How to Run Instagram Ads On a Small Budget

Instagram is highly competitive. So, even if you use Instagram ads it won’t be easy to get decent results. You may have to be creative in your approach and formulate a nice strategy. Most businesses do not have thousands of dollars lying around to use on ads. So, whatever little amount they spend it needs to be optimal and should help it get a wider reach on Instagram

These tips are meant to give you some idea or rather a starting point to start thinking of ways to reduce the cost of Instagram ads and how to work within a budget. Instagram ads can help businesses gain popularity on Instagram. So, let’s check them out.

Understand Your Business

One of the best ways to reduce the cost of advertisement is by using them optimally. An important step to do this is to understand your business thoroughly. By this, we mean that you need to know the USP and the aesthetics of your business. This is because Instagram is a social media platform that is highly dependent on visuals. So, if you can figure out what’s the best way to make your business or products look good on Instagram then you can spend money on that specific kind of ad rather than trying to pay a hefty amount for all kinds of ads. 

Let’s take an example. If your product can be easily understood and is quite appealing as an image then you may not need to pay for a video ad. For example, if you are selling hoodies or t-shirts with different designs then an image might suffice. If you are selling stuff that requires demonstration then it may be a good idea to create an entertaining and informative video about your product or service and then run a video ad. Understanding what kind of ad will be better for your brand will help in reducing the costs.

Use Insights Before Paying For Ads

Alright, we decided to include this tip because this is pretty much the basic strategy of social media marketing. You need to understand your audience and analyze what they like to see or which Instagram posts are getting more engagement. Instagram business accounts have the ability to use Instagram insights. 

This is an analytics tool given by Instagram for free. This is a very helpful tool. So, if you do not have an Instagram business account we suggest you get one soon. Don’t worry it’s easy. It is completely free. 

Once you have your business profile you can access Instagram insights. It will help you understand your followers much better. You will be able to see which posts are performing the best and understand the demographic of your audience. Having all this knowledge before starting the ad campaign can help you eliminate unnecessary targeting and thus save some cost for you. 

You can even remove certain demographics which cost more to target. Once you have understood how removing certain demographics affects the cost per result you can take note of it and use this strategy in future ads. So, better targeting and removing unnecessary demographics can help with optimizing ad budgeting and also reduce the cost of the ads.

Be Creative

Instagram is highly competitive. Thousands of brands are competing for users’ Instagram feeds daily. Every company wants its ads or posts to be ranked above the other. This can make it quite tough if you have just got into advertising on Instagram. So, you should always try to create ads that will stop users from scrolling down and take a look at them. This can give you a competitive edge and help a lot in reducing the cost of your ads. 

To get some inspiration you can always check out what other decently performing companies in your category are doing. This can give you the inspiration to put your own creativity and spin to it. Facebook’s creative hub and ad library have a collection of high-performing ads which generate good engagement from the users

The Creative Hub is a nice tool as here you can create previews and test mockups for future ads. This can help you visualize your ad even before you use it in your ad campaign. If you are looking for some inspiration you can find it here as well on the Facebook ad library. These ads have been performing quite well and you can read about the company if you like. 

The ads which have been run on Instagram will have the identifying Instagram symbol on them. The main takeaway from this is that you have to test and see what kind of ads are interesting and engaging enough for audiences to not ignore them. You have yourself experienced it while using Instagram. Some ads are just well made. So, always try to be creative with it. 

Understand That Frequency Drives Cost Per Click

The frequency of an ad is proportional to the percentage increase in cost per click. So, what is this frequency? Well, frequency is basically impressions divided by reach. Impressions are the total number of users that have seen the ad. Reach is the total number of unique users that have seen the ad. So, in simple terms frequency just means the average amount of time a single user is seeing your ads. Now, you can understand why increasing frequency is not only going to increase the cost per click but also decrease the click-through rate. 

This is because the user becomes immune to an ad if it is displayed multiple times. So, the more a user sees an ad the more is the decrease in the chance of them clicking on the ad. This is why always keep an eye on the frequency of your ad. If the frequency of the as starts getting high, something is not working. Try to change the ad content Viz. the image, video or graphics etc. Or if you need time to analyze the situation juts out a pause on the ad campaign and rethink the strategy. This can significantly affect the cost of your ad campaign. So, always remember to take note of the frequency of your ads. 

Remember these tips are not mutually exclusive rather they will work best in combination. So, set up a strategy for your business and use these tips to tweak it so that you can use your Instagram and budget optimally or rather stop overspending on it. We wish you all the best.