How advertising on Instagram works
Okay, advertising on Instagram can be really promising for business growth, but: how does it work?

First, there is a preliminary distinction to be made: there is more than one way to gain visibility, and one does not exclude the other.

You can do it:

Organically. In this case, you don’t have to shell out 1 euro! It’s about leveraging a few tricks to increase visibility and traffic on your Instagram business profile. So, off to useful and valuable content, different ways to generate engagement and interaction, smart use of Insight and polls, collaboration with other accounts.
Via sponsors. The other option is to invest in actual advertising. You can engage influencers who embody the company’s values and message, or you can sponsor your own posts.
In the latter case, pay attention to the prerequisites! You must:

Have a company Instagram page; if you have a personal one, hurry to make the account switch!
Link it with the Facebook page; yep, the ownership is the same!
Use the official Android and iOS app; it’s the only way to sponsor your content!
Well, having clarified this dual possibility, let’s enter the world of advertising!

Let’s find out right now how advertising works on this social and what you need to know.

Research your competitors. Identify the industry leaders and ask yourself: how do they go about it? How do they structure their campaigns? What call-to-actions do they use? What reactions do they generate? This is a critical preliminary analysis for your Unique Selling Proposition: you must offer something unique by sponsoring it in a unique way!
Define the goal of your advertising. Basically: what do you want to achieve? For example, do you want to increase awareness, profile traffic, or conversions? Understanding where you want to go is essential to know what direction to take and how to go about it.
Clarify your target audience. Targeting should be specific and targeted. Then define your buyer persona: How old is she? Where does he or she live? What is he or she interested in? What passions, desires and fears does she have? What behaviors characterize her?
Choose the format of your advertising. Do you prefer to focus on image or video? Better a carousel or a slideshow? Canvas or stories? The choice depends on the goal you have defined, the target audience, and the message you want to convey. However, a word of advice: aim for videos or stories, they are the winning formats! This is because of the engagement they generate and the current trend of storytelling.
Monitor and measure the results. On Instagram you can take advantage of charts and metrics that allow you to analyze performance. Monitoring campaign performance is critical to understand what’s working and what’s not, so you can make changes and optimize!


What are the advertising costs on Instagram
Knowing precisely what the costs of ads on Instagram are is impossible! And I’ll tell you why: prices change depending on certain variables, such as the days of the week or the target audience’s master data. Why? What is it that varies?

Infrasweekly there are more interactions than on weekends, therefore: it costs more to sponsor on weekdays. Similarly, targeting a young audience (from millennials up to 35 years old) is more expensive than targeting an adult one: this is the most popular target audience.

Okay, but why is this not precisely predictable? On what does it depend?

One must consider that the mechanism that governs advertising on Instagram (as well as on Facebook) is the auction. What does this mean in practice? That prices vary depending on the number of advertisers present at the same time on the same target. In general, the auction determines costs according to:

Quality of the advertisement
Economic bidding
Estimated action rates
Okay fine, but how much is spent in practice?

Let’s clarify that the minimum cost to advertise on this social is 1 euro; however, this is a very small amount if you aim to get significant feedback.

Tip: for lead generation activities on the national level it is advisable to invest at least 25/30 euros per day, for an e-commerce at least 40/50. This is essential especially at the beginning, later you can figure out which campaigns yield the most and focus only on those.

In any case, remember: with Instagram you decide how much to invest in advertising! You just choose the duration of the ad and the total budget, you will not spend more or less. But, how do I pay? First of all, the cost units of ads are:

CPC: cost per click. As the name itself says, you pay for each click the user makes on your ad. This is useful when the goal of the campaign is to increase conversions: if once clicked the user proceeds to purchase you will get your revenue!
CPM: cost per thousand impressions. A thousand impressions means that your ad can be viewed 1,000 times by users: you pay for these thousand chances of being tracked. CPM is mainly for increasing awareness and engagement; therefore, it’s for you if you’re looking for visibility!
But, how to choose the payment method? How does the transaction take place? The answer is: directly on the app.

1.Click on the three lines at the top right of your profile;
2.Select “Settings.”
3.Click on “Company.”
4.Select “Payment Methods.”
Then, once you have set your budget and configured your ad, you can go ahead and choose your payment method. You are charged automatically and only when you reach the billing threshold.


How to advertise on Instagram
If you are wondering how to advertise on Instagram you are in the right place! Do you know why? Everything is more accessible when explained simply. With a few useful tips and pointers, you can make it on your own to juggle Ads, among the most important Instagram services for businesses.

The first thing to decide is whether you want to sponsor previously published posts or if you prefer to create new content. The process is the same, the only difference is that in the first case you will already have the content ready while in the second you have to create it first.

So: if the post you want to advertise is to be dredged up in your profile, follow these steps:

1.Enter your profile and click on the little man-you will see the posts you have published.
2.Choose the content you want to promote and preview it.
3.Click on “Promote,” in the lower right corner.


Okay, at this point the steps to follow on Instagram Ads become the same:

1.First thing to do: select the target of your campaign. You will see that Instagram (as well as Facebook) offers you 3 macrocategories:
”Notoriety.” It includes “Brand Awareness” and “Coverage.” You will choose the former if the intent is to increase awareness; select the latter if you have the goal of getting the ad seen by as many people as possible.
”Consideration.” Here are included: “Traffic,” which corresponds to the goal of increasing clicks on your page; “Interaction,” for those whose intent is to induce the user to like, comment or share; “App installation,” for the purpose of stimulating downloads; “Video views,” to get more views for the latter; and “Contact generation,” to attract additional users.
”Conversion.” Instead, this macrocategory encompasses “Conversions,” “Catalog Product Sales,” and “Point-of-Sale Visits.” The objectives are quite explicit and all directed at stimulating user action, be it a purchase or a visit.

2. Set the target audience for the ad campaign.

Be careful: this step is crucial to the success of sponsored ads! Aim for a well-defined target audience, stick to the buyer personas you have worked out for each of its segments. The more specific you are, the better your chances of achieving your goal!

Instagram Ads offers very broad and in-depth targeting options, among which are:

  • Gender
  • Genus
  • Age
  • Location
  • Interests
  • Behaviors


Once you set up your audience, you can save it for subsequent campaigns so you don’t have to start all over again!

Additional option in your hands is, “Similar Audiences.” What is this? The platform uses information about followers who already follow you to search for others with similar characteristics. Not bad, right? It’s a great help: it’s easier for a similar audience to the one you already have to be interested in your offer, so it’s easier to attract them.

3.Choose the format of the ad. You have several options, which, as mentioned, should be considered according to the goal and target audience you have defined:

  • Carousel: 2 or more images/videos to scroll between.
  • Single image: a content with only one image.
  • Single video: a post with a single video.
  • Slideshow: continuous loop video insertion with up to 10 images.
  • Canvas: combination of images and video to tell a story.


As mentioned: aim for maximum engagement and storytelling. So better a Canvas than a single image!

4. Select your Call to Action.

This is about choosing the button to invite the user to action.

5. Define the budget and set the duration.

That is: choose how much you want to spend in total or daily and whether to activate the promotion continuously or for a defined duration. And there you have it! Always remember: the best way to attract followers is always to come up with valuable content. So in addition to advertising, don’t forget to offer something useful/informative/educational/stimulating.


Examples of advertisements
At this point it is good to get into practice and give a couple of examples of advertisements on Instagram, analyzing the factors that led to their success, that is, the achievement of the set goal.
A case in point is Burberry and its campaign.
As you probably know, this is a giant in the fashion industry; the brand has a distinct and distinctive identity (we’ll all be thinking of the same texture and colors) and a very good degree of brand recognition. Its campaign focused on storytelling and told, via canvas and slideshow, the world of Burberry behind the scenes. Here’s the promise and the narrative: we involve you in the making of garments and accessories, we take you backstage at our events, we let you experience the shooting of the new collection.

Basically: here’s unveiled what we do and how (it makes you feel important and curious); here’s to you an experience you might not have known otherwise (we offer not just products but a real experience)!

The telling of a story and the excitement of a whispered secret drove users to curiosity, which in turn led them to click to view more content, products, initiatives. That was the goal of the campaign. Well done!
Here is another case of success: the advertisement for Ben & Jerry’s, a large American ice cream company.
His idea is brilliant: not to create content, but to use content made by his followers (user generated content, UGC). So he sponsored his own ads with photos and posts of his customers, each with their favorite ice cream flavors, each eating it in a different place.

What do you get from such a strategy?

The follower feels involved, participatory, special: he is in the foreground; many people who end up as protagonists in an advertisement tend to like, comment and share: they increase the interactions and visibility of the post. In addition, other users find the testimony of people like them more trustworthy, rather than that of the seller: a disinterested evaluation is considered unbiased. Credibility and visibility end up increasing awareness. Well done again this time!


Instagram sponsored: what is meant
Now you have all the information to understand what is meant by sponsored Instagram! Yes, it’s really about advertising: those posts with the words “sponsored.” You find them in the feed, among the posts of people you follow, on the explore page, and in stories. And here’s the thing:

Sponsored ones fit into the scrolling seamlessly, blending in among other content. So, unlike other types of advertising, they don’t interrupt enjoyment, prevent the performance of activities, or annoy the user (think YouTube ads while listening to music or TV commercials while watching a movie!). So much so that not-so-savvy people do not even notice that that post is actually an advertisement. That is precisely the key to their success!


Why your company should advertise
By now you may be wondering why your company should advertise, what’s in it for them, and what benefits they get.

Let’s start with some data (Facebook, 2019):

  • There are about 1 billion active users on Instagram;
  • Instagram accounts for businesses total more than 200 million;
  • 90% of users follow at least one business profile.
  • 80% of users are influenced in their purchasing decisions by advertising on this social.Not bad, right?


But what do these numbers mean?

If in managing Instagram for business you consider investing in advertising, you have many opportunities to get a good ROI. In fact, you multiply the opportunities to gain visibility, notoriety or conversions (this also depends on your goal).

So, the pool of potential customers becomes larger, they have more opportunities to get to know you, and you have more opportunities to make a sale.

This is a vicious cycle: as it repeats, the users you attract increase, further increasing awareness and demand for your offer.

So rather than asking yourself why advertise on Instagram, ask yourself: why not?

What are you waiting for? Get involved now: now you know how to do it!