How to run ads on instagram and facebook

Advertising on Instagram and Facebook can be effective ways of marketing your business or gaining more followers and likes online. Over 2 billion people are on Facebook, and over 1 billion are on Instagram, making it a massive opportunity to have more people see your products, services, or brand.

However, to run effective ads, it is not just a matter of creating an ad campaign and waiting for the results. There are different possibilities of advertising on the major platforms, and it is crucial to know how to use all the possibilities depending on the audience that is targeted.

Below, I will walk you through how to set up and manage Facebook and Instagram ads, as well as strategies for creating winning ads.

Choose Your Objective

Before any advertising campaign can be developed, you need to determine what you want out of it. As with any digital ad platform, you have to select an objective or goal of your ads before you go on to create your campaign.

Common objectives for Facebook and Instagram ads include:Common objectives for Facebook and Instagram ads include:

Traffic: Traffic people to a location such as your website or physical store.
Engagement: Increase the engagement rate of your posts, including the number of likes, comments, shares, and other reactions.
Conversions: Next, call people to action to take some direct action like buying a product or subscribing to your newsletter.
Brand awareness: Generate awareness of your brand, products, or services among the target market.
Lead generation: This will involve collecting e-mails or phone numbers of the interested prospects.

Ensure that you are always aware of which of those outcomes is more important for each campaign that you develop. One of the decisions that you make will determine how the platform optimizes your ads or the reach of your ads.

Create Your Ad Accounts

To start creating ads on Instagram or Facebook, you first need to set up advertising accounts:To start creating ads on Instagram or Facebook, you first need to set up advertising accounts:

Facebook Ads Manager

All the ads for Facebook and Instagram are from one account, which is the Ads Manager account. Therefore, go to Facebook’s Ads Manager and either create a new ad account or use one connected to your business page or personal profile. You will pick the payment option, decide on the currency and time zone, and consent to Facebook’s advertising policies to complete customizing your ad account.

Instagram Business Profile

You also need to ensure your business account on Instagram is created before starting to advertise on Instagram. For instance, go to the application settings and change the profile to a business one. This unlocks important metrics about your followers and posts that are crucial for deciphering your Instagram ad performance.

Link your Instagram account along with your existing Facebook pages to the Ads Manager to operate both at once. The campaigns you have been building and analyzing together with Facebook and Instagram are now accessible via your central dashboard.

Choose Your Placement

In Facebook Ads Manager, you can select whether you want to target only your audience on Facebook, only on Instagram, or on both. You can choose this when creating your campaign or ad set for the first time.

The choice of advertising platforms should be based on audience, content, and overall marketing goals. Here are the key factors to consider for placement:Here are the key factors to consider for placement:

Facebook only:

Broader reach potential
Desktop and mobile access
The targeting of audiences is more refined.

Instagram only:

Targeting that is based on the users’ interest and their interaction with the app.
Highly engaged mobile audience.
Creative that can be done in vertical, short video, or carousel.

Facebook + Instagram:

It also means that the messages would have to be posted in both networks with the hope that their respective followers would see them. Make up for each platform's advantage to the best of their capabilities. Retargeting with Facebook and Instagram combined.

Try various placement combinations for your campaign and find out which placement combination is most liked by people that gives the maximum conversion rate at the lowest cost. Then optimize towards placements that will yield the highest return according to your goals.

Refine Your Targeting

Now, let’s find out who should see the ads using targeting tools available in Ads Manager. This includes tweaking the target audience that will be targeted in a campaign or even at the ad set level.

Demographic targeting options on Facebook and Instagram include:Demographic targeting options on Facebook and Instagram include:

Age
Location
Gender
Languages

Sophisticated interest and activity

Interests and actions can be targeted regarding profiles and posting specifically to Instagram and Facebook. In the case of a hair salon, you could reach out to those who have interacted with Instagram sticks concerning hair and cosmetics, for instance.

Another amplification targeting method is lookalike audiences, which create audiences based on the contact details of customers, visitors to a website, or people who already interact with the accounts. Facebook targets other users who “resemble” the characteristics of your source audience for growth.

In other words, detailed targeting makes your ads appear for audiences more likely to derive value from the associated brand, product, or post. However, having a very specific target audience can also greatly limit the possible reach. Experiment with the targeting options and fine-grained targeting options to maximize the value and volume.

Design Your Ad Creative

Finally, it is the entertaining and innovative part—creating your advertisements!
The form of ad creative that you develop will heavily depend on the type of platform and the format you intend to use. On Facebook and Instagram, you can create as basic as text and image ads and as complex as captivating video ads or ads in Stories format.

Here are the essential elements every effective digital ad creative needs:Here are the essential elements every effective digital ad creative needs:

Attention-grabbing visuals
A good title or introduction
Well-defined customer benefit or value proposition
A powerful and unambiguous call to action

The description has to convey a clear and compelling reason for the target audience to engage. Lastly, lead them with a single clear call-to-action button associated with a specific conversion objective, such as visiting your website.

Experiment with the following changes to the core elements above to discover what image, words, and message get clicks and sales. Ad iterations can be done using metrics to make progress on improving the metrics continually.

Monitor performance and optimize

However, as your advertisement impressions, engagement rates, and conversion rates on Facebook and Instagram increase, it is important to understand the metrics defining their real value.

Ads Manager provides detailed performance indicators for understanding how individual ads and entire campaigns are performing:Ads Manager provides detailed performance indicators for understanding how individual ads and entire campaigns are performing:

Impressions: How often ads were placed on screen.
Reach: The total number of individuals who somehow had a chance to view ads.
Clicks & CTR: How often ads were placed on screen.
Conversions: Particular activities adopted, such as buying.
CPC and CPM: Pay per click and per impression.

It is advised to compare these metrics across targeting groups, placements, creatives, and formats. Determine the factors that make some results more in line with your objectives.

Common optimization tactics include:

Suspend ineffective placements or creatives.

- Bid higher and set a higher budget for winning ads
- Subdivide targeting to the interested users.
- Switch out creative message or imagery.
- It is advisable to set the rules to be automatically directed towards the goal of conversions.

Through constant check and optimization, one is able to achieve a greater return on investment on ad spending in the long run. Don't launch and leave!

Sometimes, the Efficient Administration of Ads Requires Time and Patience.

As we have explained in detail above, it is much more than signing in to the accounts Instagram and Facebook and typing in your credit card number. Many factors related to goals, audience, message, and insights have to be taken into account in order to deliver tangible value.

And proper optimization means constant improvement based on insights derived from metrics associated with concrete business outcomes. However, the brands that are ready for experimenting and changing their strategies get incredible visibility and sales from reaching out to these platforms loyal and vast audiences.

Therefore, invest the appropriate amount of time and money needed to get the most out of your advertisements on Instagram and Facebook. After following these steps, you will be ready to communicate with your clients efficiently in the new media age. But also time-consuming and consistent to unleash their full potential for your brand.