Two weeks ago, we talked about the difference between organic and paid social marketing and when it’s best to use one over the other. As discussed, paid social marketing is best for when you want to gain new followers or customers, or if you want to increase general awareness about your business or brand. Today, we are going to dive deeper into paid social marketing, specifically in terms of how to advertise on Instagram.

How to advertise on Instagram

Believe it or not, there are at least 6 unique ways to advertise on Instagram, whether it be an in-feed advertisement (one that you come across while scrolling through the post of people you follow) or an advertisement in stories. Below are 3 of the 6 ways to get started:

1. Promote an existing post: The easiest way to advertise on Instagram is to simply promote, a.k.a. put money into, an existing post on your IG feed. Assuming you have a business Instagram account, all you have to do is go to the “Promotions” section of your profile, select the post you want to promote, allocate budget, destination (where a user will be taken if they click on the post-turned-ad), audience (who you’re trying to reach), and duration (how long you want the promotion to last). According to Hootsuite, promoting an existing post is the easiest way to advertise on Instagram.
2. Advertise via stories: Buying an Instagram Story ad is another way to advertise on Instagram. Most of the ad purchasing happens through Facebook, the parent company of Instagram. As a business, all you have to do is create a Facebook business page and that connects to your Instagram business account. All of your ad creation will be run through the Facebook Ad Manager after both of these accounts are set up.
3. Advertise via in-feed: Advertising in-feed has the most formatting options: you can choose to post one photo, a carousel of photos, a collection of photos, or a video. Similarly to promoting an existing post and posting a story ad, you can decide how much to spend per day on the advertisement based on your desired reach and budget.

If you’re feeling intimidated by advertising on Instagram, start with a low-budget promotion on an existing post and go from there! Or, if you’re an IG veteran, read more about the different ways you can advertise on Instagram from Instagram itself.