A Step-by-Step Guide to Setting Up an Instagram Ad Campaign
Published on 10th of January 2025Contents
With more than one billion users around the world, it’s not a surprise that Instagram has become one of the busiest hubs online. It offers many tools for business owners, content creators, and organizations to promote products, campaigns, and services. One of which is Instagram Advertising.
This guide will delve into setting up your Instagram Ad campaign. But before we get into the steps, let’s first cover two tools you need to create your first Instagram ad campaign.
Meta Ads Manager
Being under the same company, Instagram and Facebook uses the same platform to create, manage, and track ads. It has gone through many improvements and is now called Meta Ads Manager. To make it possible for you to run ads on Instagram, you will need to connect your business account to your Facebook profile.
Meta Pixel
We’ll next cover Meta Pixel, something you may have never heard of before. Knowing about this is essential if you want valuable insights into audience behavior after interacting with your ad.
Meta Pixel is a piece of code that you can embed into your website’s backend to collect user data and browsing habits. Generating this information based on user interaction with your website can guide business owners in improving ROI and tailoring campaigns.
How to Set Up the Meta Pixel
Before you begin, you will need a website for your business, and you must be able to edit its code. You will also need a Facebook account. Here are the steps:
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1. On Facebook, head to Events Manager.
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2. Click Connect data, then Web.
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3. Name your pixel, enter your website URL, and click next.
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4. Select Meta Pixel only.
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5. Choose manual installation of code.
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6. Copy and paste the base code to your website above the tag.
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7. You can turn on Automatic Advanced Matching to add information your customers have already provided on your website.
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8. Open the event setup tool and follow the instructions to add events without more coding. A manual setup is also an option if you prefer to add the code yourself.
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9. Click done.
Your Meta Pixel is now set up.
How to Set Up an Instagram Ad Campaign
Step 1: Create a New Campaign
On Facebook Ads Manager, click Create under Campaigns.
Step 2: Choose the Right Objective
Your ad objective will depend on your goals. What do you want to get out of this ad campaign? Do you want to increase your brand awareness? Do you want to drive more traffic? Do you want to improve your audience’s engagement with your content?
Instagram will target one of these based on your choice. Here are the six Instagram ad objectives to choose from:
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Awareness
With this objective, Instagram will help your ad reach the most users. This will increase audience familiarity with your products and services.
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Traffic
This objective will help you create a path for your audience to a destination you will set, may it be your website or Instagram shop.
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Engagement
This objective will help you target users who will most likely engage with your ad. Attached with a call-to-action, this provides an avenue for users who are already interested in your products to connect with you.
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Leads
If you want to increase leads, this objective will help you reach people who are most likely willing to share information to get to know your brand or product.
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App Promotion
This objective helps you target mobile users to encourage them to engage with your app. This CTA can come in app installation, in-app purchase, or testing an app feature.
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Sales
If you want to reach people likely to purchase your product, the sales objective is the right one for this campaign. Instagram offers more optimization to make the user’s shopping experience more seamless, from seeing your ad to a successful checkout.
Step 3: Set Your Budget
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Campaign Budgets Vs. Ad Set Budgets
There are different ways for you to set your ad budget. You can select either a Campaign Budget or an Ad Set Budget. The latter will let you set an umbrella budget for all the ad sets belonging to the Ad Campaign, and the former will give you more control by localizing into specific ad sets.
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Daily Budgets Vs. Lifetime Budgets
After deciding whether you want to set a Campaign or Ad Set budget, choose if you want to set how much you want to pay daily or if you want to set a budget for the whole ad run.
Choosing a daily budget will set the average daily spending on the ad. That means it’s not a hard limit. By allowing you to tweak the amount based on the performance of your campaign, it will enable much flexibility.
Lifetime budget, on the other hand, sets a hard cap on your ad spending. This is perfect if you don’t want to go over the amount you decided beforehand.
Step 4: Add Your Audience
There are three sets of audience settings you can tweak. If you want a quick way to go about your ad campaign, Core Audiences is the right one for you. With it, you can target your audience by defining the location, demographics, behavior, interests, and connections.
If you want to upload a database of your audience manually, you can do so with Custom Audiences. This is for retargeting visitors to your websites who have already provided you with their information.
And lastly, if you want to target people who share the same characteristics as your customers, choose Lookalike Audiences.
Step 5: Set Your Placements
Decide if you want to opt for Automatic Ad Placements or if you want to set it manually. With Manual Ad Placements, you can decide where you want the audience to see your ads.
Step 6: Connect Your Instagram Account
Step 7: Select Ad Format
In this section, you will have complete control over your ad's format. Instagram ads can come in images, videos, carousels, Instagram stories, reels, or Instagram shop. Each will have the word “Sponsored” on it.
Step 8: Input Ad Details
This is where you will add your media or create a video and fill out the information about your ad, such as the primary text, headline, description, and call to action.
Step 9: Publish
Once you’ve completed the details and previewed your ad, click publish.
Instagram Advertising is one of the many features you unlock once you switch to an Instagram business or professional account. If done right, it can help you achieve your business objectives.