How to make money on Instagram? Part 2

In the first article, we talked about how to prepare an Instagram account for promotion. We analyzed all the basic stages and components of a selling page, namely: we learned what positioning is and why it is important to start with it, we analyzed the concept of USP, decided on the target audience, filled and designed the page so that everything was beautiful and understandable, and most importantly, answered the key Goals. If you missed the first part, we recommend that you go back and read. In this article, we will learn how to make money on Instagram using the main tool – targeted advertising on Facebook. We will show how Instagram algorithms work and which creatives are the most popular in 2020.

But first, let's analyze one important topic, without which neither super design nor the coolest advertising campaign will help you make money on Instagram, namely, about the semantic part. About content, texts and planning.

Everything you need to know about content and planning

Do it with meaning

Personal blog, Instagram store, popular community, company blog/business area, children's clothing, marketing products. It doesn't matter what niche you occupy, what direction you work in, what type of account you have and what field of activity it belongs to. 

People will go where there are "interesting benefits" – information, a product, a service that solves their "painful" issue, covering their needs.

Plan and act

In order for people to come to you, in addition to the USP and a beautiful picture, there must be a meaning. Your account will grow faster if you fill it with really interesting topics and posts. Of course, you don’t need to flood the feed with 5 posts a day, 4 posts a week and 5 stories a day are enough, then you will stay in good impressions. Plan if you write boring and boring articles every day – you will not be read and it will be extremely difficult to gain a good audience. Create a content plan, break it down into topics and sub-items. Pre-planned publications will allow you to stay on schedule, make a variety of content and not “fall out". 

Entertain, educate, sell

This law is relevant, perhaps, for any selling content. Many are frightened by the word content plan alone, but in fact, there is nothing unrealistic in it. You open your favorite tablet, put down the dates and alternate the type of content: Entertaining, informational, educational, selling.

• Entertaining – responsible for gamification and other activities in the feed and stories. People love to relax and unwind most of all. Therefore, some simple one-click game works so well, but as long as subscribers “click”, the coverage of the page is growing. An excellent combination of business and pleasure!
• Informational / cognitive – you won’t be fed up with spectacles alone, give people bread. Interesting facts from your field, current news, expert opinion, life hacks – all here. Take this type as the basis. After all, it will be the main value of your content.
• The seller is a person who does not always know what he needs. Or, may postpone the purchase, doubt. This is what marketing calls to action are for. Of course, there are “minus words”, in the form of “Promotion!”, “Only today!”. Such appeals today rather repel than push to buy. Argument why a person needs to buy it, why today. Show that he will not need to “think” and “worry”, that you have already thought for him and will be happy to help / explain / suggest. Making content for the sake of content is hardly a good idea, especially if you want to make money on Instagram.

If you are still in doubt about the chosen niche or are looking for the most profitable one, this article will be useful to you .

Preparing to promote on Instagram

As your content grows, you will be able to analyze which posts, creatives, and topics users respond best to;

Check account statistics

Open the “Statistics” section and see which publications subscribers liked the most; which post caused more reactions, where there are a lot of comments, which publication was actively saved and sent to friends.
Analyze, it's not that hard. It is likely that the very post/frame that showed a good result among your audience will also attract the attention of your potential customers – new subscribers in the future.

introduce yourself 

Also, for advertising, it is better to use the publication that best represents your company and fully characterizes it. Imagine yourself in the place of a person who does not know anything about your company and sees an ad about you for the first time – what does he need to see in order to make a decision to subscribe to you in a few seconds?

Promote new offers

Use new products and services or promotions on them – as a newsbreak. Create a post about a seasonal product and promote it. Expand the audience, show them an interesting offer – make it the centerpiece of the message. 

Grow your organic audience

Instagram boosts a page with organic traffic in impressions, in other words, “live” pages with frequent posts and active user feedback. If your feed contains relevant photos, backstages, new products, happy customers even before the launch of advertising, new subscribers will immediately see an “energetic” account and are more likely to connect to it. In addition, this way people can learn more about your company and understand what it does and what is important to it.

Take action!

If you are not yet ready to deal with Facebook advertising, you can try promoting through “promotions”. To do this, open the publication and click the “promote” button. Next, select options:

1 Destination. Here you need to choose where people from your ads will be redirected – to an Instagram profile, to a website, or to Direct messages.

2 Audience. Accordingly, the target group of people to whom your ad will be shown. In this section, you need to be a bit of a targetologist, indicating the main characteristics of the audience – gender, age, demographics, interests. You can also choose the automatic setting option, then Instagram will show your ads to people similar to your followers.

3 Budget and duration. Determine the amount and duration of the ad. You can stop or edit a promotion at any time.

After you set all the parameters and check the payment method, you can safely publish ads. First, it will be checked for compliance with the rules of Instagram – the check takes no more than an hour, after which ads start showing immediately.

Instagram promotion. Where to look for clients?

How to create advertising campaigns in the Facebook account and make it profitable? 

If you want to make money on Instagram, then learning how to set up a Facebook advertising campaign is a must. Firstly, this is a more targeted (accurate) advertising, and secondly, it is inexpensive, relative to the same promotions. In this block, we will briefly tell you how to make money on Instagram by setting up Facebook advertising campaigns. 

Embedding Facebook Pixel in your project

For any commercial projects, setting up a competent advertising campaign is very important, and the first thing you need to do is install Pixel. This is an HTML tag that is placed on your site. It captures the profiles of all the people who visit your store via Facebook.

However, Pixel may not be suitable for every site, for this there are options for integrating HTML code and detailed guides for each platform. After installation, make sure that everything works smoothly – the success of advertising campaigns depends on the correct receipt of data on purchases and other events.

The best audiences for your advertising campaigns

There is no universal audience, you still have to find your own. Conventionally, the audience can be divided into three types of traffic, regarding the sales funnel: 

Top of the funnel – people who entered the funnel for the first time and do not know anything about your brand, they may not have a clear need for your product. Such an audience, as a rule, makes up a larger percentage and is searched for by various bundles of interests and combinations. In other words, through testing. Which, in turn, should be constantly repeated. Even if it seems to you that you have already found the target audience. You can earn more on Instagram.

Mid of the funnel – people who have "heard" about your brand or are simply familiar with it, but have never bought your product or made a purchase / order for a very long time.

Here you can safely launch look-a-like and retargeting – advertising to an audience similar to yours or advertising to those people who have been in contact with your company before. After the Pixel collects enough data, which will take at least a month, you can use the audience – "website custom audience". These people have already been on your site, and you can safely launch retargeting and look-a-like on them, with a greater degree of probability it will give a positive result. So, making money on Instagram will be much easier and faster.

Bottom of the funnel (BoF) are the hottest clients. These people have already bought from you or are ready to buy a product similar to yours. Simply put, they are set to buy, looking for a specific request. It is not difficult to guess that it is these campaigns that give the highest results.

One of the most valuable types is “custom audiences from the customer list”. Upload the CSV file to your advertising account, after Facebook will match your customers' data with social network profiles and create the best audience for you.

You can upload different bases. The most effective will be the audiences of previous buyers and your competitors.

Key Recommendations

To summarize, in order to create advertising campaigns in your Facebook account and do it profitably, you should adhere to the following recommendations :

– Conduct a large-scale test campaign and test as many options, interest bundles and combinations as possible.
– Use the audience collected by Pxel.
– Collect Look-a-like audience from your Pixel.
– Retarget visitors who have already visited your page.
– Set up events and also start retargeting people who have added an item to the cart and left it.
– Test, download all kinds of CSV databases.

Most Popular Ad Types

Creativity is not about creativity. It's about market research and the right message.

You can master audience targeting, but “non-creative creatives” can eat up a significant portion of your results. If we talk about the appearance of ads, there is no ideal form here either. Try. Different formats of creatives – video, carousel, backstage shots. With text, without text, with or without music – see which audience responds best to which creative.

Below is a list of ad types that we recommend setting up:

1. DPA (dynamic product ads) – dynamic product advertising. Listings that are generated automatically from your catalog using images, description titles and prices of your products. DPA remains one of the most effective and simple Facebook advertising tools in 2020.
2. Video ads can be considered the most effective way to promote. However, if your video isn't compelling and doesn't close the buyer's request, it won't work.
   The most popular type of video ad this year is user-generated content (UGC). UGC ads typically feature video customer testimonials that build loyalty credit with potential buyers. They are especially effective when an influential person speaks about the product. 
3. Carousel ads are also one of the most popular in 2020, with very high engagement rates. This, in turn, tells Facebook that users are interested in ads, thereby reducing advertising costs. In addition, when creating a carousel, you can control the entire “layout” and get creative.
4. Short repetitive videos – 15 seconds or less, automatically looping. In addition, they can even be made from a single image by adding just a couple of effects.

Key Recommendations

Show the scope of your product

Your potential customer may not fully understand the range of uses for your product. Take advantage of the advertising tools and demonstrate the use cases “visually”. Your main goal is to bring people to the site, introduce them to the product and collect data for cheap retargeting. 

Learn from competitors 

Let's reveal a secret – all ads shown by a particular company can be viewed right now. Check; 
To see all the ads that your competitor is using, go to Facebook, then "Details" in the "Page Transparency" section. In the pop-up window you will see "Ads from this page" – go to the ad library and see all the ads posted by the company. You can also search the ad library for any brand and the creatives they serve. Also, look at how the same millionaire bloggers advertise and find out for yourself how else you can make money on Instagram.

Move on to new audiences

Any audience has a point of "burnout" or a moment by which the audience exhausts itself. Then, it's time to think about how to expand the audience and attract a new one. You can move on to a new audience when you stop seeing a drop in ROAS.

How do Instagram algorithms work?

Perhaps there is nothing more mythical than the versions of the Instagram algorithms. Only connoisseurs select new ones, Instagram itself removes the chronology or “rolls out” new “buns”, which are completely confusing. How do Instagram algorithms actually work? In this article, we will use only the information given by Instagramtram experts. 

Instagram Feed Algorithm

5 factors that affect the order of content in the feed:

1 User interest in content – a pattern of actions on the platform in the form of your likes, comments and saves. When suggesting news in the feed, the Instagram algorithm is guided by your interests and behavior. Of particular importance are marks in posts and stories, watched live broadcasts – they most of all influence the sequence of issuance in the feed.

2 The relationship of the user with the subscribers – yes, Instagram may involve family and friendship ties. Of course, by your behavior you yourself show that this person is included in the Friends & Family category. You tag your friends in stories, communicate with them in Direct, see them, take an interest in their life and like them.

3 Relevance of publications – information on this subject, the developers prefer to keep closed. However, you can be sure that Instagram sets a unique time bar for each user. Depending on how many people are subscribed to it, and how many people the user is following.

4 Frequency of user opening the application – 42% of Instagram users open the application more than once a day. If you go to Instagram more than once a day, then your feed will look like a chronological one. You will be shown updates with relevance from the last visit. If you visit every few days, then the chronology is not taken into account, the output is sorted by the platform algorithms.

5 The number of user subscriptions – the more subscriptions you have, the more options Facebook has for you. However, the chance that you will see the content of everyone you follow is zero.

6 Time spent on the platform – the algorithms also keep track of how much time you spent on the app. You can see for yourself by going to the settings and opening the “Your actions” tab. Instagram shows as much content as you can watch.

Algorithms in Instagram Stories

The principle of algorithms is the same – your behavior and interests. Those accounts with which you interact more will be shown forward. And those that justify their name "relevant", showing life right now and often – their path to the top is greatly reduced. In this way, you provide more opportunities for subscribers to interact with your stories.

In order to reach the largest possible audience, use as many interaction options as possible. We will talk more about increasing coverage in the next article.

Instagram algorithm works in IGTV

Oddly enough, many write off IGTV, but in vain – the viral coverage of such videos is 4 times greater. Moreover, it can be assumed that the algorithms for issuing videos in both IGTV and the feed intersect. Although, to date, little has been said about them either. Popular videos can be viewed in a separate tab and are also shown by interest priority.

Algorithm in the “Recommendations” tab

Instagram personalizes this tab for each user – the content that you are more likely to like is shown. The algorithm works very sensitively, based on your reactions – once you like and save posts on a certain topic, the algorithm will immediately display a selection of content on the same topic.

Now you know how Instagram algorithms work. How to choose the right audience for targeting on Facebook, how to competently and interestingly fill content and make creatives that will help you make money on Instagram. Try. Test. And read the following article on how to increase coverage, what ways to promote and promote your account can and should be used today.