Like Instagram’s boosts and X’s (formerly Twitter) promoted post feature, TikTok created a tool that allows users to turn their organic content into a paid promotion quickly and simply.

In this article, we’ll provide an overview of the TikTok promotion advertising tool, review the pros and cons and guide you on leveraging it in your TikTok marketing strategy.

What is TikTok promotion?

First launched in 2021, TikTok Promote is an in-app advertising feature that allows users to quickly boost their content and turn their organic videos into ads. Users can leverage the feature to get more views on TikTok, website visits, followers, messages or profile views.

With Promote, getting an ad up and running takes a few clicks. All you need to do is choose a promotion goal, define your audience and set your ad duration and budget. Then hit ‘pay.’

Once your campaign is live, Promote has basic analytics to track your ad’s performance. These include the number of video views, likes, comments and shares on your video. You can also see how many people visited your website link, and the age and gender of people interacting with your video.

How to use TikTok promotion

Whether you want to get more followers on TikTok or convert more followers into paying customers, TikTok promotions can help you reach your marketing goals faster and tap into new audiences.

But before we get into the step-by-step guide, here are some things to note.

To be eligible for TikTok Promote, you must:

• Be over 18.
• Agree to the Promote Terms of Service and acknowledge the TikTok Privacy Policy.
• Have a creator or business account (Government, Politician and Political Party Accounts (GPPPAs) are not eligible to use Promote.)

You should also keep in mind that:

• Promote is only available for public videos with original sound or sounds.
• TikTok’s Commercial Musical Library is a resource for adding music to your video.
• Promote is just a tool to get your content to a wider audience. To make your videos more engaging, check out these TikTok video ideas.

Now, on to the fun part—using TikTok Promote.

1. Open the Promote tool

In the TikTok app, access the Promote tool from a TikTok video, Creator Tools or the Business Suite.

To access it from a TikTok video you want to promote:

1. From the video, tap the More options button.
2. Tap Promote.

From your Creator tools:

1. Tap Profile at the bottom.
2. Tap the Menu button at the top.
3. Tap Creator tools.
4. Tap Promote.

From within the Business Suite for a business account:

1. From your profile, tap the Menu button at the top.
2. Tap Business Suite.
3. Tap Promote.

2. Choose a goal

The app will then ask you to choose a goal for your TikTok promotion. You have five options:

• More video views: Get more people to watch your video.
• More website visits: Guide more people to your website.
• More followers: Improve your chances of gaining followers.
• More messages: Add a “send message” button to your video and extend your reach to new customers.
• More profile views: Get more people to view your TikTok profile.

3. Define your audience

After you choose a goal, you will need to define your audience (i.e., the people you will promote your video to). There are two options: Let TikTok determine your audience; or you can create your own.

When you select the ‘create your own’ option, you will see more screens to choose the gender, age, location and interests of the people you want to target.

4. Set your budget and duration

How long do you want your ad to run, and how much do you want to spend? Using two sliders, adjust the budget and duration for your ad to get an estimated total cost and reach, depending on the parameters you choose.

5. Pay and start your TikTok promotion

For the last step, you’ll see an overview screen with a summary of your campaign details: the goal, audience, budget and duration and estimated views. If everything looks good, click the ‘pay and start promotion’ button to pay for your ad campaign and push it live.

How much does TikTok Promote cost?

A TikTok promotion campaign can range from $3 to $1000 per day, lasting one to seven days. Therefore, TikTok Promote could cost between $3 for a one-day campaign and up to $7,000 for a seven-day campaign.

Compared to regular TikTok Ads, which have a minimum budget of $50 at the campaign level and $20 at the ad group level, TikTok Promote has a much cheaper entry point.

If you’re a creator trying to grow on TikTok (and make it into the exclusive Creativity Program), boosting your content with TikTok Promote is an affordable way to get the followers and views you need to qualify. It’s also a helpful tool for brands who want to amplify a successful organic post with minimal time or financial investment.

Is TikTok Promote worth it?

Should you throw some coins into TikTok Promote to boost your content? Like many marketing tactics, the short answer is, “It depends.” Here are a few of the benefits and drawbacks to help you decide.

Pros

• Get your content in front of more people. TikTok SEO is beneficial, but social media algorithms are inconsistent, so paying to play could be worth it.
• Maximize your organic content. TikTok’s traditional ad campaigns can be a bit tricky to set up. With TikTok Promote, your social team can turn any organic TikTok video into an ad in just a few clicks directly within the app.
• Learn more about your audience. You’ll get insights to understand your audience better and learn how your video performed in reaching your goals.
• Cost-effective. With a minimum spend of $3/day, it’s affordable to experiment with TikTok promotions without breaking the bank.
• Expanded features. TikTok Promote allows small businesses that work with influencers to boost the creator’s content or LIVE videos to help increase their views. They also recently launched ‘​​Promotional Pack,’ a new buying type that allows users to purchase a guaranteed minimum amount of views, ensuring visibility.

Cons

• Promoted videos have a “sponsored” tag. Since many social users have learned to spot and scroll past ads quickly, your target audience may not engage with a Promoted video as eagerly as organic content.
• Spreading misinformation. TikTok Promote is so simple and inexpensive to use that some people can use it to amplify fake news. However, TikTok is cracking down on this issue by removing sponsored content from sensitive or divisive topic searches.

Why TikTok may not approve a promotion

If your video doesn’t meet TikTok’s standards, there’s a chance they may not approve it for promotion.

Here are some reasons why TikTok could reject your ad:

• Intellectual property infringement. Avoid using copyrighted or trademarked elements in your ad and landing page without permission. These elements include brands, hashtags, copyrighted media, imitations and replicas.
• Ad creative inconsistency. Your caption, text, images, videos and call-to-actions must be consistent with the product/service you are promoting. The prices quoted in the ad should also match what is on the website.
• Misleading and inconsistent information. Your ads can’t contain exaggerated performances, promises or images.

How to cancel a promotion on TikTok

Canceling a promotion on TikTok is easy. Go to your promoted video, tap the three dots in the upper right-hand corner and select ‘Close Promotion.’ Any unused promotional funds will be automatically refunded to your Promote balance for future promotions or withdrawn from your account.

Accelerate your growth with TikTok Promote

TikTok Promote is a simple tool that gives creators and marketers the power to add a little fuel to their creative fire in TikTok promotions, getting their content working harder for them. Plus, its low minimum spend means it’s easy to test out on multiple videos and see which one performs best. However, while the feature may be affordable and easy to use, ad budget is often precious, and promoting posts should just be one piece of your larger strategy.

To maximize your investment and get expert guidance, check out our webinar to learn more about how to unlock the power of TikTok for your business.

The post TikTok Promotion: Boost your visibility in 2024 appeared first on Sprout Social.

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Not sure how to get started? Look no further because this post gives you a complete guide to Twitter advertising. Here, you’ll find out all about the different Twitter social media ad formats, how much you can expect to spend and how to set it up for the first time. Let’s get right to it.

Table of contents:

• Why use Twitter ads?
• Types of Twitter ads
• How much do Twitter ads cost
• How to set up a Twitter ad campaign
• Tips for using Twitter ads

Why use Twitter ads?

Now before you start investing in paid social for Twitter, you may want to know what’s in it for you. The platform has a lot of potential with improved targeting capabilities and new ad formats. As such, advertising on the platform could exponentially grow your reach. So let’s find out some of the top benefits of running ads on Twitter.

1. Potential to reach millions of users

According to the latest Twitter stats, the platform currently has 436 million monthly active users. Out of these, 237.8 million monetizable users use the app on a daily basis. That’s millions of people you could potentially reach through your Twitter advertising efforts.

2. Objective-based ad campaigns

Twitter lets you optimize your ads toward your campaign objective. You get to choose from a variety of campaign objectives and Twitter will only bill you for actions that align with your chosen objective. In other words, your investment specifically goes towards achieving your goals.

3. Robust targeting capabilities

The Twitter ads manager offers a number of campaign targeting options. This allows you to fine-tune your ad targeting to reach only the most relevant users. At the most basic level, you can use demographics targeting to reach users based on:

• Geolocation
• Age
• Gender
• Language
• Device
• Carrier

For more advanced targeting, you can choose to display your ads to users based on:

• Conversations they participate in
• Events relevant to your audience
• Keywords they use
• Whether they’ve engaged with a specific Tweet from your brand
• The movies and TV shows they watch
• What their interests are
• Whether they share similar interests with your existing followers

Twitter even lets you create unique audience segments using off-platform customer information. The Custom Audiences feature allows you to create different audience groups to target, exclude or expand to.

4. Rise in Twitter ad engagement

Ad engagement on Twitter is growing. This speaks volumes about the impact of advertising on the platform. According to the latest reports, Twitter saw a 7% year-over-year increase in ad engagement in Q2 of 2022. If these trends continue, you can expect to launch ad campaigns that drive tons of engagement.

Types of Twitter ads

Twitter offers several choices in ad types. To run a successful advertising campaign on the platform, you need to decide which Twitter ad format will help you achieve your goals.

Promoted Ads

You might remember these as Promoted Tweets. They’re a lot like regular Tweets, except Twitter shows them to people who aren’t following your brand yet. They have a “Promoted” label at the bottom so users can differentiate them from organic Tweets.

The best part is that you can use a variety of media formats to create these Promoted Ads. In addition to regular text and image Tweets, you can create ads using videos, carousels and Moments.

Follower Ads

Previously called Promoted Accounts, Follower Ads let you promote an entire Twitter account. It helps you target users who might be interested in your brand but aren’t already following you. So it’s the perfect ad type if you want to grow your Twitter following.

With this type of Twitter ad, your account will show up in the “Who to follow” section of a user’s feed.

Twitter Amplify

With this option, brands can serve their ads through video content from highly relevant publishers. There are two ad formats to choose from:

• Amplify Pre-roll, which lets you choose from 15+ categories of videos to serve your pre-roll video ad
• Amplify Sponsorships, which involves a one-on-one partnership with one specific publisher. Note that this option is currently not available for self-serve advertisers.

Twitter Takeover

These types of ads put your brand at the forefront with exclusive ownership of the platform’s premium real estate. As you can guess, they’re a lot more expensive than other Twitter ad formats. You can choose from two Takeover placements:

• Timeline Takeover, which ensures that your ad is the first one that someone sees when they open Twitter for the day
• Trend Takeover, which serves your ad alongside trending topics. Your ad will show up among topics in the Explore tab to drive conversations. Or you can even choose Trend Takeover+ for an immersive video experience.

Dynamic Product Ads (DPA)

These ads allow you to showcase your most relevant products to the right customers. With DPA Prospecting, you can acquire new customers by featuring products that are most relevant to them. Meanwhile, DPA Retargeting lets you feature products that people have engaged with on your website.

Collection Ads

As the name suggests, this type of ad lets you showcase a collection of product images in a single ad. Collection Ads feature a primary hero image on top of several small thumbnail images.

How much do Twitter ads cost

Fortunately for advertisers, the cost to run a Twitter ad campaign is customizable according to your budget. That means how much you spend largely depends on how much you’re willing to spend.

That said, it’s a good idea to get a sense of how much it typically costs to advertise on the platform. According to AdsTarget, you can expect to spend around $0.38 per action. However, the actual cost depends on the ad type. Here’s a quick look at the average cost to run different types of Twitter ads:

• Promoted Ads – $0.25 to $2 per action
• Follower Ads – $2 to $4 per follow
• Twitter Takeover – $200,000 per day

Keep in mind that Twitter charges you based on actions relevant to your ad objective. This makes it much easier to stick to your budget because you’re not paying for actions that don’t align with your goal. Check out the different billable actions for each objective:

• Reach – Cost per 1,000 Tweet impressions
• Video views – Cost per view
• Pre-roll views – Cost per view
• App installs – Impressions or app clicks
• Website traffic – Cost per engagement
• Engagements – Cost per engagement
• Followers – Cost per follow
• App re-engagements – Cost per app click

How to set up a Twitter ad campaign

If you’re familiar with setting up Facebook ads, you should have no trouble launching a Twitter ad campaign. But if you’re completely new to the scene, we’ve got you covered.

Before you start, make sure you set up your Twitter ads account. For this, sign in to your Twitter account and go to the Twitter ads onboarding page. Then follow the steps to complete setting up your account.

Next, follow the steps below to create your Twitter ad campaign.

1. Choose your ad objective

What do you want to get out of your ads? Depending on your ad objective, Twitter will offer the best engagement types and actions for your campaign.

Choose from the following available ad objectives:

• Reach – This objective displays your ad to as many people as possible within a set timeframe. And you only pay for every 1,000 Tweet impressions. Use this to raise brand awareness and improve brand perception.
• Engagements – Drive more conversations around your brand by designing ads that people would want to interact with.
• Followers – Promote your Twitter account and attract more followers.
• Website traffic – Get more people to visit your website after seeing your ad. This type of campaign leverages Twitter’s Click ID to give you a reliable way to measure visits coming from your Twitter ad.
• Keywords – Target users who use specific keywords relevant to your campaign. This is an effective way to narrow down an audience with high intent.

2. Create your ad

The next page lets you create your ad by adding text and relevant media. Twitter gives you the option to upload a new media file or choose from your existing media library. You’ll need to include a headline and a link to your desired landing page.

On the right-hand panel, you get a preview of what the ad would look like. Use this as a guide to fine-tune your ad design.

3. Customize your ad delivery

The next step is where you decide whom to target. First, select the key audience demographics you want to reach with this ad. You can narrow your targeting down based on gender, age and location.

Optionally, Twitter offers several targeting features to fine-tune your ad delivery. You can target users based on the keywords and devices they use and their interests and languages. It even lets you target people who follow accounts similar to yours.

4. Set your budget and schedule

Next, it’s time to decide how much you’re willing to spend on your campaign. When you set a daily budget, it gives you better control over your spend. That way, Twitter will stop displaying your ad once you’ve reached the budget limit.

Additionally, make sure to include a date range for your ad. This will ensure that your ad only runs for the specified time frame.

Finally, add a credit card to your Twitter ad account. Then once you’ve finalized everything, hit the “Launch campaign” button to go live with your ad.

Tips for using Twitter ads

Want to get more out of your Twitter ads? Follow these best practices and examples from top brands.

1. Stick to your brand voice

To make sure your ads resonate with your target audience, maintain a consistent brand voice. Your promoted content should be no different from your organic ones in terms of how you speak.

2. Write short and engaging copy

Twitter users quickly move on from one Tweet to the next. So stay far away from huge text blocks. Make sure your copy is short and to the point. Just because there’s room for 280 characters doesn’t mean you have to use up all that space.

If it fits with your brand personality and you don’t overdo it, consider using some emojis to catch attention. But don’t forget about accessibility considerations for those using screen readers. Your copy should be short enough to keep users engaged but not so short that it’s meaningless.

German Doner Kebab strikes the perfect balance with creative ad copy that cuts right to the chase. The brand keeps it fun and casual with a sprinkle of emojis to connect with the audience.

3. Use high-quality visuals

Eye-catching videos and images can make your ad stand out and stop the scroll, driving more engagement with your ad. They can get people to pause and engage with your ad. So be sure to use high-quality visuals that speak for the quality of your products/services.

4. Have a clear call to action

Let people know exactly what you want them to do after seeing your ad. Whether it’s to visit your website or download your app, your ads should have a CTA that clearly mentions the next step.

The following ad from Greyson comes with a CTA that explicitly tells the audience what to do. In this case, it’s to shop Justin Thomas’ championship looks.

5. Learn from your organic performance

How people respond to your organic Tweets can tell you a lot about how to run your Twitter ads. Find out what kind of content gets the most engagement and positive sentiment from your target audience. Then use the insights from your Twitter analytics to inform your advertising decisions.

Sprout Social offers Twitter analytics and reporting to help you with this. This lets you identify your best Twitter content based on reach, clicks and retweets.

6. Test and optimize

Of course, the best way to make sure your ads are working is to test them. Run A/B tests on different ad placements, messaging, ad format and post timings. Then use those data and insights to create highly optimized ads that will rake in profits.

Ready to hit the ground running with Twitter ads?

With stronger attribution and better targeting, Twitter is constantly evolving to serve brands. And with the right strategy, it can be a valuable advertising channel for your business. But the fast-paced nature of the platform means you have to perfect your timing to reach your audience when they’re most active. Check out our guide on how to schedule Tweets to get your timing right.

Use of Twitter nomenclature across Sprout refers to newly rebranded X platform and related terminology.

The post Twitter ads: The complete guide for your brand appeared first on Sprout Social.

Brands that are truly “killing it” on TikTok are creating content that’s as entertaining as it is authentic–making the audience feel closer to the brand. This trends away from the often polished and perfect posts we’re used to seeing from businesses on other social media platforms.

This 45-minute discussion will cover: 

• How your business can gain value from TikTok 
• TikTok audience insights and its potential for your business
• Impactful TikTok marketing tips you can begin implementing now

Featuring speakers from Sprout Social:

The post How to Unlock the Power of TikTok for Your Business appeared first on Sprout Social.

While organic content is still the heart of any LinkedIn marketing strategy, running ads can help amplify your content’s reach and impact.

In this guide, we’ll dive into LinkedIn advertising, discussing everything from the different ad formats available, to creating a target audience, to measuring the success of your campaigns.

Table of contents

• How to get started advertising on LinkedIn
• Choosing the right LinkedIn ad types for your campaign
• The true cost of LinkedIn ads
• Measuring the success of your LinkedIn ad campaigns
• Best practices for LinkedIn advertising
• LinkedIn ad examples to inspire you

How to get started advertising on LinkedIn

Using the LinkedIn ads campaign manager

Start by signing into the LinkedIn Campaign Manager. The LinkedIn ads manager is where you can manage your LinkedIn advertising campaigns.

Before you get started with Campaign Manager, you need to create a LinkedIn account if you don’t have one yet; it takes just a few seconds to create one.

Enter your account name and select your currency. If you’re running ads on behalf of a business, link your campaign with a LinkedIn page.

Setting a relevant ad objective

Next, choose the objective for your ad campaign. Do you want more people to become aware about your business? Perhaps you want to attract more website visitors. Or maybe you want to capture more leads.

LinkedIn advertising gives you several objectives to choose from for three different stages of the sales funnel–awareness, consideration and conversions. At this stage, you can set the most relevant objective for a particular LinkedIn ads campaign.

If you’re an employer that’s advertising for an open position, you also have the option to set an objective to promote job opportunities.

Nailing your ad targeting

You can’t run a successful ad unless you’re targeting the right people. Make sure you have a clear idea of what kind of people you want your ad to reach. You have several targeting options for LinkedIn ads–whether you want to target people based on location, industry, company size, education, job function or skills.

You can even select multiple attributes at a time to further narrow down your targeting. You also have the option to exclude audiences with certain attributes that aren’t relevant to you.

Before you save your ad campaign, make sure you enable audience expansion so LinkedIn can expand and engage a new audience with your ad campaign. This option automatically includes people with similar attributes as the ones you’ve selected.

Choosing the right LinkedIn ad types for your campaign

LinkedIn offers several ad types and formats to help you promote your business in the best way possible. Let’s take a look at these ad types below:

Sponsored content

LinkedIn sponsored content looks just like a regular post that you’d see on your feed except with a CTA button and a “promoted” label.

You can choose from five different formats of sponsored content — single image, carousel, video, event and document. It’s better to switch between the options every once in a while to compare their performances and see which one works best with your audience.

• Single image ads: These ads consist of a single image and are typically used to promote a product or service, increase brand awareness or drive website traffic.
• Video ads: These ads include video and are typically used to demonstrate how a product or service works, tell a brand story or increase engagement.
• Carousel ads: These ads include a series of images or videos that users can swipe through. Carousels are typically used to showcase multiple products, services or ideas, or tell a story in slideshow format.
• Event ads: These ads allow businesses to promote upcoming events like webinars, conferences and meetups. They include date, time and location details, and a call-to-action to register or attend the event.

• Document ads: These ads allow businesses to promote whitepapers, ebooks or case studies by displaying a preview of the document and linking to the full version. They’re typically used to generate leads and increase brand awareness.

Lead gen forms

LinkedIn’s lead gen forms let you easily capture leads without requiring users to leave the platform. You can add these forms to any sponsored content or message to collect names, emails and job titles.

The forms are pre-populated with users’ profile data, which encourages more people to sign up. You can also include custom questions in your forms to gather additional information about your prospects.

Once a user submits a form, their contact information is sent to your business and they’re also added as a new lead in LinkedIn’s CRM.

Sponsored messaging

LinkedIn also lets you send paid direct messages to targeted users. In fact, using this ad tactic alongside sponsored content can boost your clickthrough rates by over 70%.

There are two sponsored message ad formats you can choose from:

• Message ads: This ad format lets you send personalized and targeted messages to users with a single call-to-action (CTA.) You can also add lead gen forms to your message ads to easily capture leads.
• Conversation ads: This ad format lets you add multiple CTAs to your messages to help prospects engage with your business and access targeted offers and links.

Quick tip: To improve your sponsored messages, you can personalize them with your audiences’ names and job titles using LinkedIn macros.

Text and dynamic ads

LinkedIn also offers special ad options that are a bit different from regular sponsored content. These include text, spotlight and follower ads. Let’s take a look at each one below.

• Text ads: Pay-per-click (PPC) text ads appear on the right-hand side of a desktop screen. They include a small image along with a short headline and blurb. They may be less prominent than sponsored content but can still be very effective depending on your campaign goal.
• Spotlight ads: These are dynamic ads that are personalized for each individual profile. Spotlight ads link back to your website or landing page, and are a great way to share insightful, thought leadership content.
• Follower ads: These dynamic ads are also personalized, but the goal is to get you more followers on your LinkedIn company page.

The true cost of LinkedIn ads

The average cost-per-click (CPC) on LinkedIn is between $5-6.

But the actual cost of LinkedIn ads depends on factors like the type of ad, targeting, budget and the campaign’s performance.

The pricing system for ads can also vary.

For example, sponsored content is generally priced on a CPC or cost-per-mille (CPM) basis, while sponsored messages are typically priced on a cost-per-send (CPS) basis.

Targeting options, such as demographic and job title targeting, can also affect the cost of LinkedIn ads. The more specific the targeting, the more expensive the ad will be.

Additionally, if your campaign is performing well and achieving the desired results, the cost-per-conversion may be lower, making the campaign more cost-effective.

Keeping this in mind, it’s important to set a budget and measure the ROI to ensure your ad costs don’t add up and jeopardize your financial goals.

Setting up your ad budget and schedule

A big part of running ads on LinkedIn is setting a budget for your campaigns. This helps you control the total cost of advertising on the platform.

LinkedIn offers three budget options to control your ad spend:

• Daily budget: This option lets you specify the average amount you want to spend on your ad per day. You can choose between a continuous schedule or a set schedule for your daily budget.
• Lifetime budget: This option lets you specify the total amount you want to spend on your campaign from start to finish. LinkedIn will then automatically adjust the daily budget to deliver optimal results. The daily spend can vary depending on factors like traffic, seasonality and bid type.
• Combination: You can also set both daily and lifetime budgets for your campaign. This will help you control the total cost as well as your daily spending. However, you can only select a continuous schedule for this type of budget strategy.

Once you’ve specified the budget for your ad, you also need to set the campaign schedule. The schedule will determine the lifetime of your ad and also help pace your spending.

The scheduling options you have will vary depending on your budget type.

• Continuous schedule: Run your campaign continuously from a start date. The campaign will end once your budget has been entirely consumed. You can use this option for all three budget types.
• Set schedule: Run your campaign from a specified start date to end date. You can use a set schedule for both lifetime and daily budget options, but not if you’re using a combination of the two.

Understanding LinkedIn bid types

LinkedIn advertising is based on an online auction system where your ad competes with other ads for placement. To win, you must place competitive bids for your ads.

You can choose from three bidding types in the Campaign Manager:

• Manual: This bidding strategy lets you set a specific bid amount for a key result. This option can charge by clicks, sends, impressions or views, depending on your ad format, objective and goal. Manual bidding gives you more control over the bid amount, but you need to track the performance of the campaign and adjust your bid as needed.
• Cost-cap: This bidding strategy lets you set a maximum cost per key result. This allows the system to automatically adjust your bids to achieve optimal results while staying within your campaign’s budget.
• Maximum delivery: This is a automated bidding strategy that uses machine learning to set and adjust bids while utilizing your entire budget. The goal is to maximize key results and use your total budget most efficiently.

Measuring the success of your LinkedIn ad campaigns

You don’t run LinkedIn ads no reason. You’d do so with the hope of getting some return on your investment. This makes it crucial to monitor and measure your ad success so you can see whether your investment is paying off.

Perhaps you might even notice that some types of LinkedIn ads are working better than others and you’ll want to shift your focus towards those. You might also find that some ads aren’t delivering any results at all, so you’d want to stop setting money toward something that doesn’t work.

The LinkedIn ads manager comes with a robust reporting feature that lets you track LinkedIn analytics and metrics to understand your ad performance. This includes metrics like clicks, impressions, cost per click, click-through rate, cost per impression, conversions, cost per conversion, leads and cost per lead.

You can even track your performance with different audience demographics in the ads manager. For instance, you can view how people performing a certain job function responded to your ads in terms of clicks, impressions and click-through rate.

Looking to dive deeper? Sprout Social’s LinkedIn management tool can help you dig into the good stuff, visualize key metrics and keep an eye on performance and trends data.

Best practices for LinkedIn advertising

Finally, let’s walk you through some LinkedIn best practices that will help you run successful ad campaigns on the platform.

Maintain the correct LinkedIn ad specs

Your LinkedIn ads need to instantly attract and draw in your target audience and you can’t do that without outstanding visuals. When creating visuals for your ads, make sure you follow the proper LinkedIn ad specs and sizes.

The specs vary for each LinkedIn ad type and ad format. Here are the basics:

Sponsored content

Single image ads

• Should be in JPG or PNG format.
• File size should be 5MB or smaller.
• Keep headlines under 70 characters to avoid truncation.
• Keep descriptions under 100 characters to avoid truncation.
• Images display at 1200 x 627 pixels and should be at least 400x in width.

Carousel ads

• Use 2-10 cards per ad.
• Individual cards should not be larger than 10MB.
• LinkedIn recommends using 1080 x 1080 pixels with an aspect ratio of 1:1 for individual images.
• Keep introductory text under 150 characters and two lines to avoid truncation.
• Character limits below ads are either 45 characters maximum, or 30 characters with a lead gen CTA button.

Video ads

• Keep it under 15 seconds for better engagement (though LinkedIn allows up to 30 minutes of video ads).
• File size should be between 75KB and 200MB
• Your video should be in MP4 format running at less than 30 frames per second.
• Audio size should be less than 64KHz.

Multiple aspect ratios and quality options are available with varying requirements. Check out the full LinkedIn ad specs for video ads to learn more.

Message ads

• Banner creative should be 300×250 pixels.
• It should be no larger than 40KB.
• It should be in JPG, non-animated GIF or PNG (without flash) format.
• Add up to three links using a maximum of 70 characters for anchor text.
• Message text should be no more than 1,500 characters.
• Subject should be no longer than 60 characters.

Text ads

• Ad image should be 100×100 pixels
• It should be in JPG or PNG format
• File size cannot be larger than 2MB
• Keep headlines under 25 characters
• Keep descriptions under 75 characters

Note that there are five different sizes and ad specs for text ads. There’s also a whole bunch of LinkedIn ad size and specs for dynamic ads like follower and spotlight ads that are tailored to individual users depending on which format you choose.

For even better results in lead generation through your LinkedIn ads, some experts also recommend using colors that contrast with the platform’s blue and white colors in your visuals. This will give your ad an instant pop, allowing you to effectively draw in your target audience.

Support your ads with a strong organic brand

Running ads alone does not guarantee leads and conversions.

You also need a powerful organic strategy in place to pique your audiences’ interest, build trust and boost the impact of your paid campaigns.

Along with investing in ads, regularly share valuable and engaging content to establish your business as a thought leader. Create a well-designed company page and use consistent branding to look authentic and high-quality.

Don’t forget to engage with your audience — respond to comments and messages, and welcome both positive and negative feedback.

Finally, track analytics to understand the performance of your organic content. This will help guide your ad campaigns and set your future content up for success.

Keep testing and optimizing

Based on the insights collected from your performance tracking efforts, you’ll uncover some excellent opportunities and ideas to improve your ads.

Run A/B tests on different LinkedIn ad types, ad creatives, ad copy and CTAs. Find out what resonates with your audience and use that to further improve your ad performance.

Additionally, you might even want to use A/B testing to optimize your ad targeting. Make slight alterations to your targeting criteria to identify which audiences are most responsive to your ads. This will eventually help you perfect your LinkedIn ad targeting and get more out of your advertising efforts.

LinkedIn Ad examples to inspire you

Now that you know how to run ads on LinkedIn, let’s look at some interesting examples from real-life brands to get your creative juices flowing.

Asana

Asana is a cult-favorite project management tool used by businesses worldwide. This means they have some great numbers to show off and attract potential customers. This is exactly what they’re doing with this LinkedIn ad example, where they use their success in helping increase employee satisfaction as eye-catching copy.

Shopify

Shopify does a brilliant job of addressing one of the biggest pain points of office-based employees — the long, monotonous commute. They do so by using powerful imagery and contextual copy, enough to grab the attention of anyone looking to transition to a more flexible work setting.

TikTok

In this LinkedIn ad example, TikTok promotes its virtual event using an engaging video made with high-contrast, bold colors and trendy imagery — perfectly aligned with their brand identity. We also love how the copy speaks directly to the specific audience for this post — B2C startups.

Notion

Who says event ads are just for webinars? SaaS companies like Notion can also promote product demos on LinkedIn using multiple ad formats, including event ads. Make sure to throw in a lead gen form into the mix like Notion does to encourage more people to register.

Canva

This carousel ad by Canva is everything the online design tool stands for — colorful and versatile. Using this ad format allows Canva to highlight the many ways users can benefit from the software, visually showcase the tool’s interface and abilities, as well as look beautiful and eye-catching.

Grammarly

Grammarly’s LinkedIn ad is proof that you don’t need flashy colors and visuals to create an impactful advertisement. In the example above, the popular AI writing tool demonstrates its editing feature using a screenshot of the app itself as copy.

Does it work? You bet! And the clever bit about this ad is the sentence being edited in the screenshot resonates with the target audience (hint: freelancers and contractors.)

Grow faster with LinkedIn ads

With the right approach, LinkedIn advertising offers plenty of opportunities to connect with the right audience and grow your business. But it can get overwhelming when you’re just starting out.

Make the most of the steps above to build a winning LinkedIn advertising strategy and generate valuable leads. Interested in learning more? Check out our LinkedIn marketing guide to 10x your growth on the platform.

Or, find out how you can use LinkedIn for business beyond marketing.

The post LinkedIn ads: the ultimate guide from zero to hero appeared first on Sprout Social.

A Facebook business Page is central to any Facebook marketing strategy. It’s where you can share information about your business and promote your new products. Moreover, your Page serves as a channel to provide your customers with assistance. In this guide, we show you the step-by-step process of building a Facebook business Page that attracts your audience.

Table of contents:

• What is a Facebook business Page
• How to create the perfect Facebook business Page
• Tips to maintain an engaging Facebook business Page

What is a Facebook business Page

A Facebook business Page is a public Facebook account that represents a commercial organization. You can use the Page to share information about your business such as your address, contact details and hours of operation. Additionally, it’s the perfect place to share updates about your business and promote products, services and events.

As such, a Facebook business Page allows you to create a space to connect with your audience. Additionally, by setting up a business Page, you’ll gain access to Facebook Shops and advertising tools. This allows you to list your products for sale on the platform and even create paid advertisements to grow your reach.

Meanwhile, a personal Facebook account represents the individual. It can either be private or public depending on your settings. While people can Like and follow a business Page, they can only add a personal profile as a friend. Moreover, a personal profile doesn’t come with marketing and advertising tools that are available on business Pages.

How to create the perfect Facebook business Page

Ready to create your very own Facebook business Page? Follow the steps below to get started.

Step 1: Create a new Page from the “Pages” section

From your Facebook homepage, click on “Pages” in the left-hand panel. This will open up a dashboard to manage all your Pages and profiles. Click on the “Create New Page” button under “Your Pages and profiles.”

Step 2: Enter your Page name and category

Next, enter the name of your Page. This should be similar to your official business or brand name so your audience can instantly recognize it. In other words, choose a name your customers will use when searching for your brand.

After this, you’ll need to include a business category. Type in a keyword or two in the given field and Facebook will offer a few relevant suggestions. You can select up to three options to categorize your Page. This is essential to help people understand what your business is all about.

Step 3: Add your Page bio

While the bio is an optional section, including a short description of your business can be helpful. This is where you can provide more information about what your brand does and what it stands for. Your bio can only be about 100 characters so be sure to keep it clear and succinct.

The bio will show up prominently below your Page name, so it needs to be catchy and relevant. Consider using your brand slogan here instead of coming up with a new bio. Once you’re done, click on “Create Page.”

Step 4: Include your business details

Now that you’ve created the Page, it’s time to make it more complete by including additional details about your business. To finish your setup, you’ll need to include the following information about your business:

• Website
• Phone number
• Email address
• Physical address
• Hours of operation

After you’ve filled out the details, click on “Next” to get to the next step of your Page setup. Optionally, you can skip this step for now and add those details later.

Step 5: Put together your profile imagery

One of the most crucial steps is customizing your Page with high-quality imagery. Your Page’s visuals are what will help you make an impression on your audience. So it’s important that you carefully choose images that truly represent your brand and are instantly recognizable.

The first thing you’ll need is a profile picture. As highlighted in our social media image size guide, this should be at least 180 x 180 pixels. Remember that this picture will come out as a circle, so avoid including any important details in the corners.

Ideally, businesses should be using their brand logo as a profile picture. This helps the audience to instantly associate the Page with the brand they already know. Alternatively, local businesses may consider including a picture of the storefront or the owners. Some may even use a picture of their best offering instead.

As for your Facebook cover photo, the recommended size is 820 x 312 pixels. Any photo smaller than this will appear stretched and distorted. Consider using existing templates from photo editing tools like Canva to ensure that your cover photo is perfectly sized.

You can also choose to include an action button to show up at the top of your Page. This will help direct Page visitors toward the action that you want them to take. Perhaps you want them to book an appointment, view your shop, call your business, send a message or even get tickets. Choose the most relevant option, click on “Next” and hit “Save.”

Other optional steps include connecting WhatsApp to your Page and inviting your friends to Like the Page. You can choose to skip these steps for now and hit “Done.” But keep in mind that you’ll still need to complete those steps later on to improve your Page health.

Improving your Page health is essential to create a business Page that people would want to engage with. At the top of your Page, Facebook will provide you with suggestions on what actions you can take to make improvements. Your Page health will improve as you complete these actions.

Now your Page is all set up so you can start creating posts or even run ads to promote it.

Tips to maintain an engaging Facebook business Page

Setting up your Facebook business Page is the easy part. What’s challenging is getting your Page off the ground and sustaining that growth to build an engaging business Page. Here are some social media management tips to help you out.

Keep your business info updated

Remember that people use your Facebook Page to learn about your business. They may use it to find out where you’re located or when you’re open. Make sure to include the most updated info about your business so your Page becomes a reliable source of information. If you’re changing your operating hours for the holidays, for example, make sure to add that detail.

Set specific goals

Working towards something specific can give you a sense of direction with your Facebook marketing. Start by thinking about the purpose of your Facebook page and who your target audience is. Are you looking to support a community of current customers? What about attracting new ones?

Decide on specific goals that are achievable and can contribute to your Page growth. These goals will ultimately inform every aspect of your Facebook strategy. This includes the resources you put behind your Facebook business Page to your overall content strategies.

Create a Facebook content strategy

Knowing when and how often to post on Facebook is critical. Based on our research on how often to post on social media, most brands post at least a few times per week.

Moreover, it’s not enough to just keep creating content that you want to create. Think of what your audience wants to see from you so you can come up with a content strategy that delivers results.

According to The 2023 Sprout Social Index™, 68% of US consumers follow a brand to learn more about their products and services, and another 46% do so to access exclusive deals and promotions. Your Facebook Page is like a store in a mall. Consumers will follow you to stay up to date on what’s new, so don’t be afraid of a hard sell.

Engage with your customers

It’s important to realize that your Facebook page is not something that you can “set and forget.”

You may get customers commenting on your posts and asking you questions via Messenger. Failing to respond to customers promptly could result in lost sales or followers.

So you have to be present on social media and be ready and willing to engage. This doesn’t mean you have to answer every single question posted to your timeline or in your inbox immediately. It does mean you need to keep a close eye on notifications and conversations.

This would involve identifying the best social media management tool for your business to help you stay on top of those messages. For example, Sprout offers a Smart Inbox where you can keep track of all your incoming messages, comments and social media mentions in one place. From here, you can quickly see and respond to your Facebook messages and comments.

Use analytics to chart your path forward

Your Facebook Page Insights can tell you a lot about how your current Facebook strategy is working. It can show you how people are engaging with your posts and how your Page is growing. Use these insights to inform your decisions and make improvements to your existing strategy. For example, you may want to share more videos because your analytics tell you that people are engaging a lot with your video posts.

Once you start running ads from your Page, you’ll be able to see how your promoted posts are performing. Experiment with different variations of your ad copy, placement and creative to see what has the biggest impact. This will allow you to build a Facebook advertising strategy that keeps evolving.

Start growing your Facebook Page

The tips highlighted above can help you get the ball rolling and build an engaging Facebook business Page. Make sure you use them alongside a solid marketing strategy to grow your audience. Check out our guide on how to use Facebook business manager for more tips and tricks to help you out.

The post How to build a Facebook business Page that attracts customers appeared first on Sprout Social.

You already know that the first step for creating sponsored posts is to know your audience. There’s no need to repeat it. It’s time to expand your knowledge into something more actionable.

In this comprehensive guide about sponsored posts, you’ll learn best practices, discover strategies, get resources and find inspiration for your social media campaigns.

What are sponsored posts?

A sponsored post is a type of social media content used as an advertisement in any of the major social media networks to increase your brand exposure by targeting a specific audience. Sponsored posts look like native content on the social network, blending with organic content in the user’s feed.

There are two different sponsored posts, which are:

• Promoted or boosted posts: Amplifies the reach of your content by paying the platform to “boost” the post’s visibility to a larger audience.
• Paid sponsorships or paid partnerships: Promotes your brand through a creator or influencer’s account on their social network(s). Their audience will see a post similar to organic content, except it will be tagged or indicate in the copy that it’s being sponsored by a brand.

With sponsored content, you can create a better experience for your audience by leveraging these less intrusive ads for your influencer and paid social strategies. Plus, sponsored posts expand your reach by tapping into new audiences.

Tips for creating effective sponsored posts

Whether you’re a small business trying to put your name out there or an established brand seeking to boost engagement, here are some tips to help you get on the right track.

Outline goals

This is one of the most difficult—but crucial—steps to get started with your sponsored content campaigns. That’s why you need a clear direction for what you want to achieve with your sponsored posts.

You can define specific campaign KPIs based on your target audience, past campaign performance and potential reach. To evaluate this potential reach, have in mind if you’ll be working with influencers or not.

Here are a couple of questions to help outline your goals:

• What are your business goals? Determine the overall business goals that you’re trying to achieve. If your leadership expects to generate leads or $$$ from social media marketing efforts, start breaking that down into smaller goals.
• What are your objectives? You know this one too well. Use the SMART goals framework to make sure your goals are attainable within a timeframe.

Set a budget

To figure out a budget for your sponsored posts, look at your social media marketing budget as a whole. Knowing how much you can spend helps you allocate your resources wisely. Download our custom budgeting spreadsheet to start outlining your expenses.

Remember, the money you spend on your social media strategy depends on the amount of sponsored content you want to incorporate. Or if you’re willing to work with influencers.

For sponsored content efforts, here’s what you need to consider:

• Define your strategy: Determine if you’re going to use sponsored posts for a single marketing channel or as a pillar of your social media strategy. Knowing this will allow you to determine the investment you need to make for sponsored content.
• Research the costs: The cost of sponsored posts is determined by your social media advertising strategy. These costs can involve creating new content, boosting existing content or hiring influencers. Have in mind that the cost of influencers varies, depending on their audience size (micro vs. celebrity), caliber of their influence, experience and more.
• Compare your budget with your expected ROI: Think of your budget as an investment. Naturally, your return on investment (ROI) should be suitable enough to justify the cost of your sponsored content.

Determine your ROI

The goals you outline can be translated into key metrics (think: reach, engagement and conversions) that calculate ROI.

In the case of sponsored posts, justifying your marketing budget based on likes and comments may seem like a difficult task. But ROI isn’t just measured by bottom-line profit.

You can measure ROI by money saved or used efficiently to expand reach, brand awareness or conversions (think: clicks to your website or sign-ups). However, through social shopping, you can impact the bottom line through direct sales or influencer endorsements (think: influencer discount codes).

Here’s our take on figuring out your ROI:

• Identify your metrics: Reach, engagement and conversion metrics are a good rule of thumb for your sponsored content.
• Track those metrics: Keep track of your sponsored post as soon as it is live. This will help you understand what content and which influencers are performing well.
• Communicate your key metrics to influencers: Make sure you tell influencers what metrics you want to track from the beginning so you can monitor performance and social media ROI efficiently.

Note: Focus on relevant metrics when measuring your sponsored post performance. Tracking too many metrics can distract you from your initial goals. More information isn’t the same as better information.

Create quality content

Sponsored posts can take on a variety of formats, such as videos, testimonials, infographics or static images. Regardless of the type, you can follow best practices to create effective posts.

The anatomy of high-performing sponsored content consists of:

1. Addressing your target audience: You don’t have to directly mention your audience, but a slight reference to them can help capture their interest.
2. Writing strong copy: Put yourself in your audience’s shoes by highlighting benefits or pain points they care about. What’s in it for your audience? Why should they be interested? The same applies to video scripts.
3. Balanced design, visuals and colors: Make sure your sponsored post catches your audience’s eye while being true to your brand and the creator’s identity.
4. A call-to-action: This is how you generate conversions. If you don’t tell your audience what action to take next, you’re losing opportunities.

Decide if you’re working with Influencers

Sponsored content doesn’t have to be paid partnerships. But influencers are a highly effective way to expand your reach and build trust. They’re experts in their niche with an engaged, loyal audience. So, if you partner with them to generate sponsored content, it’s likely some of that trust is going to rub off on you.

Here’s what you need to have in mind for your influencer marketing efforts:

• Find an influencer that belongs to the same niche you’re targeting. This ensures the influencer aligns with your target audience.
• Review your marketing budget to choose the right influencer for you. Influencer rates vary across platforms. But the more influence and followers they have, the more expensive their services will likely be.
• Make sure the influencer understands the message you want to transmit. You don’t want them to post something that doesn’t align with your brand values. Give clear directions but leave room for collaboration. Influencers are also content creators that want to stay true to their audience.

Use tools to look for influencers or do your own research on social media. They’ll usually have their contact info for paid collaborations on their profile.

Instagram sponsored posts

Sponsored posts on Instagram enable you to promote a post from your business profile or partner with an influencer for a paid sponsorship. Additionally, you can promote Instagram story ads.

Instagram sponsored posts have a “Sponsored” tag below your brand name and call-to-action buttons like “Shop now”, “Learn more” or “Sign up”.

This is what a promoted post on Instagram looks like:

For paid partnerships, sponsored posts on Instagram have a “Paid partnership” tag under the influencer’s name, and sometimes also lists your brand’s name.

This is what a paid partnership on Instagram looks like:

How to create a sponsored post on Instagram

To create a promoted post on Instagram, you’ll need to boost an existing post:

1. Go to your profile and select the post you want to promote.
2. Press the Boost post button.
3. Select your goal (whether that be more profile visits, website visits or messages).
4. Choose your target audience (it can be automatic or you can create your own).
5. Set your Budget and Duration.
6. Pay and you’re done.

To manage your Instagram advertising efforts and see how your sponsored post is performing, go to your profile, select your post and press on View insights or Ad insights. From there, you can view your engagement and goal metrics.

With paid partnerships, the influencer will create and post the content. It’s up to you to approve the influencer as a content creator associated with your brand. To achieve this, you:

1. Go to your Settings and press Business.
2. Select Branded content and then Approve content creators.
3. Enter the username of the influencer you’re working with.
4. Press the Approve button that’s next to their username.

With your approval, the influencer will be able to tag you as a business partner in their sponsored post. And you’ll be able to see the reach and engagement metrics from the influencer’s post.

Facebook promoted posts

Facebook only gives you the option to do promoted posts (no influencers here).

Facebook promoted posts have a “Sponsored” tag below the name of your brand and include a call-to-action button that can be “Shop now”, “Learn more” or “Sign up”.

This is what Facebook promoted posts look like:

How to create a promoted post on Facebook

These are the steps to create a promoted post on Facebook:

1. Go to your Facebook page.
2. Select the post that you want to promote and press Boost post.
3. Choose a campaign goal based on the stages of Awareness, Consideration or Conversions.
4. Select a recommended audience or create your own custom audience.
5. Enter your Budget and Duration of the campaign.
6. Pay and boost your post.

To view the results of your boosted post, you can go to your Facebook page, select Ad Center, choose your boosted post and press the View results option. The Ad Center lets you track all your paid posts, so you can see the performance of your entire Facebook advertising strategy.

TikTok sponsored posts

Sponsored TikTok posts have both promoted posts and paid partnerships as options for your TikTok ads.

Much like the others, a “Sponsored” tag appears below your brand’s name and the captions, along with a CTA button.

Here’s what promoted TikTok posts look like:

TikTok sponsored posts have a “Paid partnership” tag under the influencer’s username and captions.

Here’s what paid sponsorships on TikTok look like:

How to create a sponsored post on TikTok

Sponsored posts are just one of the many ways you can make money on TikTok. Since TikTok users are 1.4x more likely to research brands or products on the platform, these types of posts can be especially effective.

Here’s how you create promoted TikTok posts, assuming you already created the sponsored content and posted it on your account:

1. Go to your Profile and tap on the three-line menu.
2. Select Creator tools and then Promote.
3. Pick the TikTok video you want to promote.
4. Choose your goal: more video views, website visits, followers, messages or profile views.
5. Choose your audience (it can be a default or custom audience).
6. Set your Budget and Duration.
7. Pay and start your promotion.

To monitor your post’s performance, go to your Profile, tap on the three-line menu, select Creator tools and check your Analytics.

On the paid partnership side, you can contact a TikTok influencer to collaborate with you by following these steps:

1. Log into the TikTok Creator Marketplace.
2. Click on Explore and use the filter to find TikTok creators that you want to reach out to.
3. Select Create campaign and fill in your campaign details.
4. Click on Upload Message to initiate contact with your chosen TikTok creators or influencers.

Later on, when you reach an agreement with an influencer and the sponsored TikTok post is live, you can check how your post is doing. For this, log into your TikTok Creator Marketplace account and click on Reporting to see your Campaigns, Views and Engagement rate.

LinkedIn promoted posts

For LinkedIn promoted posts, the format remains similar, with a predominant “Promoted” tag along with a CTA.

How to create a promoted post on LinkedIn

These are the steps you need to follow to create a LinkedIn ad:

1. Sign in to the LinkedIn Campaign Manager.
2. Select an objective from Awareness, Consideration or Conversions.
3. Build your audience by selecting multiple attributes.
4. Choose an Ad format.
5. Set a Budget and a Schedule.

To manage the results of your sponsored content, go back to your LinkedIn Campaign Manager and click on the Performance Chart to see clicks, impressions, conversions, leads, the average cost per lead, etc. You can also click on Demographics and display information like job title, company, company size, location, country and more information about the people who have interacted with your ad.

Twitter promoted Tweets

Twitter promoted posts have a “Promoted” tag at the bottom left with a little arrow pointing upwards. Twitter doesn’t have defined CTA buttons, but once you press the ad, it redirects you to the associated landing page.

How to create promoted Tweets

This is how you create promoted Tweets for your Twitter advertising campaign:

1. Go to Twitter’s ad platform.
2. Input your Country/Region and Time zone.
3. Choose your objective: Reach, Engagement, Followers or Website traffic.
4. Write your ad text and add media.
5. Select the demographics of your audience.
6. Add targeting features like keywords your audience uses, followers of similar accounts and even their operating system.
7. Set a Budget and Schedule.
8. Add your payment method and launch your campaign.

To monitor the performance of your promoted Tweets, go to Twitter’s ad platform once again and click on Analytics. Then select Tweet activity to see the impressions, engagement, engagement rate, likes and other metrics for your Top and Promoted Tweets.

Boost your presence with sponsored content

Now that you leveled up your sponsored content knowledge, it’s time to explore how sponsored posts fit into your social media strategy.

As you test sponsored posts and learn what works best for you, also consider how they can be a part of your larger creator marketing strategy. Working with creators has become a must, so check out our article to learn how you should be integrating creators into your social strategy.

The post Sponsored posts: How to create effective sponsored content appeared first on Sprout Social.

In this guide, we break down how to sell on Instagram, starting with the fundamentals and moving on to advanced Instagram selling strategies. You’ll learn how to use Reels, Stories and other Instagram features to capture the attention of Instagram users and drive sales of your products.

• Why businesses should be selling on Instagram
• How to set up Instagram shopping
• What are the best practices for selling on Instagram?
• How to start selling on Instagram
• What are you selling on Instagram?

Why businesses should sell products on Instagram

Not convinced Instagram is where you need to be? These three compelling reasons should be motivation enough to start selling products on Instagram:

People are researching products on Instagram

Because Instagram is a visual medium, it’s no surprise that 70% of shoppers research products on the platform. Having a business profile is a good first step, but you’ll also want a store that people can visit to research your products.

Younger consumers expect you to be on Instagram

When it comes to marketing to Gen Z, these younger consumers rely on Instagram to discover and engage with brands. And your presence (or lack thereof) on Instagram can have a big influence on Gen Z buying behaviors.

Your competitors are selling on Instagram

With more than 200 million businesses on Instagram, it’s wise to assume your competitors are already selling products on the platform. So don’t delay in setting up your Instagram shop (which we’ll tell you how to do in the next section).

How to set up Instagram shopping

To start selling on Instagram, you’ll need to have an Instagram business profile. You can convert your personal Instagram account to an Instagram business account in just a few steps. Only then you can create your Instagram shop (we recommend taking a look at Instagram’s commerce policies first).

Next, head over to the Meta Commerce Manager to set up your Instagram shop. You can choose to create a shop for both Instagram and Facebook, or only one of those platforms.

What are the best practices for selling on Instagram?

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to selling your products on Instagram.

That said, some strategies make more sense than others depending on your target audience and what you’re selling.

Below we’ve highlighted best practices for selling on Instagram.

Sell yourself in your bio

Your Instagram bio is valuable real estate, especially if you’re interested in sales.

After all, your bio links represent the sole avenue from your follower to your storefront if you’re not connected to Instagram Shopping.

Make sure that your bio includes a combination of the following:

• A call-to-action directing followers to your shop
• A mention of your branded hashtags to encourage user-generated content
• A trackable link (think: SproutLink or a shoppable Instagram tool) to monitor traffic to your storefront

Post regularly

Instagram is a crowded medium, and if you want people to notice your brand, you need to post regularly. How often is “regularly”? According to Sprout Social Index™ data, the average number of posts on Instagram is 1-2 times a day. If you also share two Instagram Stories per day, you’re likely to improve your engagement.

Post more than just products

This might seem counterintuitive, but hear us out: One of the most effective strategies for selling on Instagram is to not focus on selling. Not all the time, anyway.

If you’re an up-and-coming brand or you’re trying to grow your audience, some non-sales-related content is a great way to warm up potential customers. After all, today’s shoppers expect brands to show off their personalities in various ways.

For example, Suavecito Pomade regularly publishes photos of its products but also sprinkles lighthearted content like memes and dog photos throughout its feed.

These types of posts score tons of engagement and can be a gateway for new followers to discover your brand. In our social media for retail guide, we saw that it’s crucial for brands to create content for every step of the customer journey. That includes folks who are warming up to you or might not even know you yet.

As a side note, this illustrates the importance of creating a social media content calendar. With the help of social media management tools like Sprout Social, you can find a balance between promotional and non-promotional content. Doing so ensures that your followers are consistently engaging with your marketing messages.

Publish people-centric product photos

Research shows that of four types of brand images (customer-centric, employee-centric, product-centric and symbolic visuals), Instagram users spend the most time engaging with customer-centric images.

Instagram users want to see how people are using products in a real-world setting. For example, Camelbak shows off their products in the great outdoors rather than in a photo studio or on a kitchen counter.

Frequently featuring photos of people, specifically user-generated content, creates a snowball effect. That is, customers will want to take their own snapshots with your product so you’ll feature them on your feed, too. This results in more engagement and reach, creating even more opportunities to win customers.

Make your product photos pop

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Creativity counts on Instagram—especially if you’re trying to sell products.

Remember that you’re fighting for your customers’ attention, and they’re more than likely following competing brands on Instagram.

Here’s an awesome example from IL MAKIAGE. Although the brand has plenty of customer photos to choose from, they keep their content strategy fresh with eye-popping product shots, as well.

You don’t need to be a master photographer to create engaging images. Just review how to capture and format Instagram photos and explore creative filters and apps that can give your snapshots some pizazz.

Use video to showcase your products in action

Depending on the types of products you’re selling, you might want to post more videos than static images. For example, if you’re selling performance bicycles or high-end watches, customers probably want to see those items in action.

Craft compelling captions

Want to avoid bombarding your followers with sales offers? There are plenty of ways to write Instagram captions without coming across as too promotional.

For example, consider how you can show off your products while asking your followers a question. Here’s a great example from Paper Mate.

Meanwhile, check out how JOAH manages to put their products front-and-center by asking for a comment.

See how that works?

There’s some debate about whether salesy captions restrict your reach as part of the Instagram algorithm. To be safe, experiment with different call-to-action phrases.

How to start selling on Instagram

You’ve set up your shop, created engaging images and fine-tuned your CTAs. Now it’s time to start selling!

Enable checkout on Instagram

You can use Instagram to drive people to your website’s online store, but some users may expect to shop entirely within the Instagram app. You can deliver on that expectation by using checkout on Instagram.

Available for eligible US businesses, checkout on Instagram makes it easy for users to quickly complete a purchase and track order updates within the app. And once they’ve made a purchase, Instagram stores their information for an even faster checkout experience with subsequent purchases.

Publish shoppable posts

If you’re a seller based in an eligible country with a product catalog and Instagram shop, you can create Instagram shoppable posts. All you need to do is tag products in your image or video, then share the post. Users can click on the tags to view information about each product.

If you’re running a promotion for one of the products in your image or video, Instagram will tag it automatically, and the CTA bar will be “View Offer” or “View Sale.”

You can also tag your products if you use a social media management app such as Sprout. Once you compose your post and add an image, select Tag Image followed by the Product Tagging tab. You can search for your product by SKU or name.

Use stickers in Instagram Stories

While you can’t add product tags to Stories, you can add a sticker with a clickable Instagram shopping link that takes users to a product page or other content on your site.

Set up product collections

If you’d like to group similar products, you can create collections. Go to Commerce Manager, then:

1. Choose your shop and click Edit.
2. Click +Add New, then Collection.
3. Choose Create new collection.
4. Click Confirm.
5. Add these details to the Featured Collection section:
   • Images — Add at least one product image (4:3 ratio, with minimum dimensions of 800 x 600 pixels).
   • Title — Choose a name for your collection (30 characters max).
   • Text — Add a title and subtitle (30 characters max)(this step is optional).
6. Click Publish.

If you have a checkout-enabled Instagram store, you can then add your collection to your Instagram profile shop:

7. From your Instagram profile, click Edit Shop.
8. Tap Collections, then Add.
9. Choose the collections you want to display on your profile, then click Done.

Users won’t be able to see the collection until Instagram reviews your shop and collection (usually within 24 hours).

Engage with Live Shopping streams

If you have a US-based business with Instagram checkout, and your products have been in your catalog for at least three days, you can use Instagram Live Shopping to sell products in real time and interact with customers.

Here’s how to set up a Live Shopping post:

1. Open Instagram and click Your Story on the top left.
2. Scroll right and tap LIVE.
3. Tap the shopping bag icon, then click Add next to the products or collections you want to add.
4. Tap LIVE again when you’re ready to launch your Live Shopping broadcast.
5. During your broadcast, you can tap the shopping bag icon, then Pin to highlight a product.
6. When your broadcast ends, click Download so that users can still make purchases through that post.

Showcase products with Reels

You can create dynamic product videos with Reels. Just shoot your video, upload it to Instagram and tag any products you want to add. Then create a cover photo and a call to action.

Promote with Instagram ads

Many brands have found success selling through Instagram ads.

Taking advantage of creative ad types such as Stories and carousels, ads offer tons of flexibility and targeting options to reach customers shopping on Instagram. Plus, you can add an eye-catching CTA that changes from white to a color as users scroll through their feed.

In the Vicks example above, the CTA banner coordinates with colors in your ad.

Boost conversions with user-generated content

Many brands are making user-generated content a cornerstone of their Instagram social selling strategies.

Customer photos go hand-in-hand with high engagement rates and let your customers serve as your brand ambassadors. Given how eager consumers are to share product photos, scoring user-generated content is often just a matter of asking.

For example, Grove Collaborative encourages fans and followers to share how they use Grove products on Instagram through their branded hashtags.

Grove Collaborative regularly uses customer photos to highlight their latest products with a sense of authenticity—and to show their appreciation for their customers.

User-generated content shows your customers what your products look like in action. This also gives you a break from traditional planned posts and lets you show your products from different angles, so to speak.

Use influencers to amplify your posts

Influencer marketing has exploded as a way for brands to get their products in front of their target audience through a more compelling and relatable manner.

The concept is simple: Partner with someone who has a highly engaged audience to raise awareness for your brand and potentially discover new customers.

Influencer promotions are effective because they don’t feel as “salesy.” Also, some influencers might have more followers than you do.

Forming relationships with relevant Instagram influencers is a cost-effective way to get your Instagram social selling promotions in front of people who could become customers.

Promote upcoming product launches with Instagram Drops

US-based businesses with checkout on Instagram can use Instagram Drops (formerly “product launches”) to promote new products.

Instagram users can click the Shop tab to search for view featured drops.

Create Instagram product Guides

You can use Instagram Guides to provide an in-depth look at your products and share them in Stories, in direct messages and in your shop.

To get started, click the + at the top of your profile and follow the prompts.

Provide support and sell through Instagram Direct

Eligible business accounts can sell products through Instagram Direct. Access your Instagram professional dashboard via mobile only and tap Get paid in chat. Then, when you’re chatting with a customer who wants to buy your product, you can click Request Payment.

You’ll need to enter your bank account information and other details when you accept your first Instagram Direct payment, and the platform will save it for future transactions.

Monitor your sales performance via Instagram analytics

Lastly, don’t forget about your data.

So much of selling on Instagram revolves around your analytics.

For example, which product photos score the most engagement? How do your Instagram shopping posts perform versus non-promotional ones? How much of a direct ROI are you seeing from Instagram?

Sprout’s Instagram analytics can answer those questions and then some. Our comprehensive reporting makes it a cinch to track paid and organic campaigns all in one place, including those happening beyond Instagram.

What are you selling on Instagram?

Hopefully, this guide provided some much-needed motivation and inspiration to score sales on Instagram. As long as you stick to Instagram’s best practices and keep a close eye on your analytics, you’re on the right track.

Learn how Sprout can help you take your Instagram selling strategy to the next level with a free 30-day trial today.

The post How to sell on Instagram: A guide for businesses (2023) appeared first on Sprout Social.

Instagram has 2 billion active Instagram users each month, and the average user scrolls through the platform for 53 minutes each day. With usage like that, Instagram ads can help you expand your reach significantly.

If you’re new to Instagram ads, this guide will help you get started.

Read on to learn more about what Instagram advertising is, why it’s a great strategy for your business and how to create your first Instagram ad campaign.

• What is Instagram advertising
• Why advertise on Instagram
• How much does Instagram advertising cost
• How to create Instagram ads

What is Instagram advertising 

Instagram advertising is a paid service that businesses use to promote their content. Instagram started offering ad spots to select businesses after Facebook acquired it in 2013. In 2015, Instagram opened advertising to all businesses, and by 2017 had 1 million advertisers on the platform.

Why you should advertise on Instagram 

Organic social media strategies might seem cost-effective at first, but they rely on a lot of trial and error, and can only get you so far when you’re up against ever-changing social media algorithms.

This is why it’s so important to focus on a social media strategy that incorporates both organic and paid tactics. This way, you get the best of both worlds. You’re actively engaging with your audience through your Instagram posts, and, with ads, you’re reaching out to an even larger audience that might not know about your brand.

As a visual medium, Instagram ads give you a great way to show off your product. And with Instagram shopping, you can make it easier than ever for Instagram users to convert to customers.

How much does Instagram advertising cost 

The cost to advertise on Instagram depends on several factors like the mobile device you’re targeting, demographics, day of the week and whether your ad is running during a major televised event.

It all comes down to your target audience, which is why it’s so important to know your Instagram demographics.

To make the most of your marketing budget, dedicate money to ads and campaigns only if they’ll help your bottom line.

Put money behind posts and content that you already know perform well organically. Test everything to see what performs best, and dedicate most of your ad spend to that. Make sure to measure your ad success and take note of anything that didn’t do as well as you’d hoped.

How to create Instagram ads 

You create your Instagram feed ads and Instagram story ads inside the Facebook Ads Manager.

To get started creating your first Instagram ad, log into your Facebook Ad Account, head over to your ads manager and start a new campaign.

Step 1. Choose your ad objective

Once you create a new campaign, the first step to creating an Instagram ad is to choose your objective.

If you choose an objective that doesn’t make sense, like creating a traffic ad for a video or a sales ad for an Instagram placement, Facebook will likely deny your ad.

Step 2. Name your Instagram ad campaign

After selecting your ad objective, you’ll name your campaign. This is the best way to keep track of your ads within the ads manager.

You’ll then select any special categories that apply and specify campaign details.

You can also get started on a split test for different ad variations, as well as decide whether to optimize your budget across ad sets.

If you select Advantage Campaign Budget, the platform will automatically distribute your ad budget across your ad sets. Or you can manually allocate spending for each ad set.

Step 3. Decide how to design your ads

You can design your ads, or choose “Dynamic creative,” if you want the ads manager to create your ads. If you go that route, you’ll upload the various ad elements—images, CTAs, and ad copy, for example—and the ads manager will test different designs.

Step 4. Choose your optimization and delivery

Now, decide how you’ll be charged when you run ads.

Step 5. Define your ad budget and schedule

When you advertise on Instagram, you have full control over when you’ll run ads and how much you’ll spend on them.

First, choose between a daily budget and a lifetime budget. Daily budgets allow for your ads to run indefinitely while spending up to your allotted amount each day (you can still set start and end dates), while lifetime budgets will run for a set amount of time.

If you choose a lifetime budget, you can also select a specific schedule for your ads. Perhaps you want them to appear only on weekdays or weekends. You’re able to manually choose the days and times your ads will appear for your target audience.

Step 6. Target your audience

Ah, now the good part! Targeting your audience is how you’ll optimize your Instagram advertising strategy.

You don’t want to waste money by trying to target anyone and everyone. This is your opportunity to really nail down the demographics, interests and behavior of your brand’s target audience.

Step 7. Choose your ad placements

This is where you’ll decide where to display your ad.

To advertise on Instagram only, uncheck Facebook and check Audience Network.

Step 8. Choose your Instagram ad format

Once you’ve completed the last three steps, click continue to head over to your ad creation dashboard. This is where you’ll upload your content, write your ad copy and publish your ad.

This is also a good time to give our Instagram ad sizing guide a second look to ensure you’re uploading the correct sized ad assets.

Different formats are available based on the ad objective you chose, but the basic Instagram ad formats are:

• Photo ads: These include a single image, so you want to make sure it’s a good one.
• Carousel ads: These allow users to horizontally scroll through multiple images or videos on their mobile device.
• Slideshow ads: These are similar to carousel ads, only the images “play” automatically (no scrolling required).
• Instagram video ads: These are video clips that can be from 3 seconds to 60 seconds long.

Visualize your Instagram ad performance with Sprout

You’ve created your ad, but it’s essential to check up on performance.

With Sprout’s Paid Performance Report for Instagram, you can track any number of Instagram advertising campaigns for the metrics that matter most.

Sign up for a free trial today and let Sprout take care of the rest.

Start your free Sprout trial

Advertise on Instagram today

Ready to start creating Instagram ads on your own? We can’t wait to see what you put together.

If you’re looking for more tips to manage your entire Instagram strategy, check out our comprehensive guide for improving your Instagram marketing strategy.

The post Instagram advertising: The 8 step guide for your brand appeared first on Sprout Social.

When users scroll through TikTok, the brands that are truly “killing it” are creating content that’s as entertaining as it is authentic–making the audience feel closer to the brand. This trends away from the often polished and perfect posts we’re used to seeing from businesses on other social media platforms.

Join Sprout Social’s Jonathan Zuluaga and Sarah Corley as they discuss: 

• How valuable TikTok can be for your business 
• The TikTok audience
• Top TikTok marketing tips for brands

The post How to Explain the Business Value of TikTok to Your Boss [Webinar] appeared first on Sprout Social.