7 best practices to launch high-performing Instagram ads

In Switzerland alone, Instagram…

• Represents 2.6 millions active users
• Is a platform where 67% of users discover products or services
• And where they are 75% to take action after finding inspiration there

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The social platform has quickly become an ideal playground for brands, both to broadcast organic posts and to launch advertisements. 

Want to deploy Instagram ads that generate real results for your brand? You've come to the right place: discover here our experts’ 7 best practices for campaigns that help you reach your marketing goals. 
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Choose goals that are adapted to your marketing needs

First off, before launching your advertising campaign on Instagram, you need to define the right goals to target. These goals will allow you, not only to choose the right targeting method, but also to define the right advertising format to use.
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In terms of advertising goals for Instagram, we recommend you to avoid post likes or fan acquisition campaigns: these are goals that your Community Management strategy can achieve without investing in advertising. 
Instead, invest in campaigns whose objectives are... 

• Brand notoriety
• Driving traffic to your website
• Converting your target audience
• Developing customer loyalty
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Use the full potential of the Meta audience

"Many brands want to launch ads on Instagram right now; but few understand how important it is to tap into the global Meta audience. The idea is, in addition to running ads on Instagram, to also run them on Facebook, or even WhatsApp, when relevant to your targets. At Gamned!, our experts always try to study closely the web habits of your targets, in order to set up the most appropriate advertising device, in terms of targeting, formats, or even messages." Timothée Pierre, Head of Account Management at Gamned!.

Instagram advertising is part of a larger ecosystem - Meta, which includes features to also run Facebook and WhatsApp ads. 
Why stick to investing your budget only on Instagram, when you can use the full potential of the Meta audience across all its platforms? By doing so, you ensure that you reach the maximum number of users who are in your target audience. 

What's more, we see that the performance of ad campaigns deployed across the entire Meta ecosystem is much higher than if they were deployed on only one platform. 
For example, using not only Facebook advertising, but the entire Meta audience, we see on average... 

• 2,1 more liff
• 71 % cost reduction per conversion
• 7 % incremental reach
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Segment your audiences to target them properly

With Instagram ads, and more broadly advertising in the Meta ecosystem, you have the ability to target multiple audience types. The key to proper targeting? Knowing very well the prospects and customers you want to reach, so you can choose the ideal method. 
Choose if you want to deploy an advertising campaign aimed at... 

• Your existing customers, to set up a loyalty strategy, or to make them buy again your products or services
• Your website visitors, in a retargeting logic
• Lookalike audiences, i.e. targets that are similar to your current follower base, or to targets in your database
• Targets based on socio-demographic and behavioral criteria, such as the type of device used (mobile, tablet, desktop), or their interests 
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Set up Instagram ads campaigns on all placements

Now that you have chosen your targeting method, you need to choose the type of Instagram ads you want to deploy. 
On Instagram, the best practice is to set up campaigns on all placements where your targets consume content. You have several ad placements that you can choose from on the platform: 

• The newsfeed, which is where organic posts appear 
• Instagram stories
• Search, which is where you launch ads that appear in users' search results when they type in keywords on Instagram
• The Instagram marketplace, a great place to showcase your products 
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Thereafter, for each placement, you have the choice of several ad formats: video, static, carousel, Instant Experience... These different types of ads are more or less effective depending on the goals you aim for in your Instagram ads. 

Also note that you can run native ads, banners and interstitial ads on Audience Network. These formats give you access to a larger audience on third-party applications that are Meta partners.

Invest in video advertising

It's a fact: 75% of mobile traffic is on video. So video is proving to be an extremely powerful format on social networks, but also for your digital advertising campaigns, and in particular for Instagram advertising, where everything is based on the visual.
You need to rely on video for an effective advertising strategy. 
This being said, be careful to apply some good practices if you choose this format:

• Grab users' attention in the first few seconds of the video, to ensure you catch users' eyes
• Design your videos for the sound off, but delight your audience with the sound on
• Find the right balance between the message and the duration of the ad, to make your targets want to see it until the end
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Design your advertising messaging according to your customer journey

Competition between advertisers on Instagram is fierce. So to differentiate yourself on the platform, it's crucial to craft finely thought-out advertising messages. 
The key is to create your messages based on your customer journey:

• At the top of the funnel, communicate your values and highlight your brand 
• At the bottom of the funnel, showcase your product, its features, its advantages, its price, and focus on urgency and rarity (for example, by highlighting limited offers)
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Either way, don't be afraid to show your brand early on in the customer journey (highlighting your branding elements). 

And last but not least, be sure to step out of your comfort zone to experiment with differentiating messages!

Measure the performance of your campaigns to continuously optimize them

To start off, here is a prerequisite if you launch campaigns to drive Instagram users to a Landing Page on your website: install the Facebook pixel on this site. This is what allows you to track all the actions taken by your targets on your pages. 

Then, you need to choose the right key performance metrics to follow according to the goal you have set and the stage of the customer journey your campaign is addressing: 

• For awareness goals: reach, video views
• For consideration goals: landing page views, time spent on site, messages received
• For conversion goals: number of leads, number of sales, number of app downloads, revenue generated, average shopping cart
• For loyalty goals: number of repurchases, revenue generated, average basket
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Tracking some of these KPIs will also allow you to calculate the ROI of your campaign, which is crucial to know the performance of your advertising strategy. 

Finally, be sure to use Facebook's brand lift feature. Its purpose? To help you understand if your ads are relevant. It allows you to serve your ads to an audience that you define, and then survey that audience on topics like ad recall, brand awareness and message association. 

Want to launch high-performing Instagram advertising campaigns? Contact a Gamned! expert now. Our agency specializes in digital advertising, especially programmatic advertising. 
We can both audit your existing campaigns, or launch your campaigns out of the blue, always with one idea in mind: help you achieve your marketing goals with the best possible ROI!