Instagram has over 1 billion monthly users and is a platform rich with opportunities for virtually any kind of business.

Your Instagram ads will run on Facebook as well as IG, and are linked to your Facebook account. Because ads cost money and you have a budget, your digital marketing strategy must contain smart choices for those posts you choose to promote.

Here are four tips to help give you a kickstart…

Use Post Interactions to Create a Custom Audience

Start by opening the Custom Audience tab in Facebook and navigate to the Instagram business profile source.

Using this tool, you’ll be able to build custom audiences for your ads, made up of people who already interact with you on the platform, and thus know your brand.

The tool allows you to select criteria by which you can filter engagements and target audiences for specific ads or campaigns. Utilizing these options can zero in on those people most likely to want to purchase your product or service.

You can filter based on recent visitors to your page, as well as those who sent you a direct message, saved a post or shared information from your page. Your audience can further be refined with the Exclude feature.

For example, you can exclude anyone who visited your page but did not engage in any way.

Use your most popular posts

Organic Instagram posts are free, and if you do a good job creating relevant content, your users will engage. When choosing paid ad content, you can repurpose previous posts that had a high level of engagement. These posts have a proven track record of being popular, so have the best likelihood of delivering engagement when boosted.

The best way to determine your most popular post is to check out your Insights in your Business Profile page. Use the Drop-Down menus to see which posts have garnered the most attention and engagement.

Pro Tip: Your Insights tab can also give you a record of your comments, email, engagement, follows, and more. This is all excellent data when analyzing your Instagram page’s effectiveness.

Track your ads for ROI

Like any advertising, it is vital to monitor the effectiveness of the dollars you spend. Even though you are utilizing Insights to choose proven ad content, once you are boosting to a paid audience, you should reassess the effectiveness of each placement.

You can select three different avenues for advertising and see which works best for each type of ad. You can place ads in your Instagram feed, Instagram Stories, or Instagram Search and Explore.

You can determine which placements and ads are giving you the best return on investment by utilizing the Breakdown tool in the Facebook Ads Manager.

Create ads that stop the scrolling

With over 1 billion active users posting content, getting someone to notice your ad takes some skill. Instagram is a very competitive marketplace, so you need to create ads that can stop your prospect’s scrolling long enough to read it.

The only way to drive your ad costs down is to drive your engagement up. Using your most engaging posts as ads in one way to do this, another is to check out which ads are succeeding for your biggest competitors.

The key is determining the formula which works best for your business. Instagram can help with their Creative Hub, located in the Business Manager or Ads Manager menus.

Any of the above tips on its own will help to stretch your advertising budget. However, the more adept you become at incorporating all of these tips, the faster your engagement should grow.

Instagram has over 1 billion monthly users and is a platform rich with opportunities for virtually any kind of business.

Your Instagram ads will run on Facebook as well as IG, and are linked to your Facebook account. Because ads cost money and you have a budget, your digital marketing strategy must contain smart choices for those posts you choose to promote.

Here are four tips to help give you a kickstart…

Use Post Interactions to Create a Custom Audience

Start by opening the Custom Audience tab in Facebook and navigate to the Instagram business profile source.

Using this tool, you’ll be able to build custom audiences for your ads, made up of people who already interact with you on the platform, and thus know your brand.

The tool allows you to select criteria by which you can filter engagements and target audiences for specific ads or campaigns. Utilizing these options can zero in on those people most likely to want to purchase your product or service.

You can filter based on recent visitors to your page, as well as those who sent you a direct message, saved a post or shared information from your page. Your audience can further be refined with the Exclude feature.

For example, you can exclude anyone who visited your page but did not engage in any way.

Use your most popular posts

Organic Instagram posts are free, and if you do a good job creating relevant content, your users will engage. When choosing paid ad content, you can repurpose previous posts that had a high level of engagement. These posts have a proven track record of being popular, so have the best likelihood of delivering engagement when boosted.

The best way to determine your most popular post is to check out your Insights in your Business Profile page. Use the Drop-Down menus to see which posts have garnered the most attention and engagement.

Pro Tip: Your Insights tab can also give you a record of your comments, email, engagement, follows, and more. This is all excellent data when analyzing your Instagram page’s effectiveness.

Track your ads for ROI

Like any advertising, it is vital to monitor the effectiveness of the dollars you spend. Even though you are utilizing Insights to choose proven ad content, once you are boosting to a paid audience, you should reassess the effectiveness of each placement.

You can select three different avenues for advertising and see which works best for each type of ad. You can place ads in your Instagram feed, Instagram Stories, or Instagram Search and Explore.

You can determine which placements and ads are giving you the best return on investment by utilizing the Breakdown tool in the Facebook Ads Manager.

Create ads that stop the scrolling

With over 1 billion active users posting content, getting someone to notice your ad takes some skill. Instagram is a very competitive marketplace, so you need to create ads that can stop your prospect’s scrolling long enough to read it.

The only way to drive your ad costs down is to drive your engagement up. Using your most engaging posts as ads in one way to do this, another is to check out which ads are succeeding for your biggest competitors.

The key is determining the formula which works best for your business. Instagram can help with their Creative Hub, located in the Business Manager or Ads Manager menus.

Any of the above tips on its own will help to stretch your advertising budget. However, the more adept you become at incorporating all of these tips, the faster your engagement should grow.