Promotional posts VS Instagram Ads
Promotional posts on Instagram are basically the ones that are already published on your profile. Promotions can be created from posts, stories or highlights. The goal of boosting a post is to increase the visibility of your post, reach more users and boost engagement. To promote a post on, you can choose your goal, your target audience, budget, and the duration of your promotion. Once the post is boosted, it will appear in your target audience’s Instagram feeds and stories.
Instagram Ads on the other hand are organic posts that are specifically created for an Ad. You can place ads in different formats including Pictures, Carousels, Videos and a slide show Ad. It allows you to achieve your goals of lead generation, conversion, brand awareness and store traffic. You can create an Ad using Facebook Ad manager (used for both Facebook and Instagram Ads as Meta owns both platforms). These ads are connected with Facebook accounts therefore the ads will not just appear to your targeted audience Instagram accounts but also on the Facebook Ad network.
How to create an Instagram Promotion?
- Firstly, you need to switch your Instagram profile to a business profile (if you haven’t already). To do this simply go to settings and switch to a business profile.
- After setting up your business profile, you can create your first promotion. Publish
- your post first on your feed. If you have already published posts on your business profile and you wish to boost that, you can select the one you want to use.
- Open the post you want to promote and click on “Boost Post”.
- The next option that will appear is to “select your goal.” You can choose from three available options: more profile visits; more website visits or more promotion views.
- Next option is to select “Your target audience.” The first available option is
“Automatic.” If you select this them Instagram will boost your post as per your current followers. The next option is “Local,” and you can target people of any specific location. The third option is “Manual,” it helps you target people of specific interest.
- The last step is to select the budget and duration of the promotion. Once you select this, review your promotion, and make it live.
How to create an Ad?
- Connect your Facebook and Instagram Ad to cross post your Ad on both platforms (but this is not mandatory).
- Go to Facebook Ad manager, this is used to create both Facebook and Instagram Ad campaigns.
- Tap on “create” to choose your campaign objective.
- Fill in the details about your Instagram Ad (whether you want to post a video or
- picture)
- You have many Ad placement options where your Ad can appear. You can select the Feed option (Facebook feed, Instagram feed, Facebook Marketplace, Instagram explore) or you can publish your Ad in stories (Facebook stories, Instagram stories, messenger stories), streams or in search.
- Finally review your Ad and publish it.
How much Ads and Promotion costs?
Ads
Cost-per-click ranges from $0.20-$2.00
Average cost-per-impression $6.70
Promotions
Cost-per-click ranges from $0.50-$1.0
Success Rate
If your business is new, a combination of promotions and Ads can work better for you. In terms of Instagram Ads, the success rate and conversion rate are quite impressive. The average conversion rate for Instagram Ads is 1.08%. The results of Ads are worth the price. You can target a specific audience through your Ads post. Instagram ad revenue was estimated to hit $18.16 billion last year and it is continuing to increase. This shows how much potential and power the platform has. The in terms of Instagram promotions, it is worth your investment as it helps you reach more people.
Bottom line
Depending on your business goals, you can decide whether you want to go with Promotional posts or Ads. However, if you want to get quick results you may want to go with Instagram promotions. Your content gets exposure to a wide audience very quickly. On the other hand, if you want to target a specific audience, then placing an ad is a better option for you. Finally, if you are looking to target a special niche, then boosting a post won’t help. Instead, place an ad and it will give you more specific reach.
