You may have seen recently that Instagram have added Instagram Business Pages to their offering, bringing Instagram more in line with Facebook. Users that have a Facebook business page linked to their profile are now being prompted to convert their Instagram pages into Business profiles.
What are the main benefits of Instagram Business Pages?
An Instagram Business Page is an attempt to make Instagram more like Facebook for businesses. The key benefits for the user is the access to insights and stats on your fans, when they are online, reach and impressions of posts etc. The real reason that Instagram have introduced this however is to make it easier for businesses to run Instagram ads.
Running a basic ad on Facebook is very simple, you just select boost post from under a photo, select your budget and away you go. Previously to run an ad on Instagram was quite a bit more work and many people were unaware that this was an option. It needed to be created in Power Editor and even at that still was not extremely clear as the option to advertise on Instagram was only available once you had selected a specific goal – “Increase clicks to your website”.
Setting up an Instagram Ad Campaign
The introduction of Instagram Business pages has changed all of this and now ads can be created in similar fashion to Facebook. Under all of your posted photos you will now see two tabs – Promote and View Insights.
Selecting promote then brings you through a step-by-step process to create and ad.
First of all you are asked “What do you want people to do?” At present there are just two options available – visit your website and call or visit your business”. Down the line we would anticipate we will also see the introduction of further options such as “Increase followers on your page.”
Select the web page you wish to send users to, your audience and your budget and you are good to go.
One thing that we noted was that the saved card details does not transfer over from your Facebook Business Page account to your Instagram Business account, so you may need to link up your card again the first time you create an ad through Instagram.
This is the process for promoting an Instagram post that you have already published but to create an ad that is not published on your profile feed, you will still need to use Power Editor for this.
What next for Instagram Business Pages?
Expect to see more and more features rolled out for Instagram Business Pages as they look to monetize the platform even further. With it being easier than ever to promote your posts, logic would suggest that pages are soon going to see a decrease in organic reach on Instagram to incentivise the use of the ‘promote’ function.
One new feature that we are sure to see is that at present the Instagram ads must send the user to the website or give contact details. There is no option to advertise the page to increase followers at present, but this is something that will come in the not too distant future.
For personal users, again logic would suggest that you are about to see a lot more ads on Instagram.
Getting the most from Instagram Business Pages
As ever, to make the most of this new change you have to embrace it. Instagram ask you for an email address, a contact telephone number and an address that can be displayed on your page and will pop up when the user clicks on the new ‘contact’ button which displays at the top of the page under your follower count. Make sure these details are up to date and only submit the contact details if you are going to be in a position to reply to the queries you get. For example, submitting an email address that you only check every so often is not worthwhile as users will want quick turnaround time on their queries.
According to statistics provided by Instagram for 2o16 there are 300 million active Instagram users daily and an average of 4.2 billion likes per day. You can check out the full 2016 Instagram statistics here. There is a huge audience out there, so don’t be afraid to try claim so of it for your business.
Try out the different advertising options and see what works for you. If you are selecting the ad type to send people to your website then you need to create an advertising audience who will see your ad. This audience is based on demographics and interests so this may take some tweaking to see what works for your business.
For the ad that sends people to your contact details, you just simply have to chose the location that you would like the ad to run. This is a bit more straight forward as a lot of people will use the surrounding area of their shop but don’t be afraid to be a bit ambitious with this feature, it could be an idea to run ads near competitors or in locations you plan to set up in to see how they perform.
Creative Digital Marketing Agency – The Link Marketing
If you would like help with building and making the most of your online presence, get in touch with The Link Marketing today, we would love to hear from you and have a chat about how we can help turn your online presence into sales. The Link Marketing are an award winning creative digital marketing agency based in Dublin, Ireland. We work with clients both from Ireland and abroad.