How to Retarget Audiences With Instagram Ads
Published on February 24, 2016
Instagram is an incredibly valuable resource to marketers. Its user base is young, hungry, and growing, and it’s a great way to introduce yourself and your business to potential customers in a low-pressure, visually interesting way.
But did you know that you can also use Instagram for direct marketing? And if you’ve already got a Facebook Ads campaign, getting out the word on Instagram is remarkably easy, allowing you to retarget audiences for a more direct, personalized appeal.
Let’s talk about retargeting, and how you can start using Instagram to retarget your ideal audience.
What is Retargeting?
We’ve told you about retargeting, also sometimes called remarketing, before. It’s one of the tricky – and most effective – ways that Facebook Ads really work, allowing you to target users who have already shown an interest in your site.
If you have Facebook Pixel built into your website, you can track the unique visitors who spend time or engage with your site. Using that traffic data, you can then set up Facebook Ads to re-target these users, showing them your ads on their feeds to gently re-engage them, helpfully nudging them into completing their business with you.
To get started using Facebook Ads, check out our helpful explainer. Once you’re all set – and you’ve got a healthy Instagram account – here’s how to start retargeting users with Instagram.
How Do I Retarget Using Instagram Ads?
Once you have Facebook Pixel running on your site, you can create custom audience lists. Simply go to Pixel, then Create Audience, and select “Website Traffic” for the audience type. From there, you can get more specific, from selecting everyone who visits your landing page within a certain window to people who engaged with a specific page on your site.
Next, use Facebook Power Editor to create your campaign. First, follow the steps: Select your audience (the group that you’re retargeting) and your goals (clicks to website, website conversions, etc.).
It’s now time to build your ad sets. Start by setting your daily budget and schedule, then select your custom audience and set the ad placement to Instagram. Before you go any further, make sure that you’re actually retargeting enough users to make this campaign worthwhile. After all, many Facebook users don’t have Instagram accounts. A good rule of thumb is to wait for your Facebook Pixel to capture an audience of at least 20 Instagram users.
After all of this is set up, connect your business’ Instagram account to your Facebook by selecting Add An Account and supplying the requested information (generally just your username and password). You can run an Instagram ad directly from your Facebook account, but this tends to look a little unprofessional and won’t lead to the results you want to see, so we advise against it. Once you’re ready to design your ad, just select your Instagram account as the destination.
Once your audience and your ad set are to your specifications, design your ad as you would a Facebook ad, with engaging written copy and a compelling visual. There are a few design rules to keep in mind with Instagram; namely, limit text to 20% of your ad, and set the image size to 1080 x 1080.
Once your beautiful new ad is ready to get the word out, launch the ad by clicking Review Changes – in the top-right corner of Power Editor – and following the prompts.
With a little planning and a solid content marketing strategy, you now have a powerful new tool to guide your ideal audience back to your site.
Are you looking to boost your SEO or stand out on social media? Why not drop Geek a line? Our team is here and eager to help with all of your content marketing needs.
