Many businesses are now turning to Instagram for new leads and customers. The platform is undergoing significant growth, and using Instagram Ads is a great way to reach people that other methods can’t. But a lot of people make mistakes with Instagram Ads, so we want to highlight these mistakes for you so that you can avoid them.
Not Aligning with Business Goals
A lot of people that use Instagram Ads do not align their advertising with their business goals. You can create some awesome Instagram Ads, but if there is no alignment with your business goals, then you are wasting your time.
So think about how your Instagram Ads can align with your overall goals. Do you want to increase the amount of awareness of your brand? Do you want to increase the amount of followers on your Instagram account? Or is your main goal to drive a lot more traffic to your website so that you can generate more email marketing leads?
It is not difficult to create goals for your Instagram advertising campaigns, and you must do that. Take the time out to think about what you really want to achieve from your Instagram Ads. To do this, ask yourself these questions:
- What results do you want from your Instagram Ads?
- Do you want new customers or existing customers to purchase again?
- Do you want to increase the traffic to your website?
Not Targeting the Correct Audience
You can easily identify your target audience when you use Instagram Ads. But to do this properly, you need to have a good idea of who your audience are and what they are looking for. A lot of Instagram advertisers don’t spend enough time on this and end up targeting the wrong audience.
To identify the right audience for your business, take a look at the products and services that you offer. Then ask yourself these questions:
- What needs does your product or service fill for people?
- What problems do you solve, and what pain points do you alleviate?
- What kind of person would get the most out of your products?
Another good thing to do is to take a close look at what your competitors are doing. Who are their customers?
For your own customer base, you need to know the demographics. This includes:
- Age range
- Gender
- Location
- Education
- Income
- Interests
Getting Ad Content Wrong
Even if you really know your audience well (which you must) it is still possible to make mistakes with the content of your ads and a lot of advertisers do this. You must provide content in your Instagram ads that will connect with your audience.
Your content must accurately reflect your products and services and your brand positioning. Also, it is essential that you do not overhype your content and make it too sales orientated. The aim is to provide value and inspire Instagram users.
Your Instagram Ads need persuasive captions. When you are creating your captions, be sure that it reflects the image in your ad. Be sure to use the right hashtags and provide a compelling call to action.
Ignoring the quality of Images and Videos
It’s all about the visuals. Advertisers know that Instagram is a visual platform, but a lot of them do not pay enough attention to the quality of their images and videos. There is no excuse for this, as there are plenty of tools around to make your visuals great.
Pay special attention to the lighting. There are apps available to adjust this. Make your videos interesting by providing different perspectives. Consider what is in the background for your images and videos.
Image Enhancement Tools You Can Use For Great Instagram Ads
You need to make your Instagram Ads look as great as you can. A good-looking ad will always be more appealing to Instagram users than a bland one. We are going to discuss a number of editing tools here and don’t worry because you don’t need any graphic design skills or any other skills to use them.
Images are going to figure in your Instagram Ads a lot, so it is very important that they really look good. You don’t need to be a Photoshop expert to enhance images and there is no need to pay a designer to do this work for you as the tools we will discuss are really easy to use and very effective.
Canva
You need to add text to your images to help persuade users to take the action that you want. This is easy to do with Canva. In fact, Canva provides hundreds of professionally designed Instagram Post and Ad layouts to get you started.
Canva provides a free account to get you started. To access all the Canva Pro templates, including those in the screen above, you’ll need to upgrade starting at only $12.99 a month.
Superimpose
When you have the Superimpose app, you can do some amazing edits with your images. One of the things you can do is to extract the foreground image by removing it from the background, and then add this to another image.
If you want to rotate foreground images, then you can do this with Superimpose. You can also use the tool to blend images as well. The tool also has some great masking features which are fun to experiment with. It will cost you $0.99 to purchase the app for either Android or iOS devices.
Afterlight
There are some good filter features and other editing features within Instagram itself, but if you want to go beyond this, then you have to get Afterlight. Afterlight has many unique lighting effects and filters that you can use to really bring your images to life.
You can get the Afterlight app for only $0.99, and it is well worth this small cost. The app works on both iOS and Android phones and tablets. When you purchase Afterlight you will get 128 frames, 74 filters, 15 adjustment tools, 78 textures and 15 preset cropping tools.
