An Instagram Ads Checklist for Creating a Perfect Ad

Instagram offers marketers a unique opportunity to reach their audience through the making of advertisement campaigns. Since Instagram ads look similar to the posts, they become less invasive and more compelling for the users to check out than their counterparts.

However, setting up ads on this platform needs proper thought. From selecting your target audience to choosing the image insert, one needs to focus on every aspect thoroughly to create an attractive ad. One missing piece in the puzzle and will not give you results. Below are a few vital aspects that can help you set up an excellent campaign.

Choose an Editor

The primary thing is to decide the number of ads you plan to run. If you manage many campaigns, you will need more time and effort to streamline the ads. More ads also mean usage of third-party apps that can help you in fulfilling the basic needs.

Establish an Objective

A few of the objectives are as follows: –

  • Boosting your posts
  • Aiming to send people to your site
  • Get your app installs.
  • A surge in conversion on your website
  • Get high video views.
  • Increase the engagement of your application with the viewers
  • Establishing an objective helps in streamlining your strategies and get you to your goals faster.

Select Your Audience

Instagram advertising might confuse you with which target audience to go after. Suddenly you have access to all the users on Instagram, and keeping one determined audience might occur as tricky. To test it, you can start by playing around with the type of audience till you find the right group.

You can consider the vital factors while selecting the ideal target audience, such as location, gender, age, language, education, relation, financial status, profession and qualification, hometown, ethnicity, interests, behaviors, connections, among others.

Moreover, you can even create a custom audience with whom you have interacted through your business, or even a lookalike audience to reach new people eventually. However, one should keep in mind that to attract a more contemporary audience, one needs to master the art of Instagram posts and stories. Getting more likes and comments on posts can easily lure viewers into checking out your content. You can even choose parties, like various sites, to earn likes from real people on your posts.

Calculate the Budget

One can choose a daily budget or a lifetime budget for the campaign. A daily budget ensures the ad runs throughout the day, whereas a lifetime budget ensures the ad runs for a particular period.

Another vital element one should remember setting your schedule. You should know when the campaign will start and when to end it. With the ad scheduling option, one can easily make the ad run at a specific time of the day or even particular days of the week, depending on your goals.

The influencers that stress who will see your ads are as follows: –

  • Link clicks ensure that the ads get delivered accordingly to get the highest clicks on your website at the lowest possible cost. The Instagram algorithm is responsible for this tactic.
  • Impressions are when a user can see repeated ads on his feed all day long. In such cases, you only have to use the impressions option to target the same person with the same data. Experts mostly believe that such a strategy helps in boosting brand recall.
  • A unique daily reach is when a viewer will see your ad only once a day. They might see the ad much time in consequent days, but not more than once per day.

Since many businesses target a similar audience, one must carefully contemplate the market space and choose strategies after thorough brainstorming.

Moreover, you can either choose standard or accelerated mode to deliver your ad. The standard method provides your ad throughout the day. On the contrary, the accelerated way focuses on reaching the audience quickly through time-sensitive ads.

Curate an Ad Creative

This is the creative aspect of an ad. Your ad should complement your pre-determined objective. Instagram offers many options for your ad, such as single image or video, collection, and carousel. Once you choose this, the next step is to upload the imagery. A few fundamental requirements one needs to fulfill your ad imagery includes the following: –

  • File type, such as .jpeg, and .png.
  • Inclusion of text or caption with recommended characters not more than 125, although the maximum characters are 2,200.
  • A square image or a video should include recommended image size of 1080 x 1080 pixels.
  • A landscape format of image or video should possess the recommended image size.

Build the Page 

After the ad creative, you will have to build your page effectively and set up links. Put in your website URL to drive traffic. In case you are using any marketing automation software, ensure creating a unique tracking URL with UTM parameters to track your traffic and conversions from the respective ad efficiently. Moreover, add a catchy caption that can grab the viewers’ attention without needing to click the more option.

Select a Call to Action

A call-to-action option can vary depending on the business type. A few examples are: –

  • Apply Now
  • Learn More
  • Contact Us
  • Book Now
  • Watch More
  • Download
  • Sign Up

Remember that your call to action should merge appropriately with your objective. Once you fulfill all these options, preview your ad to ensure a perfect fit. Never publish the ad before previewing it, as certain discrepancies may pop up at the last moment.

Furthermore, you can go to the advanced options to edit the tags, change the display link, setting up any sponsors, enter the URL parameters, and opting for pixel tracking. Confirm the ad, and your ad will get presented to the Insta fam.

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One must remember that they can always tweak the aspects of the ad. Once the ads are out, keeps a keen eye to notice any errors and alter them using the metrics.

Author’s Bio:

Pete Campbell is a social media manager who has worked as a database administrator in the IT industry and has immense knowledge about email marketing and Instagram promotion. He loves to travel, write and play baseball