The much-celebrated image sharing platform by Instagram has become more than just a place to share well-filtered images of your delicious meals. Over the course of the last few years, Instagram transformed from a space to share your personal photos.
It swiftly became a platform where businesses, not only market but also sell and sometimes, even launch their products. Instagram provided catalog options to brands to add direct shopping links to their website.
It is home to thousands of influencers from different industries who have the power to make or break your products and services. So, once considered a whimsical platform for putting up photos for your friends is now the place where you can exponentially grow your business.
Instagram Stories and Story Ads
In 2016, Instagram launched Instagram stories, short format 15-sec video or photo posts that disappear after 24 hours in a bid to compete against Snapchat’s rising popularity. While Facebook launched stories for WhatsApp and Facebook soon after, they never became as popular as the Instagram stories.
Stories were the perfect place for brands and people to share their content, engage with their audience, and build a loyal fanbase. And for the longest time, Instagram ads were only on the feed.
But gradually, the popularity of feed ads are waning, and the new ad format that is taking over is Instagram story ads! These multi-frame 15-second ads showcasing the important aspects of your business have greater chances of conversion.
These vertical full-screen ads appear in between the stories from friends and brands. Characteristically, when a story ends, you move on to the next one by way of a user manually swiping past through or it simply ending.
Being vertical and full-screen, an Instagram story ad consists only of the content that you want to show to your audience. A great way to use this content is to use a photo video maker to create ads with high production value.
Objectives for Using Instagram Story Ads
There are a host of reasons why you should be using Instagram story ads for your business. These ads can be created in Creative Hub or on Ads Manager and come with a variety of objectives that you can choose from. Depending on what you want to achieve from the ad campaign, you can pick one of these –
- Brand awareness: This is when you need to tell people about your brand. Whether you are a new brand or an existing brand with a brand new product portfolio, your products would only sell if people know who your brand is!
- Reach: Grabbing more eyeballs mean that you will be selling more of your products. Through this objective, you will be reaching the maximum number of your potential audience.
- Video views: This works best for creators who want to push their video content to their audience base. To get good quality ads for this objective, you can use a photo video maker.
- Conversions: This is for brands with a specific objective to change ad views into valuable action on their website or app, such as buying a product, reviewing service, or subscribing to a plan.
- App Installs: Whether you are struggling with people to move from your website to your new app or you have launched a brand-new app for your business, selecting this objective will ensure that you receive enough app installs.
- Lead Generation: This objective is to drive sales leads like customer demographic information, email addresses, and phone numbers. It works well for brands that are looking to create a database for potential customers.
- Traffic: Just like app installs, this objective setting sends your audience straight to your website and increases the visits statistics on your page.
How Will Your Ads Work?
Now that we know what we want to do with the Instagram ads for our business, it’s time for us to figure out how we can make them work for us and achieve the goals set for the campaign.
Here are 7 ways in which your Instagram story ads will truly benefit your business!
- Create High-quality Content: Owing to the fleeting nature of these ads, you need to capture the attention of the audience immediately. And what better way to do this than using high-quality photos and videos that capture the attention in the first glance.
- Capture their Attention Fast: What your ad is trying to say should be apparent in the initial 3 secs before your audience decides to move on to the next more interesting story. The key to making this work lies in finding that hook and incorporating it in your ad right at the start.
- Drive Brand and Product Awareness: The main objective for your brand is to sell its products or get people talking about it. And the best way to do that is to use this platform to showcase your brand or product in the most favorable light!
- Announce Sales and Special Events: There is nothing better than a 15-30 sec video ad telling your audience to come out and join you for a special event or shop to their heart’s content at a sale. Your customers can simply swipe up to get more information or to start shopping!
- Engage with your Audience Publicly: Nothing makes a brand more approachable than creating relatable content that they can engage with. Whether it’s sharing their own stories, AR filters, or a simple quiz, these activities can get the audience to feel like they are appreciated by the brand.
- Share Your Behind The Scenes Moments: The audience loves a little behind the scenes action from your brand – whether to show how your products get made or the preparation for a big event! These short format ads could be a great way to redirect your audience to a live stream or YouTube video!
- Retarget Customers: Using Facebook Pixels, which has tracked your customers’ behavior, you can easily retarget them for your upcoming campaigns!
Conclusion
Instagram story ads are one of the best ways to reach your customers, engage with them as well as sell your products or services. They ensure that your potential customer’s full attention is only on you and hence, is one of the best ways to use this ad format!
Create high-quality content with photo video makers and get ready to take your business to the next level!
