Instagram has more than 400 million users that share 80 million posts daily, making it a compelling platform for advertisers. The platform itself says its ads can help drive awareness and increase customers among a highly engaged audience. Instagram offers photo ads, video ads, carousel ads, and stories ads.

 

Reasons to Use Instagram Ads

 

Audience Growth

The key reason brands advertise on Instagram is the efficiency of this marketing channel. It’s one of the fastest growing social media platforms, with over 250 million daily active users in June 2017 according to TechCrunch.

Constantly Adapting

In Instagram’s monthly updates, you will find that the platform is updated regularly to provide a better user experience and making advertising even more efficient.

Attention

Instagram is a highly engaging social media platform that helps your brand receive a lot of attention and engage with new users.  According to Pew Research, 51% of Instagram users access the platform daily, and 35% say they look at the platform several times a day.

Additional Instagram advertising stats:
– 95 million photos and videos are shared on Instagram per day.
– Currently, Instagram has 1 million monthly active advertisers—up from just 200,000 in   March 2016.
– eMarketer projects that Instagram’s global mobile ad revenues will reach $2.81 billion this year, accounting for over 10 percent of parent company Facebook’s global ad revenues.

Targeting

Instagram ads use Facebook’s advertising system, which most likely has the most powerful targeting ability. You can specify your target audience’s location, demographics, interests, behaviors, and more. You can even target people who have bought from you or interacted with you and others similar to them.

 

Instagram Feed Ad Formats

 

Carousel Ad

Carousel ads bring another layer of depth to campaign where people can swipe to view up to 10 additional photos or videos in a single ad. They are a great way to accomplish business goals by highlighting several products and specific details to give them a considerable boost. You can recognize these ads by the small dots under the image, indicating that there is more than one image.

 

These ads provide an excellent opportunity to:

-To create a step-by-step illustration of how to use your product
-Tell a story about your brand in several images or videos
-Give a good sense of the essence of your promoted offer
-Lower your Instagram ads cost

Specs:

Caption: up to 125 characters
Media type: image or video
Recommended image/video resolution: min. 600 x 600 pixels, max. 1080 x 1080 pixels
Image format: .jpg or .png
Minimum number of cards: 2
Maximum number of cards: 10
Image ratio: 1:1
Video aspect ratio: 1:1
Minimum video length: 3 seconds
Maximum video length: 60 seconds
Video thumbnail image ratio: Should match the aspect ratio of your video. If not, thumbnail auto resize is available.

 

Single Ad

Exactly how it sounds, these are ads with a single image in landscape or square format. This is the most widely used ad type and consists of an image, ad copy, and a call-to-action button.

 

Specs:

Caption: up to 125 characters
Media type: image
Recommended image size: 1080 x 1080 pixels or 1200 x 628 pixels (the typical Facebook ad image size)
Image format: .jpg or .png
Max. file size: 30 MB

 

Video Ad

Instagram used to have a 15-second limit for video, but now videos can be up to 60 seconds long and shot in landscape or square format. They are an effective way to explain how your product or service works or simply share a fun and engaging message. Overall, this type of ad is known to catch users attention as they scroll through their feed.

 

Specs:

Caption: up to 125 characters
Media type: video
Recommended video resolution: 600 x 600 pixels (square) or 600 x 315 pixels (landscape)
Aspect Ratio: 1:1 (square) or 1.9:1 (landscape)
Minimum resolution: 600 x 600 pixels
Maximum resolution: 1080 x 1080 pixels
Minimum length: 3 seconds
Maximum length: 60 seconds
Maximum size: 4GB
Frame rate: 30fps max
File type: .mp4 container
Video: H.264 video compression, high profile preferred, square pixels, fixed frame rate, progressive scan
Audio: Stereo AAC audio compression, 128kbps + preferred

 

Slideshow Ad

Slideshow ads are looping video ads with up to 10 images and music. It’s almost like a carousel ad that scrolls on its own, with music. You can upload an existing slideshow or create a new slideshow. Facebook Ads Manager has an easy-to-use slideshow creator where you can select the images, music, video captions, and a thumbnail for your Instagram ad. You can also choose whether you’d like to images to transition or fade while changing.

Specs:

Caption: up to 125 characters
Media type: images + soundtrack
Image duration: up to 50 sec per image
Image size: min. 600 x 600 pixels, max. 1080 x 1080 pixels. If you use images of different sizes, your slideshow will be cropped to be square.
Music file format: WAV, MP3, M4A, FLAC, and OGG. You must have all legal rights necessary to use the song.

 

Lead Ads

Instagram lead ads help to collect valuable information from prospects without leading them off the Instagram platform. As someone clicks on your Lead Ad, they’ll be guided to a new page with a lead form that asks for their name and contact details (e.g. the person’s full name, email address, phone number, etc.)

Tip: When you create this form, there are several fields to fill in. Once you hit “Finish, you won’t be able to edit the lead form. You can use the “Save” button to save a draft of the lead form if you wish to edit it afterward.

When setting up Lead Ads, you’ll also need to include your company’s privacy policy (As you will be collecting user information).

Specs:

Caption: up to 125 characters
Media type: image
Recommended ad image size: 1080 x 1080 pixels or 1200 x 628 pixels (the typical Facebook ad image size)
Image format: .jpg or .png
Max. file size: 30 MB
Other requirements: Privacy policy

 

Stories Image Ad

In 2017, Instagram opened up Instagram Stories ads to businesses globally and people appear to be highly engaged while watching the stories from their followers. You can create image stories ads that contain up to six images to share your brands messaging in a fun and engaging way. There is not much customization you can do with these ads, making them very straightforward and simple to create.

Specs:

Caption: not currently available. Any text must be part of the image file
Format: Full-screen vertical ad (9:16)
Recommended Resolution: 1080 x 1920
Minimum Resolution: 600 x 1067
File types: .jpg or .png
Max. image size: 30MB
Photo content: visible for 5 seconds

 

Story Video Ad

Instagram stories video ads is a great way for your brand to stand out among all its peers’ advertising. With this format, you can upload a video or GIF of up to 15 seconds in length. Simply upload your video or GIF and choose a video thumbnail. The thumbnail you choose will be what people see before your video plays. It can influence a user’s decision to watch the ad. It’s an amazingly engaging way of showcasing your product, building your brand’s personality, and engaging your audiences by reminding them of your offers.

Specs:

Caption: not currently available. Any text must be part of the image file
Format: Full-screen vertical ad (9:16)
Recommended Resolution: 1080 x 1920
Minimum Resolution: 600 x 1067
File types: mp4 or .mov
Max. video size: 4GB
Max. video length: 15 seconds
Recommended Video Codecs: h.264, VP8
Recommended Audio Codecs: AAC, Vorbis

 

Key performance indicators (KPI) for marketing tells you how well you’re doing in relation to your overall marketing and business goals. Marketers use KPIs to understand what is selling, who’s buying, how they’re buying, and why they’re purchasing. They give you enough insight to make better decisions to prove and improve the ROI of your marketing efforts. Column Five Media recently reported how to measure five important KPIs and how improve each one.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

CLV is the net profit that a customer will generate for a business during the entire relationship with that customer. It can be calculated historically, over specific time periods, or it can be predictive. One of the most effective ways to boost LTV is by focusing on two areas: retention and upselling (add-ons and complementary products). The longer a customer continues to purchase from a company, the greater their lifetime value becomes. Incorporating a customer loyalty program can help you keep achieve this, increasing average purchase frequency (APF) and Average customer lifespan (ACL).

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

CAC is the cost of convincing a potential customer to buy a product or service. The online traffic you generate must be converted into sales, so make sure you’re focusing on boosting conversion rates to lower your CAC. When you try to improve your conversions, you need to optimize the landing pages you are directing traffic to. Construct A/B testing on the content, CTA layout, structure, testimonials, emails, etc. The other way is to retarget potential customers and receive attention through email and ad targeting. Referral programs are also a great way to lower CAC and grow revenue. When a customer refers two friends who then make a purchase, you’ve just gained three customers for the price of one.

Marketing ROI (MROI)

Marketing ROI is exactly what it sounds like, a way of measuring the return on investment from the amount a company spends on marketing. There are several benefits associated with using this measurement including justifying marketing spend, deciding what to spend on, comparing marketing efficiency with competitors and accountability. Analyze your data before, during, and after every marketing activity for every part of the marketing mix. Also, use the insights you derive to focus on efforts that bring the greatest returns.

Traffic-to-lead Conversions

This simple KPI is how many subscribers, leads, or users you are generating from your top-of-funnel efforts. The goal is to increase both traffic and conversion rate. Here are some common places a business might get visitors: email marketing, social media, blog post, etc. Once you identify where your leads are coming from, you want to make sure the pages they’re landing on are doing everything they can to capture a visitor’s interest.

Lead-to-Customer Conversions

Once you have leads, you need to turn them into customers. You’ll need a lead-nurturing system to guide leads through each stage of the sales funnel; Awareness, Interest, Decision, and Action. Make sure to segment your leads so you can offer more targeted content. Create content that solves specific issues for specific buyer personas. Lastly, engage with your leads often, 10 times on average to make the sale.

How to optimize voice search SEO

In the fast-changing world of search marketing, technology search engines have drastically improved its interpretation and serve results activated via voice and it’s becoming an important piece of a search marketing strategy. According to SEO Tribunal, it’s predicted by 2020 50% of all searched will be voice searches. So as it continues to grow, brands need to know how to implement a strategy that focuses on optimizing voice search.

 

What is voice search?

Voice search uses speech recognition technology to enable human speech into text. It analyzes the text to detect questions comments while connecting to external data sources such as search engines to find the relevant information. As a result, it translates that information into a list of results and fulfills the user’s intent.

 

What does this mean for marketers?

 

Use natural language.

When determining target keywords and content, keep in mind the conversational nature of voice searches. Voice-activated searches can be longer than 10 words so it matches with consumer searches more, and increases your rank. You need to be aware of how your audience speaks about your business, products, and services.

Incorporate Q&A.

Voice searches are more often in the form of a question, so it’s important to look at keywords in questions form as a part of your content strategy. Develop questions that searches may ask and make sure you have content that answers those questions.

Consider local.

Twenty-two percent of voice queries are for local content. Since users have local intent when searching on their mobile phones, you need to incorporate effective keywords. Research the phrases people use to describe the community around your location, landmarks around your business location, and titles of local institutions that are relevant to your business.

Use “near me” queries.

Eighty-eight percent of all “near me” searches are done on mobile. Incorporate “near me” in your title tags, meta descriptions, internal links, and anchor text to optimize local sources as mobile voice searches.

 

Findings based on an analysis of 18,639 landing pages

 

Landing pages are an essential tool in helping inbound marketers generate more leads and convert them into prospects and customers. A landing page is a web page that allows you to capture a visitor’s information through a lead-capture form (ads, social media, email link, etc.). It’s an effective way to target your audience, offer them something of value and convert a higher percentage of your visitors into leads. While also capturing analytics on demographic information and what they’ve converted on. The value and relevance of this offer has a major impact on the conversion rate, so it’s important to know what makes up a high performing landing page. Recently, Unbounce conducted a study of 18,639 lead gen and click-through landing pages to discover proprietary findings of specific attributes related to conversions.

 

What makes up a high performing landing page?

 

1. One Call-to-Action (CTA)

Pages with one call-to-action, meaning there’s only one place to click on your landing page, has an average conversion rate of 13.50%. While landing pages with 5+ links have an average conversion rate of 10.50%. This confirms landing pages that focus a visitor’s attention on one main call-to-action(or link) are more likely to earn conversions.  CTAs are the most important element of a landing page, as it’s the best way to get users to take the action. They can use all different types of messaging to attract attention such as “Start a free trial”, “Contact us to learn more”, or “Get a free quote”.

2. Fast Page Speed

It’s mandatory for your landing page to load within a few seconds. Efficient and speedy landing pages are more likely to earn conversions. While landing pages with an image are more visually appealing, oversized images can cause the page to load slowly. This can lead to visitors bouncing and fewer conversions. In fact, 82% of landing pages have at least one image that needs compressing. Landing pages that have no images that require compressing have an average conversion rate of 11.40%.  Pages with over 1MB of potential image compression have an average conversion rate of 9.80%. For more suggestions on how to reduce your page loading time, visit Google PageSpeed Insights.

3. Social Proof

Social proof (like photos of customers, testimonials, social media posts) establishes trust and ultimately persuade visitors to convert.  Pages that have indications of social proof in the form of copy have an average conversion rate of 12.50%. In comparison to pages without that only convert at 11.40% on average.

4. Email Traffic

Marketers can drive traffic to a landing page from a variety of sources like social media, paid media, direct, etc. However, specifically, emails produced the highest average conversion rate at 13.0%. One survey shows that email marketing is 40 times more successful at acquiring new clients than Facebook or Twitter.

5. Mobile Responsiveness

As of the first quarter of 2018, 51.77% of global web traffic originated from mobile devices, meaning a mobile responsive landing page is guaranteed to boost conversions. Mobile responsive landing pages are pages that are designed to display on mobile devices with minimal resizing, panning and scrolling. It’s re-arranging the elements of the page to comfortably fit within the confines of a smaller screen. Landing pages with a mobile page have an average conversion rate of 11.70%, in comparison to those that don’t have a mobile page which converts on average at 10.70%.

6. Lower Word Count

It’s reported that 29.5% of landing pages have too much copy, with an average conversion rate of 11.10%. Landing pages that are word-count-conscious convert on average at 14.30%. The content on a landing page should briefly explain the value of offer clearly, simply, and in a compelling way.