Recently updated: August 27th, 2024
At present, Instagram is the best social media platform out there as it brings the highest audience engagement rates. The engagement rate on Instagram is 58% higher than that of Facebook and 2000% higher than that of Twitter. However, the problem is that as more businesses, professionals, bloggers, and social influencers are leveraging Instagram’ popularity and high engagement rate, it’s getting extremely harder to grab the attention of the right audience and encourage them to follow your account.
Though there are various ways to grow the list of followers, Instagram ads are the least talked about but among the most effective SMO strategies. Most often, the focus is on increasing followers organically without paying a dime. However, there comes a time when your Instagram account does not receive much engagement, and your follower list does not grow either, no matter how compelling content you post on Instagram. At such times, Instagram Ads is the one thing that can revive your account with new followers and more engagement.
Hence, when you feel like your business account on Instagram is getting no attention, we recommend you use the Instagram advertising strategy to build your following and kick-start the engagement. Now, you might be thinking – how do I get more followers through Instagram ads?
In this guide, we will discuss everything you must know about how to create Instagram ads to expand your follower list that consists of potential leads and customers.
1. Identify the Right Instagram Audience
Any business succeeds when it delivers its message or marketing content to the right people. Running Instagram ads blindly in front of random people will take you nowhere. When you run ads in front of a specific audience, it increases the chances that you will be able to entice potential followers to like your content and follow your account.
Even if it means you need to spend more on Instagram ads and pay more per follower, you should do it. Why? Once you get a follower interested in your services and products, you will earn a lot more in exchange for that small amount. So, it is better to spend more on high-quality followers than less money on followers who may not bring any revenue to you.
Do you want to get an idea about how much Instagram ads can cost you?
Read this: How Much Does It Cost to Advertise on Instagram?
Now, the question arises – how do I find the right audience on Instagram? Let’s find out.
2. Create Buyer Persona to Find the Right Audience
To build a high-quality following, you need to define and create your buyer persona. A buyer persona refers to the profile of your typical customer. To create the right buyer persona, ask the following questions:
- What do my ideal customers look like?
- What do my customers do?
- What age group do my customers belong to?
- Where are my potential customers concentrated?
- What kind of jobs do my customers do?
- What does my customer’s home life look like?
- Are my typical customers single or married?
- Do my customers have kids?
- What common hobbies do my customers have?
- What type of questions do my customers typically have?
- What challenges do my customers face?
- What common interests do my customers have?
- How do my customers make decisions?
This list can vary based on what kind of business you do and what kind of customers you serve.
In short, your goal is to define your customer profile. Once you complete this goal, you can focus on creating ads they are more likely to enjoy and engage with. And once they know you post great ads and content, they will be more willing to become your follower and eventually your customer.
3. Grow Your Audience
When you know the buyer persona you need to target, you are ready to build your audience. But defining a persona is not going to build the audience itself. You need to work on it. You need to find out the sources where you can find your audience and get them to follow you.
To build the audience from scratch, you can try different sources, such as:
- Existing Facebook Audience
- Lists from Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
A. Use Existing Facebook Audience
To get started, you can leverage the Facebook advertising system because your Instagram followers can be the same audience that you are already targeting on Facebook.
Here are the steps to build an Instagram audience through Facebook:
- Open Facebook Ads Manager.
- Go to Audiences.
- Click Create Audience.
- Click Custom Audience from the drop-down menu.
- Select Engagement.
- Choose Instagram Business Profile.
- Select the relevant Instagram Business Account.
- Enter “5” in the Past Days box.
- Write a short descriptive name for your target audience.
- Click on Create Audience.
Once you do this, Facebook will track the social media users who take any action on your post or your profile, such as double-tapping, posting comments, saving posts, sending direct messages, or clicking the link in your bio.
It will yield amazing results because it helps you convert all your organic actions on Instagram, such as sharing posts and uploading stories, into actions that will allow you to bring new leads for your business.
B. Utilize Lists from Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
If you have already uploaded CRM to Facebook, Facebook is already helping you find the exact people you need to target and increase your follower count on Instagram. If not, it is time to upload your CRM to Facebook so that it can start finding the target audience based on the email lists.
In general, most CRMs come integrated with email marketing software. If your CRM is integrated with the email marketing software, your work is already done. If not, you should also focus on the email addresses you have accessed through newsletter subscriptions and other campaigns.
4. Create Instagram Ads that Your Target Audience Loves
At this point, you know who your ideal customers are, and you have established the audience on Instagram. Now, it is time to create eye-catching advertisements to increase your follower count. When creating ads, you do not always need full-blown video ads. To find the best performing ads type, you need to test a variety of Instagram ads.
When creating an ad, you must make sure that you specifically design it for Instagram so that it does not seem to appear out of the blue. Otherwise, you will distract Instagram users rather than grabbing their attention.
An Instagram ad features high-quality photos along with engaging Instagram captions that encourage viewers to spend a few seconds on your content and follow your account. You should prefer creative content that features people because photos that contain people are known to perform better than those that do not.
When posting an ad on Instagram, make sure to tag the account name in the ad copy to make it easier for people to follow you.
Here are a few tricks to target people who will find your content beneficial for them and feel the urge to follow your account:
Surprise people to get their attention
A post with generic content will not do much to gain the attention of new followers. So, you have to try something that includes people and movement. Or something unique and interesting that makes people stop scrolling and look at your post. Challenge them, puzzle them, inspire them, contest them, or bring revelations that they find interesting. Whatever you do, make sure that you maintain high quality.
Give People the Reason to Follow You
Be utterly clear about your offer. What do you have to offer? Are you going to host a webinar? Are you conducting an interesting survey? Are you hosting an event? Are you offering discounts or coupons? Are you launching a sale soon?
Whatever it is, make sure that you are upfront about your offer so that your audience receives a clear message about what they will get from you and why they should follow you.
Ask for the Like, Share, and Follow
There is no harm in asking or reminding your audience to interact with and follow your content. Sometimes, people find your posts intriguing, and they spend time reading your caption but then scroll to the next post.
It happens because sometimes people do not think about taking any action. However, if you specifically ask them, they might do it happily.
Create Instagram Shop
If you are a business or entrepreneur and sell products, it is worth creating an Instagram shop to make the customer shopping experience smooth and easy. When people find your Instagram ads interesting, they might like to have a tour of your product catalog.
With an Instagram Shop, you can easily invite them to look at your products and let them decide if they find your business worth a try.
To learn more about Instagram Shop,
Read our post: Why & How to Use Instagram Shopping to Boost Your Online Business
To Conclude
You must make your Instagram ads engaging and native to the platform to serve the Instagram audience. Be creative, keep innovating, and find new ways to keep people engaged and grow your followers.
Be consistent with posting frequency. When you disappear for so long, people start forgetting why they have followed you. When they think that your account is not valuable to them, they will unfollow you.
Once you find the right buyer persona and build the audience through the existing customers and subscribers, you will get a head start. When you start posting Instagram ads once in a while and engaging content regularly, it will help increase your follower count.
