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to advertise on Instagram in 2023: The Complete Guide


Advertising on Instagram is big and hot right now. It’s no surprise that many people are trying to learn how to market on Instagram.

Instagram has more than 1 Billion active monthly users and offers digital marketers a great opportunity to reach their target audience.

It’s already changing the way we eat, #picturesFirst. And it’s about to change the way we advertise our business using visual content.

Here’s a step-by-step guide for advertising on Instagram if you have exhausted all your Instagram influencer marketing options or just want to explore new channels of marketing.

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Why advertise on Instagram?

Instagram and ecommerce are both visually driven and designed to appeal to a small audience. High-quality imagery is a key component of online shops that convert customers into buyers. It’s easy to repurpose these high-converting images, and learn how to advertise on Instagram via a photo-sharing site like Instagram.

Instagram advertising allows you to control where and who your ads are displayed. Your ads can be published directly from your account, which is a big advantage over paid partnerships. Only you can decide how much money to spend on ads and where to send them to people who click them.

Instagram ads can be a great tool for marketing your business.


  • Simple to use platform

  • Scalable pricing

  • Robust reporting to ensure you are constantly improving

Advertising on Instagram has one of the best advantages: you can reach thousands of users and not interrupt their browsing experience. Instagram ads look almost exactly the same as regular posts that are shared on the platform. Mobile Marketing Association discovered that native ads are more popular than traditional display ads. Users spend 40% more time engaging with them. This is a great stat to have for anyone looking to invest in new channels of advertising.

How much does it cost to advertise on Instagram?

Many businesses are curious about the cost of Instagram ads before making the plunge. Revealbot found that the average cost to run Instagram ads campaigns is:


  • $8.83 CPM (cost for one thousand impressions).

  • $1.28 CPC (cost per click)


The site claims that the average CPC or CPM can vary depending on campaign objectives. Based on your campaign objective, the graph below shows that Instagram’s ad CPC can range from $.25 to $7.96.

A good CPC on Instagram is different for every business. Your industry, product, and advertising used will all impact the results.

Your Instagram ads’ cost may vary depending on your industry. It’s likely that if your industry is highly competitive, it will be more costly to attract customers than if your business is less competitive.


Types Of Instagram Ads

These are some examples of Instagram ads that you can use to promote your campaigns:


  1. Video ads

  2. Photo ads

  3. Carousel ads

  4. Stories ads

  5. Collection ads


1. Video ads


You can upload Instagram videos up to 60 seconds in length, and the footage can be shot in either square or landscape formats. This allows you to promote and introduce your business much more than the 15 second limit.


2. Photo ads


A photo ad is a single image, either in landscape or square format. These ads are the easiest to make in terms of visual assets because you only need one image.

These images and videos can be 2-10 minutes long.

4. Stories ads

Instagram Stories are similar to Snapchat in that they allow businesses share self-destructive visual content. Insta Stories allows you to advertise using images or videos.

5. Ads from the Collection


A collection ad functions like a video ad, and appears as a video in a user’s news feed. They are created by a collection of still images, which play like a video slidehow. Instagram ads can be enhanced with audio and text.

8 Steps to advertise your business on Instagram

You will need a company Facebook Page to set up Instagram ads campaigns. All budgeting, scheduling and creation are done through the Facebook Advertising Manager. You don’t have to create an Instagram account. There is no separate Instagram manager. You’re probably familiar with Facebook ads if you have run them in the past.

Let’s take it step-by-step.



5 things to consider before we start…


Five things are necessary to succeed on Instagram.

  1. Brand and product. Instagram is best for brands and products that are distinct. Brand awareness campaigns do not yield great results.
  2. Visuals. High-quality visuals are key to your ad’s success. Before you advertise on Instagram, make sure you have something eye-catching.
  3. Facebook page. Funny enough, in order to run Instagram ads, you must create a Facebook business account. This one is essential.
  4. Landing page. How are you going to drive all of the traffic? To get the most out of that call-to-action button, have a landingpage ready. If your homepage is optimized for conversions, it will also work.
  5. You can create an Instagram account. Even if you don’t have an Instagram account, you can still run ads there. However, to get a better understanding of the platform and its vibe it’s a smart idea to do so before investing any money.

We’re all set.


1. How to Choose the Right Tool


You have a number of Facebook tools that you can use to create Instagram ads. These include Ads Manager, Power Editor and Facebook Marketing API. We’ll stick with Ads Manager for simplicity. It is the most widely used and should meet all your needs. First, create a new advertising campaign.


2. Choose Your Objective


Click to create a new advertisement. You should land on this page


It is important to know what you are trying to accomplish, just like with any other advertising campaign. My advice to anyone who is trying Instagram ads for the very first time would be to pick a simple goal, such as Traffic (aka. Sending people to your website ).”.


While you might be tempted to just jump to lead generation, remember that setting up such ads takes a lot more time and is much more complex.


Instagram ads may not work for all of the objectives. You can choose from any of the objectives if your campaign is on Facebook or Instagram. However, if your campaign targets only Instagram users, you will need to choose from the following:


  • Reach

  • Traffic

  • Brand Awareness

  • App installs

  • Engagement

  • Video Views

  • Conversions

  • Lead generation

  • Messages

  • Store traffic

  • Catalog sales


I will follow my own advice and choose “Traffic”.


Once you have chosen the objective, your campaign should automatically be promoted to give it a name. To make it easier for future identification, be sure to include attributes such as date, offer, or content.


3. Choosing Your Audience


It might seem difficult to choose the right audience if you are just beginning to use Instagram to advertise. You can learn from experience, so don’t be too concerned about it. It is important to consider who would be most compatible with your objective.

If traffic was your choice, you can use your buyer personas as a guideline to determine the audience. Who would be interested in learning more about your products and services? You can also create a Custom Audience that will show your ad to a specific group of people.


You can also create a Custom Audience, which will show the ad only to a specific group of people

You have four options for defining your custom audience, as the screenshot shows.

  1. Upload a file with customer information ( surname, email address, phone number, zip/postcode and country, year, gender, age, etc). Then create a Custom Audience in Facebook that matches these criteria.
  2. You can insert JavaScript to your website and create a list of people who have visited your site and specific pages, and have taken an action in the past. Target them with Instagram.
  3. You can create a custom audience for an app. This allows you to reach specific users who use your app .
  4. To create an Instagram Custom Audience, you can use the data that you have on your Facebook fans. You can create a list of people that have: a) viewed your videos; b) completed or opened a Lead form in your Facebook ads on Facebook; c) opened your Canvas.

If you are able to identify your ideal customer’s interests, demographics and behaviours, detailed targeting is an excellent option.

Once you’re done, save your Audience to avoid repeating the process. You can also monitor the response of different audiences to your ads by saving it.

Scroll down to continue.


4. How to Choose the Placement


Next, you can choose where your ads are displayed. Scroll down and uncheck all boxes except “Instagram”.


5. Set up your budget and schedule


This one is easy. What amount do you want? There are two options: Daily Budget or Lifetime Budget. What is the difference?

The daily budget is the average amount you will spend each day during your advertising period. A lifetime budget is the maximum amount you will spend during the time your ad runs.


Next, choose one of these options to define your schedule. If you don’t have an idea of the best days and hours for your ad to perform, choose the “Run my advertisement set continuously starting today” option.


Next is optimizing your ad. In the drop-down menu, you’ll see three options for optimizing your advert delivery. These are their meanings:

  • The best option is to use link clicks. To bring people to your site at the lowest price, the adverts are optimized to be linked clicks.
  • Impressions. Although the ads aren’t optimized for clicks, they will still be delivered as often as possible. You may have seen the same ad multiple times in your feed throughout the day.
  • Unique reach every day. Your ads will only be seen once per day.
  • Page views on landing pages. Your ads will reach the people most likely to click your link and load your site.


What should you bid?


Your ad’s effectiveness will be determined by the bid option. It’s quite simple. If you are a serious believer in link clicks, you can manually set a price for each click. This will allow you to compete with other ads for the attention of the same audience. If you don’t know what to do, you can choose the Automatic option. Facebook will determine which price you pay and give you the most clicks for the least amount of money.


6. How to Choose the Right Format


The most exciting part of this campaign is finally here! Now it’s time for you to choose the best format for your ad.

The main factor that determines the format of your ad should be your campaign objective. For more information about the formats available, visit Facebook’s Ads Guide.

img alt=”How do you advertise on Instagram? Ad format” height=”254″ loading=”lazy” src=”https://www.honeyhat.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/1603971077-instagram-ads-format.png” width=”850″/>


We are almost there! Connect your Instagram account and Facebook Page. You can still run Instagram ads if your business does not have an Instagram account. Your Facebook Page will be used to represent you brand in your ad.


Follow the steps to create your ad. Here are some tips to help you get started.

  • Text: Keep the copy concise and sharp. Text: 125 characters is the recommended limit. To see more than 125 characters, click “More span>
  • Website URL: This is the URL of the page from which you drive all traffic. To track the performance of your ad, make sure that your URL has unique UTM parameters.
  • Call to action (CTA). Your CTA should directly link to the content that you offer. If your goal is to get people on your website, “Learn More”, is the best option. It’s worth trying something more aggressive if you are advertising a product. These are the rules you need to follow to create killer calls to action for your campaigns.


Give your campaign another look by clicking “Review Order”, and then click “Place Order” for the final push.


You did it!


8. Monitoring Your Performance


But wait! It’s not done until it’s done. I promised to show how to market on Instagram.


After your ad has been launched, keep track of its performance and monitor all metrics. You can also go back and modify the ad. If it isn’t performing well, you can change the image or add a call to action.


Go to your Ads Manager to view the complete dashboard, including data on reach and the total amount spent as well as the cost per click. You will find a button in the upper right-hand sidebar that says “Columns Performance”. Clicking on this button will bring up a drop-down menu that offers a wide range of options. To get a better understanding of everything, from page views to click-throughs, you can customize your report.


Summary – How to Advertise on Instagram 2023

You should now have a better idea of how to advertise on Instagram. Make sure you take the time to learn about the different options and to build your campaigns. You’ll soon see how Instagram marketing can help you reach targeted customers and increase your sales.


In short, these are the 8 steps for creating your first Instagram advertisement:


  1. Open Facebook Ads Manager

  2. Select your goal

  3. Select your target audience

  4. Select “Instagram” for the placement

  5. Create your budget and plan

  6. Select an ad type

  7. Publish the advertisement

  8. Track your performance


Go out and conquer the Instagram crowd!

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Would you like to learn more?

Are there any other topics you would like to learn more about or wish were included in this article. Comment below to let us know!

Juste Semetaite
Author: Juste Semetaite

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