Hold On – I Gotta Get This Up On The Gram!

Instagram is now drawing 300 million daily users and 500 million monthly users. The vast majority of its 200,000 advertisers are small-to-medium-sized businesses and many of them are selling online.

More importantly, Instagram ads work! 60% of Instagram users confirm that they discover new products and services on the platform, while 75% say they take action after being inspired.

We’re thrilled to unveil the complete package today:
Vantage Smart Campaigns for Instagram!

Great Vantage customers like Ellen Degeneres, Your Tea, Foo Fighters, Slick Case, REM, and the NBA all use Vantage to better understand their online businesses and run auto-optimized Instagram and Facebook campaigns that drive huge traffic, increase engagement, and deliver revenue.

It stands to reason that our clients really wanted to see Instagram as an option for driving action right from the award-winning Vantage dashboard.

Over the past month we’ve been quietly testing Instagram ads to understand what makes a great ad campaign on Instagram and to decide how we will help drive our clients’ success online.

As with our Smart Campaigns for Facebook, Vantage’s Smart Campaigns for Instagram will leverage our powerful predictive analytics and machine learning core to automatically optimize your ads for you.

Vantage significantly out-performs the industry
with an average 10x return on ad spend.

Q&A

I spoke with Sara Radginski, owner of the online store DropsOfJoyJewelry.com about her ad campaigns and how Instagram could be part of them. She is already running very successful Facebook ad campaigns for her cool diffuser jewelry that offers stylish use of essential oils. She wanted to know more about Instagram ads.

Sara: What does an Instagram ad look like?

Vantage: Instagram ads look pretty much exactly like an Instagram post except that there is a small “sponsored” word at the top right.

Sara: How do Instagram ads work? Is it just more for visibility or can people click on an Instagram ad?

Vantage:  Instagram ads do increase your visibility but they also convert. People click on Instagram ads and go right to your store and purchase!

Sara: How does targeting work? Do you use certain tags, etc.? How do you decide who to show my ad to?

Vantage:  The Vantage Smart Campaign targeting works the exact same for Instagram as it does for our highly successful Facebook ads. We use your website traffic, shopping behavior, and purchase data to build target audiences.  These audiences may be based on whether you’re looking for new customers or to retain past visitors or customers.

Sara: Have people been finding them as effective as Facebook ads? Is it worthwhile to spend money in both places?

Vantage:  Yes. In fact, dollar for dollar, some brands and retailers find that Instagram ads actually tend to do even better than Facebook ads. This might be a short-term situation due to the fact that there aren’t as many advertisers on Instagram yet. The costs are likely a bit lower than they’ll be long-term. We highly suggest that you try ads if you see any traffic coming from Instagram already.

Sara: Is this something you can add for me?

Vantage:  Yes and no. We can automate the building of your Instagram ads based on default cop. However, it’s much better if you can write some brand-specific copy that will really resonate with your audience.

Also Instagram ads/posts require square-shaped images unlike Facebook’s rectangular images. Instagram recommended size is 1080px by 1080px.

Sara: Can I send you a couple of different images to see which does better?

Vantage:  Absolutely, and it doesn’t affect the cost/price at all. The Vantage platform will keep an eye on which one works best and may ultimately cull the lesser performing one. Most of our clients run multiple versions of the ads together to test which will work best. You can track the progress in the Campaign Stats page and learn what works best for future reference. One client kicked off a campaign today with 50 different ads! That might be a bit too many but if there’s enough traffic / click data to give them some insight, why not?

The key is to try out different copy and/or different text, and see what works better to help you improve over time. The Vantage platform will prune out one if it’s noticeably underperforming the other – so that you don’t waste money.

Great brands are already generating huge sales with Vantage Smart Campaigns for Instagram. Join them today by contacting CustomerSuccess@gotVantage.com

• Simple set-up takes minutes. Instantly monitor, forecast and benchmark business and advertising KPIs in real-time.

• Instagram and Facebook campaigns can be run quickly, easily, and automatically. No developer work required.

• Best performing ads, bids, budgets, placements, channels are optimized automatically. Dramatically reduce cost per visit.

• Trusted by over 11,000 brands and retailers in 104 countries around the world and recognized as a Top Analytics Solution by Retail CIO Outlook (2016).

 

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