user information on Facebook and make your targeting options on point.
With your audience demographics and buyer persona, you can filter your audience based on their interests and target the right people for your ad campaign.
There are two options, you either create a new audience or use a saved audience.
So you can create your Instagram audience with the following filters:
- Location: Which region in the world do you want to reach and target?
- Age: Select an age range you think will be interested in your products
- Gender: You either select a specific gender if your products are better fit for that gender or all genders.
- Detailed Targeting: This is where your customer demographics come to play, where you can advertise to them based on their selective interests. There are so many targeting options you can play around with to really market to your audience. Options like life events, recent purchases, and more.
Take time to really define your audience because it can make or break your ad campaign, your success is dependent on the response from your customers, if you advertise to the wrong people then your efforts will be futile.
3. Select The Platforms For Display
Where do you want your ads to be displayed? Here are the 4 options you have
- Facebook: All over possible ad display spaces on FB
- Instagram: Appear on all Instagram’s ad spaces
- Audience Network: This is displayed beyond Instagram and Facebook, it appears on third-party platforms.
- Messenger: The ads will appear inside the FB messenger’s app.
Depending on your preferences, you can choose which platforms you want your ads to appear, although all four are chosen by default.
There are two types of placements, automatic placements if you want to market all across and manually if you want to display on specific platforms.
After selecting placements for your ads, the next step will be to select the ad spaces you want your ads to show which is also dependent on the placements you have selected.
- Feeds: Facebook Newsfeed, Instagram feed, Facebook video feeds, Facebook right column, Instagram Explore, Messenger inbox, and Facebook groups feed.
- Stories: Facebook Stories, Instagram Stories, and Messenger Stories.
- In-stream: Facebook in-stream videos.
- Search: Facebook search results.
- Messages: Messenger sponsored content.
- In-article: Facebook Instant articles.
- Apps and sites: Audience Network native, banner and interstitial, Audience Network rewarded videos and Audience Network in-stream videos.
5. Choose Your Budget
The next step in the Instagram ad campaign is to stipulate how much you intend to spend and for how long.
The options range from a daily budget or a lifetime budget which you set a specific life span you want the ads to run.
Your ads can run continuously or at certain times of days.
Just keep in mind the Instagram’s CPCs of your targeted audience and period you want to run ads.
5. Create Ads
It’s time to create your ads and how it should look to users. You will be given an ad format to select from depending on your campaign goal.
After selecting your ad format, follow the instructions that pop up to guide you through the whole creation process. You will get a preview of what it would look like on different placements.
6. Introduce Your Campaign To The World
Finally, let all those plans and magic come to life after you are fully satisfied with your choices and decisions. To make sure you are not missing a thing, select the review button to go over it once more and hit the confirm button to unleash the Instagram potential.
2- Promote Posts on Instagram
The second way to advertise is through Instagram itself, simply promote posts you have already published.
Go to the Promotions tab,
You will be directed to either create a promotion or manage previous promotions.
You are also recommended to choose posts that are already doing well and select promotion or choose your preferred post.
You will probably have to log in to your Facebook account to be authenticated, simply do so if prompted.
After selecting the post, then choose the destination for Instagram users:
Then select your preferred CTA that will appear below the post.
For your target audience, either use an automatic audience or create yours.
Then choose your ad duration and budget
You can preview your promotions before making them go live.
After making your campaign go live, track and monitor your ad performance with various social media tools like Buffer, Hootsuite, Facebook analytics, and others.
This will give you an insight into what’s working and what isn’t.
Ready to Start Your Own Campaign?
Investing in Instagram ads can be a game-changer for your SaaS business, as you will be able to expand your reach and increase brand awareness.
Plan ahead, define your goals, target audience, strategy, and budget in order to be well prepared.
Try working with Influencers to boost your ad campaign and target more people.
Activate engagement for more awareness and to establish relationships with potential customers and followers.
Strive to engage and Interact with people under your posts, answer their queries, or spark up conversations if there’s none.
Experiment with different tactics, visuals, and captions and monitor performance for all your posts.
Remember to manage your expectations on your first Instagram ad campaign, look at it as an experiment to see what works and learn from it for your future campaigns.
Get started with your successful Instagram ad campaign today for your SaaS business.
