Instagram ads are a great way to reach new users who might be interested in your content. They can appear in Stories, your Explore page, and in your Feed as part of your ad campaigns. But have you wondered how you can reach a specific portion of Instagram users using your ads? What kind of targeting options are available on Instagram, anyway?
In this post, we’ll go over the Instagram ad targeting options, how you can choose them, and which ones we recommend you look into.
Instagram Ad Targeting Options: Long Story Short
You remember how Facebook acquired Instagram, right? Well, since around that time, Facebook and Instagram have started to use the same ad targeting options through the Ads Manager. This basically means that you can expect to use the same options across platforms and that it’s even possible to have the same type of ad on both Facebook and Instagram. The Facebook Ads Manager is a powerful tool that allows you to track the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns on both Facebook and Instagram.
So which targeting options are available?
Firstly, you have demographics, which can be targeted using various Instagram ad formats. This includes users’ age, gender, location, and language. These are relatively stable and easy enough to find out with either Instagram Insights or a tool like Sotrender.
So which groups would you target in your ads based on insights like this? Based on this graph alone, you might conclude that your ad would do well with women and men between 25 and 34 years old or 35 and 44 years old. This would allow you to reach new users that are already similar to your followers.
As for interests, these categories can really make a difference. Some of the categories you’ll find in the interests section include photography, science, travel, and entertainment. There are other categories that are even more narrow than that, but which one you go for really depends on the type of audience you want to attract. Besides demographics, we highly recommend targeting users based on interests to better define your Instagram target audience. Remember, not everyone who fits your followers’ demographics is a guaranteed new customer. However, those who actually are interested in your product categories might be!
Behaviors as a category can be a bit tricky, though. This category includes things like a person’s job title, whether they have made a purchase recently, what kind of buyer profile do they fit, and so on. This matters when you want to reach users who might work in a specific field or if you want to reach people who you can be sure fit a specific buyer profile. Instead of hoping that they’ve previously made a purchase over Instagram simply because they are interested in “shopping” or “e-commerce”, you’ll reach the users who actually performed this type of activity.
Understanding Instagram Ad Targeting
Instagram ad targeting is a crucial aspect of creating effective Instagram advertising campaigns. It allows you to reach specific audiences who are more likely to be interested in your products or services. By targeting the right audience, you can maximize the impact of your ads and optimize your advertising budget. Instagram ad targeting works by selecting specific locations, demographics, interests, behaviors, and traits. You can use data from a user’s profile to determine which ads to show them.
Defining Your Target Audience
Defining your target audience is essential for effective Instagram ad targeting. You need to understand your ideal Instagram audience to target your ads effectively. This involves identifying your target demographic and understanding their interests and behaviors on the platform. When defining your ideal Instagram audience, it’s essential to delve deeper into their psychographics. Psychographics include factors such as values, attitudes, lifestyles, and interests.
Creating Custom Audiences
Custom audiences are a type of audience that can be used for targeting on Instagram. They are created by grouping users based on actions they’ve taken in the past. You can create custom audiences by uploading existing customer files, such as email addresses or phone numbers. You can also create custom audiences based on website traffic, app activity, or engagement with your Instagram posts. Custom audiences help you create lists of users to re-engage with and can narrow your audience to a very small group of people.
Lookalike Audiences
You can also target your Instagram ads to a Lookalike Audience. Lookalike audiences are designed to be a true prospecting targeting type, intended to generate new users. They are created by selecting a custom audience source and allowing Meta’s machine learning to analyze the source audience and put together a group of users that look and behave like those users on Facebook and Instagram. Lookalike audiences can be used to target a specific country or region. They are a powerful tool for reaching new users who are similar to your existing customers.
Manual Targeting Options
Manual targeting options on Instagram include location, age and gender, and Advantage detailed targeting. Location targeting allows you to target users based on their location, including country, region, state, city, postal code, address, DMA, or congressional district level. Age targeting allows you to target users based on their age, from 13 to 65+ in single-year increments. Gender targeting allows you to target users based on their gender. Advantage detailed targeting allows you to target very specific audiences based on interests, behaviors, and connections.
In case you’re unsure of it all, you might want to hire a freelancer or agency to manage your Instagram ads for you for some time. You can learn from them and eventually, learn how to use the targeting options to set your own ads. Read the article below for more info!
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