According to analysis by DataReportal, Meta’s Instagram is the world’s fourth-largest social media platform, trailing only the company’s own Facebook and WhatsApp platforms, and Google’s YouTube. With an active user base hovering around 1.45 billion, Instagram offers an incredible opportunity for businesses and social media marketing professionals to engage with a massive audience of ABC1 consumers.
For the small- and mid-sized business, the question becomes less about whether you shouldengage with Instagram advertising, and more about how should you engage with it. Whilst the more tech-savvy companies can effectively tackle the problem internally, for businesses whose specialities lie outside the fields of tech and marketing, retaining a dedicated Instagram and social media marketing agency can prove a highly worthwhile investment.
Naturally, you want only the best Instagram manager service for your business. Your new marketing agency could potentially be in control of all your social media content – it’s essential you can trust them to deliver your brand message correctly.
At The Bank, our team of marketing agency professionals have extensive experience developing paid social advertising campaigns that are targeted, on-brand, and profitable. From strategy and content curation to optimisation and performance analysis, The Bank are on-hand to assist you in all aspects of marketing campaign development, implementation, and maintenance. What’s more, unlike some social media marketing agencies, specializing solely in one form of paid social advertising, The Bank’s expertise covers a wide range of services, from Instagram and Facebook, to Twitter and TikTok, to PPC and Google Ads – our agency service is the most comprehensive you’ll find.
So, if you think an Instagram marketing agency might work for your business, why not give us a call today to schedule a meeting with your new dedicated account manager? In the mean time, take a look at our handy guide to advertising on Instagram.
Instagram Demographics
Age
As the chart here demonstrates, Instagram skews heavily towards the 18–24 and 25–34 demographics. This young, progressive, switched-on user base offers marketers the opportunity to reach out to individuals who possess a wide range of social, political, and consumer interests.
Gender Identity
Whilst there are more male than female Instagram account-holders, the difference is marginal. The wide-ranging appeal of the Instagram platform allows your digital marketing materials to appeal to followers of all gender identities.
Location
By some margin, India is home to the greatest number of Instagram account-holders, though the platform also has a strong foothold in the United States and South America, with Brazil, Mexico and Argentina showing healthy user numbers.
Instagram’s global appeal opens up exciting possibilities for e-commerce firms to connect with interested consumers and potential new customers across the globe.
Platform Usage
Although the chart here focuses solely on Instagram accounts within the United States, it does provide encouraging data about overall platform loyalty and engagement. The majority of the site’s users visit it daily, with 90% logging in at least once a week. By employing a savvy social media marketing strategy, it’s possible to leverage this routine and platform familiarity to your advantage, no matter the nature of your business.
The Benefits of Instagram Advertising
Generally speaking, if you want to see the greatest returns from your social media marketing, it’s beneficial to take a multi-platform approach – splintering your ad spend across Instagram, Facebook, and the myriad other social media platforms allows you to develop the broadest possible audience of followers, across all demographics.
Nevertheless, Instagram does have some distinct advantages over other popular social media marketing channels:
Reach
With over 1.45 billion active users, Instagram is massive. Crucially for advertising agencies, nearly 62% of this user base (approximately 900 million) are in the 18–24 and 25–34 age brackets. If your product or service skews younger, Instagram should be a key component of your digital marketing strategy.
Creativity
Instagram as a platform is one which encourages engagement and creativity, and Instagram account holders respond most positively to relevant content that is bold and innovative.
When it comes to advertising, Instagram provides you with the freedom to develop new ideas for making your brand’s voice feel distinctive. With unique and inventive online advertising materials, your followers on Instagram are more likely to be receptive to your message.
Connection
Instagram lead the way in live chat and messaging features, allowing for direct and authentic communication between your company’s Instagram account manager and your followers, customers, and potential clients. For artists, artisans, beauticians, tattooists and the like, your account can be used to instantly follow up on the leads generated by your Instagram ads.
Targeting
Like all Meta brands, Instagram benefits from the data analytics and consumer behaviour modelling gathered by Facebook over the past decade. As a result, Instagram marketers are provided incredibly powerful tools to target users based on a wide range of demographic and psychographic criteria. This can be particularly useful in finding target users in the initial stages, but also in making sure your social media marketing efforts keep moving in the right direction over time.
Data Reporting
Along with supreme audience targeting options, Instagram gives its advertising account holders superb data reporting and analytics tools. This is where a paid social agency can really come in handy – when it comes to professional digital marketing agencies, the best Instagram manager service will interpret all these statistics for you, delivering clear, detailed analysis whenever you need it.
Developing an Instagram Social Media Marketing Strategy
If you have no prior experience in Instagram or social media marketing, developing a strategy may feel like a daunting prospect. With so many platforms, ad formats and targeting metrics, it can be difficult to predict which will offer you the best ROI.
At The Bank, we encourage our new clients to start off their Instagram marketing journey by considering a few key points. If you’re currently scratching your head over where to begin, take a look below:
Business Goals
Let’s start with an easy one: what do you want to accomplish with your Instagram social media campaign? Or, to put it another way: what will make your Instagram marketing efforts feel worthwhile..?
Awareness
If building brand awareness is your primary aim, you might want to create an ad that speaks directly to a broad cross-section of society. To achieve this, you must ensure your social media content is creative and engaging, and designed to connect with everyone, no matter their demographic.
Traffic
Generally speaking, directing traffic to a website is the simple part – the difficulty is in making sure that traffic is coming from relevant leads and potential clients. You want to build ads which will resonate most clearly with the right audience.
Client Acquisition
For many small businesses – particularly those in the B2B space – the ultimate goal is to connect with potential clients who will retain your services over a long period of time. For this, your Instagram advertising campaign should nurture trust – show your audience that you will not only provide the service they need but that you have a proven track record of delivering results.
Increase Sales
Social media marketing in the e-commerce space is extremely competitive. The huge number of brands and ad agencies vying for attention means that if increasing sales is your goal, you simply must stand out from the crowd. In this instance, only the highest quality image and video marketing materials will do!
Target Audience
After establishing your business goals, you can start to think about your target audience.
If your business is already on its feet, this is most likely something you’ve considered. If your company is just getting started, do you want to try and build a picture of what your ideal customers look like?
As mentioned, Instagram provides advertisers with extremely powerful tools for targeting account holders, but only you know your target audience. Consider demographic and psychographic criteria such as: age, location, gender identity, ethnicity, education, income, values, desires, goals, interests, and lifestyle choices. While this is far from a comprehensive list, if you can address at least some, you are on your way to finding the right person to target with your Instagram and social media marketing.
Advertising Budget
It’s worryingly easy to go over budget when it comes to Instagram advertising (and social media marketing in general). Whether you choose to retain a full-service agency, or choose to manage your ads in-house, it’s vital to understand the limitations of your budget.
For Instagram advertising agencies, providing ad spend and budgeting guidance should be a top priority. As a client of The Bank, your advertising team and a dedicated account manager will work with you to create a comprehensive advertising budget; one which not only accounts for any financial constraints but which looks to reach your goals and expectations.
Types of Instagram Advertising Formats
Like most other social media platforms, Instagram are constantly looking for the next hot social media marketing service to offer its advertisers. As such, the company have a range of creative ad format options – it’s your job to decide which speaks directly to your followers.
All Instagram advertisements contain a ‘sponsored’ icon to alert followers to the fact they’re viewing marketing content, along with a caption, and call-to-action button. Whilst these factors are common across all Instagram advertising formats, the appearance of your primary creative content will depend upon the specific format you decide to utilise, and where on the platform you intend to display them.
If you’re an Instagram account holder, you’ll probably be familiar with most of their advertising services; take a look at the following ad formats and see which ones you recognise:
Single Image
Classic single-image Instagram advertising is the most common format across the platform. Consisting of a single image in either square, landscape or vertical format, image ads are a simple, low-CPC way to start your Instagram advertising campaign.
Videos
If you need to really “wow” your followers and potential customers, video media is a fantastic option. Video content is presented in square or landscape formats, or, if you choose to run your ads through Stories, you can deploy vertical media.
Carousel
Already a familiar sight on Facebook, carousel ads allow Instagram advertisers the option to upload multiple images or videos within a single ad – ideal for content curation, and showing off all the creative marketing materials your company has to offer.
Instagram Stories
Story ads appear while users are watching the stories of those they follow. As this advertising is sandwiched between user-generated content, Stories adverts offer significant audience engagement.
Reels
Building on the success of TikTok, Meta have introduced reels to Instagram and Facebook services. Like Stories, Reels adverts are sandwiched between user-generated material, and are ideal for brands with short marketing messages.
Instagram Shop
Currently only available to US-based e-commerce businesses, Instagram Shop adverts provide the opportunity to include price info and checkout links within ads themselves. Perfect for encouraging impulse purchases.
Influencer Marketing
While not a service offered directly by Instagram, influencer marketing can be extremely effective if your business is capable of developing a marketing agreement directly with a content creator. The efficacy of this method of advertising will depend on the influencer accounts you choose to work with, and the demographics of their audience.
The Bank: Our Instagram Marketing Agency – A Step-by-Step Guide
Instagram marketing agencies are like snowflakes: no two are alike!
At The Bank, our Instagram marketing agency team take a unique, collaborative, evidence-driven approach to advertising strategy development. So you can fully understand how our Instagram ad process works, take a look at our step-by-step guide:
Step 1: Campaign Strategy
At The Bank, our Instagram advertising experts use their collective experience and expertise to develop an Instagram marketing strategy that is tailor-made for the size, budget, audience and goals of your company.
As our newest client, we will combine our considerable knowledge with industry-beating data-driven analytical software to construct a strategic plan of action that will improve engagement, brand awareness, and boost income.
Step 2: Social and PPC Audits
Now that the strategy is in place, your account manager will proceed to audit your existing online marketing, including paid social (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), paid search (Google Ads, etc.), and any other accounts which your brand uses to engage with its audience online.
The audit process will allow us to: identify possible areas for refinement; see which other services might offer good ROI; and ultimately standardise and manage each paid social and paid search account as a single entity.
Step 3: Website Optimisation
Linked to the audit service above is website optimisation. Most of your ads will direct the user to a landing page, so it’s critical that all your online materials are up to date, and built to properly convert that traffic.
Our SEO and website development team at The Bank will ensure the content on your site is formatted to not only convert social ad leads into purchases, but also refined to develop Google authority and produce organic traffic.
Step 4: Content Creation
For many small- and mid-sized enterprises, developing ideas for engaging ad content can be difficult. Paid social media marketing can benefit businesses in a variety of sectors, but it might appear impossible to those who are not creative experts.
With The Bank, you can delegate all aspects of content creation. Our in-house creative team and partner network have the knowledge and abilities to produce sales materials that are tailored to your target client.
Step 5: Implementation
In order to start Instagram advertising, we’ll help you to open an Ads Manager account – all your ads will be run from here.
We will use this account to get your advertising campaign up on its feet, and with collaborative access, you will be able to see performance metrics any time you choose. Decide you no longer need The Bank for your social media marketing? No problem! If you stop retaining our services, the account stays with your company!
Step 6: Performance and Optimisation
From the start-up business to the multinational corporation, a social advertising campaign is an ongoing endeavour. We constantly evaluate the efficacy of our clients’ campaigns, monitoring all changes, no matter how small.
We will tweak your keywords, look at competitor performance, and monitor advertising returns across every social media account – anything we need to do to ensure you’re getting the most from your advertising efforts.
Step 7: Reporting
It’s easy for your marketing team to tell you that your campaign objectives have been met, but more important for you is that you see tangible results.
Your dedicated account manager will provide regular reports and clear analysis – we will keep you informed about performance, so you can see how our service continues to work for your business.
The Bank: The Last Word in Instagram Marketing Agencies
Whether you want to boost followers of your Instagram account, encourage web traffic, or create valuable leads, The Bank is the digital marketing agency for you!
From Instagram to Facebook and everything in between, our advertising specialists have the tools and the know-how to create maximum engagement, and encourage your followers to become your customers.
Our agency will assist you in building an unbeatable Instagram marketing strategy, before guiding you through implementation, optimisation and long-term maintenance.
Don’t think twice! For more information on how our agency can work for you, contact The Bank now!
