Why and how to create promotions on Instagram

It’s no secret that advertising is important for successful promotion of a blog or commercial Instagram account. The built-in platform on the social network helps new entrepreneurs with this issue. How to create a promotion in Instagram? How to set it up and pay for it? What nuances should be taken into account to ensure that advertising blocks are most effective? Spend five minutes of your time reading this article and calmly launch an effective marketing campaign.

What is the purpose of a promotion and what are its benefits?

A promo campaign is one of the ways to promote on Instagram. It involves promotional posts with your publication that appear in the feed of the intended audience.

FYI. A promo campaign is similar to promoters on the streets. Both offer passersby to get acquainted with a new company “nearby”.

The benefit of this marketing is that it:

1. Introduces the audience to the company’s products. And this can mean not only food or non-food items, but also blog posts (e.g. cooking videos).
2. Helps find new customers and, consequently, increase sales.
3. Increases brand recognition. Often, when entering a store, a buyer sees a familiar inscription on a box and remembers seeing it in a social media ad block.
4. Helps maintain the company’s image and shows that it is still alive and quite active.

These are just a few of the benefits of promo campaigns on Instagram, in reality, there are many more.

How to create a promotional campaign on Instagram: step-by-step guide

Now let’s move on to how to create and launch advertising for your profile. The main actions that you cannot do without are:

1. Create an account on Instagram if you haven’t already done so. To do this, launch the application on your phone or PC, click “Registration”, enter your email, nickname, mobile number, and password.
2. Authorize your account.
3. Click on the “person” icon in the bottom menu and go to the program settings.
4. Go to the “Account” section and tap on the hyperlink “Switch to a professional profile”.
5. Link your Facebook page.

Done. Next, we will go step by step on how to start a marketing campaign, namely:

1. Set up the promotion.
2. Pay.
3. Launch.

We will dedicate a separate section in the article to each item.

Setting up an advertising campaign

So, how to promote through the app? It’s simple, follow the steps below:

1. Login to your Instagram account.
2. Tap on the “+” button in the bottom menu and create your future ad post.
3. Go to your profile page (the “person” icon).
4. Click on “Promotions” and then “Create Promotion”.
5. Select the post you want to promote and click on the arrow.
6. Login to your linked Facebook account.
7. Set up your promotion.
8. Confirm.

To set up your ad, you’ll need to specify a few details:

• Destination:
• Your profile (the post will include a link to your profile);
• Your website (users can go directly to your website from the promotion);
• Direct (users can message you directly from the promotion).
• Audience:
• Automatic (the system will find new users with similar interests to your followers);
• Create your own (manually add audience parameters).
• Budget and duration:
• The duration of the promotion (minimum 1 day, maximum 30 days);
• The budget per day (from 20 to 20,000 rubles per day).

Note: The more you invest in advertising, the wider the audience reach. The longer your campaign lasts, the better the system will be at finding future customers for you.

Payment methods

After checking the created promotional campaign, payment is required. This can be done in two ways:

• with a debit or credit card;
• using the PayPal payment system.

Important. Instant cards, cards without the owner’s name, and social “plastic” for receiving benefits are not suitable for paying for advertising.

Let’s consider each method separately.

The first:

1. Select the appropriate payment option.
2. Enter the details: name and surname of the holder, card number and expiration date, CVC2 code.
3. Confirm.

The second:

1. Don’t forget to add the plastic card to the payment system.
2. Click on the option through the PayPal account.
3. Enter the email and password to log in to the PayPal system.
4. Confirm.

Instagram will deduct the funds for the promotional campaign only after its completion. This is the so-called post-payment system.

Status: Under review

As soon as your application is submitted, it is assigned the status “under review”. It can take up to 24 hours for this status to change. The application system moderates your post and may even reject it.

If your marketing campaign is not launching, the reason may be:

• presence of videos or photos with an age restriction of 18+;
• offending the feelings of believers, inciting racial or interethnic hatred, etc.;
• advertising prohibited products on Instagram (tobacco, alcohol);
• inactive hyperlink to the company’s website.

You should correct your mistake and try submitting the request again.

How to edit a promotional campaign

Unfortunately, it is not possible to change the settings of an advertising block through Instagram. This means that in this case, the solution would be to either delete the promotion or create a new one with the desired settings. However, it is possible to make changes through Facebook. Through this social network, you can adjust the budget, duration, target audience (including creating a new one), and placement (from feed to stories). To do this, go to the Facebook website and log in, click on “Manage Ads” by clicking on the gear icon, select the appropriate advertising account, hover over the promotion and click “Edit,” set the budget limit and target audience reach, and save the changes.

How to track the result after launch

To view statistics on promotion, you will need:

1. Launch the Instagram app.
2. Go to the profile page (the “person” icon).
3. Click on the “Promotions” button and the “Active” tab.
4. Select “View statistics”.

Here you will see:

• number of likes/comments/bookmarks;
• number of clicks on the ad post to visit the profile/website;
• audience reach and impressions;
• duration of the marketing campaign;
• costs;
• target audience (age, gender, region).

FYI. As mentioned above, when Instagram automatically targets people, the effectiveness of the target audience often depends on the budget you have chosen.

Secrets of a Successful Advertising Campaign

How to make Instagram promotions more successful? Here are a couple of tricks to increase the effectiveness of advertising:

1. Thoroughly analyze the post selection. The photo or video should appeal to the users who are targeted for the product. For young people, something creative and bright; for older people, something more calm.
2. Describe your product clearly and concisely, without unnecessary information.
3. Set the publication time for when there is a “peak hour” on Instagram. For example, Friday/Saturday evening.
4. Add information about discounts or bonuses. You can set a time limit for the promotion (for example, only 24 hours).
5. Before publishing the promotional post, conduct a couple of surveys to identify customer preferences.

To launch a promotion on Instagram, you only need 10 clicks in the app. To make marketing more successful, you need to approach it with intelligence, namely knowing the tricks that will make your target audience pay attention to you.