E-commerce entrepreneurs have an incredible opportunity to reach customers and sell on Instagram. Due to Instagram’s popularity and its emphasis on visual content, dropshipping ads can reach a wide audience.
According to an report, 75% of Instagram users actually take action after seeing Instagram ads. You could be wasting money if you don’t leverage your Instagram account to increase conversions.
You want to learn more? Learn how to create an Instagram account and use ads. Our top ten tips to create ads that drive shoppers to click and purchase will be shared.
Why run Instagram ads for your Dropshipping Shop
Advertisers love Instagram and its one-billion+ users love brands! Let’s look at some stats.
- 200 million+ Instagrammers visit at minimum one brand profile per day.
- 60% of Instagram users say that they find new products through Instagram.
- 90% of Instagrammers have at least one company.
Instagram is an image-based platform that allows for e-commerce. This is because customers want to see products before buying. Instagram users are specifically there to scroll through images.
Dropshippers need to find creative ways to show your products in a way that blends seamlessly with the Instagram feed of your target customers. It is important to understand your target audience and create imagery that resonates with their lifestyle.
Instagram offers a variety of filters, tools and features that can be used to enhance your photos or videos.
How to Start Instagram Ads
Instagram ads are Stories or posts that a company pays to promote on users’ Instagram accounts. These ads can look similar to regular Instagram posts but are identified with a “Sponsored” label. They almost always have a call to action button to drive traffic and conversions.
This section will cover the five basic steps to setting up an Instagram account. We’ll also discuss how to create an ad campaign that converts for your dropshipping business. This Complete Instagram Advertising Guide will provide more detail on how to set up an ad campaign for your dropshipping store that converts.
Step 1 – Create a Business Account
You will need a business account to be able to run Instagram advertising campaigns. An ordinary personal account won’t do.
Don’t panic if you already have a personal account where you’ve been promoting and getting some traffic to your online store. It is easy to convert it into a business account. Before you can start using Instagram ads for dropshipping you must make the change.
An Instagram business profile allows you to see real-time data on how stories and promoted posts are performing, gain insights into how followers interact with your content and unlock exclusive features that help businesses get noticed and drive sales.
Scroll down to Switch to Business Account. Make sure that your profile is public. You can’t make your Instagram account private if it isn’t public.
After your business account has been opened, you will be able to add any pertinent information such as your contact information and website address. Your account is now ready for business!
Step 2 – Link your Instagram Account to Facebook
Next, link your Instagram account with your Facebook page. This is all you need to do once and you are done.
Click on “Instagram Ads” in the Settings section of your Facebook page. Next, click on “Log in” to enter your Instagram login credentials. Facebook will allow users to create an Instagram account if they don’t already have one.
All your Instagram ads will be run through Facebook’s self service Ads Manager platform. This tool gives you complete control over how your ads appear, who sees them and your advertising budget.
Step 3 – Create an Instagram Ad Campaign
Instagram offers many ad formats
- Photo ads
- Instagram Shopping Ads
- Stories ads
- Video ads
- Carousel ads
- Ads from the Collection
- Instagram Shopping Ads
- See more ads
- Advertisements on IGTV
Each type of ad works for different business goals, and each has different call to action options. Dropshipping ads on Instagram are most popular with entrepreneurs who start out with the photo, shopping, or Stories ads.
You can choose from a variety of campaign objectives when advertising on Instagram. These are your campaign goals that you choose for your Instagram advertising campaign. This step is crucial! This will affect how your ads are optimized, and how much you pay for them.
Facebook offers 11 objectives through the Facebook Ads Manager. However, Instagram ads only have eight of these.
- Brand Awareness
- Reach
- Traffic
- App installs
- Engagement
- Video views
- Lead generation
- Conversions
The Conversions objective is a great choice for ecommerce businesses looking to increase sales. However, it is important to remember that this objective can only be used if you have the Facebook Pixel installed on a website.
Next, define your audience, budget, placements, and schedule. Instagram ads offer the same targeting options that Facebook. These options include targeting based upon location, demographics and interests, behavior, lookalike audience, and automated targeting (let Facebook make the final decision).
You can also target them on Instagram if you have Custom Audiences. Your custom audience is a group of people who have connected with you in some way. They may have visited your site, shared their contact information, or engaged with your posts.
Finally, upload your creatives (see below step 4). These are your images, videos, content and call-to-actions that will go along with your campaign.
NOTE: Every promotion is reviewed by the Instagram team to ensure it meets all advertising policies. To ensure your ads are approved, make sure you read the policies first. This will help to avoid account suspensions.
Step 4 – Design your Ad Creatives
Choose the ad format that you would like to use in your campaign. Make sure your video/image meets all Instagram platform requirements. This guide provides the most current sizing requirements for all of Instagram’s ad formats.
Dropshippers will be primarily interested in promoting the products they sell online. This will help you get more sales. You are encouraged to experiment with different product images. You can experiment with single products vs multi-products. Also, you can play around with color, lighting, text overlays, graphics and other factors to determine which product gets the most attention from your audience.
Once you have found the look that you like, you need to be consistent. No matter what type of creative you use, it is important to be on-brand and concept-driven when showcasing products via this visual platform.
What message do you want to convey? What message do you want people think or feel about your ad? What do you want people describe about your brand?
It is important to remember that Instagram tends to favor lifestyle imagery over product images and videos. Marketing agencies have noted that images of lifestyle products (using content and relatable individuals) perform 5X better than images without people.
It makes perfect sense. People like to see images of people they can relate or inspire by. This increases user engagement. This will increase the likelihood that your followers will engage with your content.
These are some ideas for creating ad creatives for dropshipping’s most popular formats: shoppable posts, photo ads, and Stories ads.
Photo Ads
Instagram advertising is based on photo ads. These ads are easy to create and maintain on-brand.
Photo ads can be placed in the user’s Feed. They can either be square or landscape formats. They will not appear in the viewer’s browsing experience unless they click on a photo.
Tips to make photo ads:
- Your feed will look consistent if you apply the same filters to your ad images that you use for your daily posts.
- Stay true to your brand’s style guidelines (colors and fonts, logo).
- Your ad copy should match your images.
- Use your logo or other elements of your brand to create a strong focal point.
- When using photos in a carousel advertisement, arrange the images according to a theme or a linear storyline.
- Make sure you choose images that are well-crafted and appeal to your target audience. Talk directly to your customers, you don’t have to be everything to everyone.
Shoppable Ads:
After you have your account set up with Instagram Shopping you will be able to tag up to five products in photos to your store catalogue. You can now create a shopping experience by sharing your products on your Instagram feed.
It’s easy to hop, skip and jump from there to promote a shoppable post, then turn it into an Instagram advertisement for dropshipping.
Tips to shoppable post ads:
- Make sure product images are compatible with your Instagram feed.
- You should have a balanced mix of shoppable and lifestyle posts in your feed.
- Take photos of your most loved products in action and turn them into shoppable posts.
Stories Ads
Stories ads are short-term video or photo ads that appear in between Instagram Stories. Stories ads are a great way for your brand to be noticed, as 500 million people check Stories each day.
Stories ads are able to cut through the clutter and capture viewers when they are engaged in a personal space. Stories ads are perfect for seasonal offers and special offers that require a lot of attention quickly.
Stories can also be a great way to share behind-the scenes information about your brand. These stories can be used to add personality to your e-commerce shop and help customers establish a relationship with your brand.
Tips and tricks for stories ads:
- You might consider adding stickers to your photo Stories ads or shoppable hyperlinks.
- Stories videos should not exceed 15 seconds. However, you must show your brand/product in the first 10 seconds.
- Captions are important when using video. You can easily do this in Facebook ads Manager. Many people view Stories muted.
Step 5 – Analyze Ad Performance
After you launch an Instagram ad campaign it’s not over. You should monitor and analyze the performance of your ads to find the most effective variables. You can edit your Instagram ads in Ads Manager to include split testing and change targeting parameters.
Instagram’s business accounts can access an incredible tab called Insights, which is located under every image. This feature contains some very valuable information!
Instagram Insights can help you discover:
- Know who your followers are. Find out their average age, most popular gender, location, and behavior. This will allow you to see which stories and posts get the most engagement. That’s marketing gold.
- What was the performance of your advertising campaign.
Important advertising KPIs should be tracked, such as:
- Impressions Total number of times your post has been viewed.
- Reach: Number of unique accounts that viewed your post.
- Engagement Total number of Instagram accounts that like, comment, or save your post.
- Referral traffic – How much traffic is your website getting from Instagram.
- Profile Views Total number of unique users who have visited your business profile.
- Conversions: Based on who viewed your advertisement, you can see how many people actually take the action that you want.
Tips to Create Wining Instagram Dropshipping Ads
Dropshippers are often on a limited budget. This is why we created this list of tips. These tips include both organic and paid options so that you get the best bang for your buck when running your Instagram ads.
You can build your brand with a little creativity, effort and knowledge. Let’s get started and share our top ten (10) tips for Instagram marketing success.
Optimize your Instagram Business Profile
It’s important to get your ducks in order before you start droppingshipping your Instagram ads. You can boost your account by doing some organic things that will make your ads more successful.
Did you know that the new homepage is an Instagram business profile? To discover brands, more people are turning to Instagram than Google.
You should spend as much effort curating an Instagram feed and optimizing it as you do creating a website. Your profile is like an elevator pitch for you business account. Make it count!
Your bio should reflect your brand’s personality. It should also show your audience why they are signing up to follow your business.
An Instagram profile for a high-quality business should contain the following:
- Profile photo: Choose an image that is completely on-brand (like the logo) and helps you identify your online store.
- A well-written bio: Your Instagram bio is extremely important. Your bio should contain a concise description of your business that appeals to your target audience. Tell them exactly what you have to say.
- Link to Your Store: Your URL section in your bio is the only link that you can add on your page. This is a great way for you to drive traffic to your ecommerce store from individual posts and stories.
Build Your Brand
Brands that people trust are the ones they will buy from. They won’t buy from brands they don’t trust if your account is running ads as soon as you open it. It’s like dating before getting married!
Before you start your first promotion, you will need to make sure your business account is filled with primary content. You can mix and match lifestyle posts with product posts to appeal to your target audience.
Start building an organic audience. Follow the same influencers as your competitors and see who they are following. You might be followed back by some of them.
Follow hashtags that are relevant to your brand by searching for them. Scroll through the posts to find content that matches your niche. These hashtags can be used in your own posts for more visibility.
Follow influential people and share or comment on their posts. Begin interacting with people who are likely to buy your products. Build your brand’s voice so that people can know what kind of products and content to expect.
Start Testing Organically
This is an excellent time to collect information to help you target your dropshipping instagram ads once they are running. Consider the time spent building your first Instagram feed as a test opportunity.
Always post captions and images that reflect your dropshipping niche. Now is your chance to find out which posts are most popular before you spend money to promote them.
Choose a few favorite backgrounds and filters, and then post images of products using those options. Which ones generate the most engagement?
Are your followers more responsive to plain, uncluttered images of the product against a plain background? Do they prefer’real-world images’ of people using the product in the wild?
Text overlays or simple, minimalist images work better for your brand.
Also, you can experiment with different styles, tone, and caption content. Are your followers more interested in informational copy? Do they prefer humor or informational copy? Are they more interested in having you talk to them as a friend or expert in your field?
Ask questions and use other prompts (like tag a friend, share this post) to find out what works best for getting people to engage with your content.
Pay attention to what works. Find the best filters, colors, images, caption styles, etc. Start using these filters consistently for your audience. You have now created an Instagram brand and are ready to run ads and promote posts.
Find And Target Your Audience
After you have built an organic audience, you can start to explore paid advertising. You can combine your Instagram engagements and Facebook’s targeting tools to increase conversions.
This can be done in one of these two ways:
- Retargeted ads can be run to people who visit your site through an Instagram story or post, or ad.
- Create a custom audience using Instagram engagement.
A carefully targeted advertising campaign can result in more conversions. This is possible by audience segmentation.
To separate your audience into distinct niches, you can combine interest targeting with custom audiences. Next, you create ad creatives that appeal to these users. For example, if you sell organic fair-trade coffee you might run different ads if you are targeting eco-conscious buyers than if you were targeting gourmet foodies.
Your target audience might use your product differently, or have different buying motivations. This is something to consider when creating Instagram ads for dropshipping.
Create A Shoppable Instagram Feed
While Google and Facebook are shoppable for a long time, Instagram’s ecommerce options have been limited. Instagram introduced a shoppable feature called “shoppable posts” and it has been a game-changer!
People can tap on the product tag to see its name and price. Users can then view the product and purchase it directly from your site. This is so cool!
Even shoppable posts can be promoted and turned into dropshipping Instagram ads. This streamlines Instagram eCommerce allows for seamless shopping. Prospective buyers need to simply look, tap and then buy.
This is how to set up Shoppable Posts for Instagram eCommerce.
Step 1. Step 1. Create a product catalogue on Facebook.
Step 2 Upload your products and URLs to your online store in the Shop section of Facebook Shopping Attributes.
Step 3. Wait for Facebook to approve your application. This process can take from a few hours up to several days.
Step 4 Add shoppable tags for your posts. Open Instagram and choose Settings, Business, then Shopping. Select the catalog that you have created on Facebook, and then press Done.
You can now tag Stories and posts with products from your catalogue. Instagram allows you to tag up five products per image, or up to 20 products per Story Carousel. Make sure you tag the right product when you tag multiple products in an image. This will prevent potential buyers from being confused about the price.
After you have added all tags, tap “Preview” to view the final result. Include a caption and any relevant hashtags. Share the post as usual with your followers. It’s as easy as that!
Use the Right Hashtags
Hashtags can be a great way for potential customers to find your brand. Don’t get carried away. It’s not a good idea to use too many hashtags at one time. This can make your posts appear spammy and low-effort.
What is the ideal number? TrackMaven analysed 65,000 posts to determine the optimal number of hashtags for maximum engagement. Also, they found that longer tags perform better.
You can find great hashtags by simply looking at which ones are being used in your niche. You should look for hashtags that are targeted and get attention but don’t get lost so often.
If you sell vitamins and supplements, you might see #health. But with 131M posts it’s too saturated that it won’t get you noticed. While hashtags like #healthcoach, #healthyliving and #nutritiontips have millions of views, they are more specific to specific audiences and more likely to get you brand noticed.
Relevance and reach should be considered when selecting hashtags for your company. To get a list with potential tags, you can use a hashtag generator. Next, narrow down the list to those that are most relevant for your ideal customer.
Create compelling captions and CTAs
Although Instagram is a visual platform, it doesn’t mean that words aren’t important. They matter a lot.
Remember that Instagram ads only display a small portion of the text at bottom of images when scrolling on mobile. Your caption copy for Instagram is initially only visible to viewers if they are within the first 10-15 words. Make sure that your first sentence counts!
A strong opening sentence should encourage people to click on the “More!” button to discover your call-to-action (CTA). The total caption can be as long as 2,000 characters. However, if the first ten words of the opening sentence don’t grab the user’s attention, they won’t see the rest. Spend extra time getting those first few words right.
Captions can do a lot. These captions can be relatable to your target audience, and help you get more followers for your Instagram account.
More Customers = More Followers
Great captions are key to Instagram ecommerce. They tell stories and ask questions that encourage input.
Keep in mind that Instagram’s Instagram feed ads cannot contain a CTA within the image. You can either overlay text on your ads photos or use a button.
There are many predetermined CTA buttons that you can choose from, including: Book, Shop/Reserve, Reserve, Start Order and Learn More. It is essential that ads clearly explain what viewers need to do next. This can be done with a clear CTA button.
Remember that captions should always include appropriate mentions. You should mention people in photos and credit people who contributed content to the story.
Sell With Emotions
The Harvard School of Business found that 95% of purchase decisions are subconscious and are influenced by emotional factors.
“People do not buy goods & services. They buy relationships, stories, magic, and love.” -Seth Godin
E-commerce entrepreneurs must build an emotional connection with customers. Instagram allows you to use lifestyle photos to create emotional connections with customers.
If your dropshipping niche includes eco-friendly products, then you can tap into peoples’ desire to help the environment by sharing emotional images that show conservation efforts. This is emotional market and it works.
It’s like this: If there were two ads for the same product, one that explained the product and one that made it funny or sad, which one would you choose? You’d choose the second.
Consider this: If you are selling a supplement that supports immunity, which is more appealing to potential buyers? The fact that the supplement has vitamins C, E and B6. Or – how having something that boosts your immune system can help you live a healthy, happy life.
While shoppers may compare prices and read about products, when it comes time to make a purchase, they will tend to trust their gut instincts more than their heads. Although product descriptions are important, it is the feelings that convert.
Emotional marketing is a key component of lifestyle photography. Here are five emotions that you might use to create authentic product photos.
- Happiness
- Sadness
- Fear/Surprise
- Anger
- Empathy/Belonging
Remember, you aren’t selling a product. You’re selling a lifestyle and a way of life. You can also turn followers into fans.
Another study found that customers who feel a connection with a brand have a 30% higher lifetime value and are more likely recommend it to others. Customers who feel emotionally connected to your brand will reward you with loyalty, advocacy, and other rewards.
Develop A Content Strategy
Dropshipping Instagram ads must be useful, entertaining and inspiring, regardless of what product you have in your eCommerce store.
It is a good idea to identify key themes for your brand and then plan and create your creatives around these themes. These are some themes you could use to promote your brand:
- Lifestyle: Allow potential buyers to see your products in real life to help them envision how they could be used in their lives.
- Get to know your team and meet them by introducing them virtually to your followers.
- Behind the scenes: Tell your followers what happens behind the scenes at your brand. How you choose products, photos, industry events, etc.
- User-generated You can share images and posts from real people that showcase products you sell. A satisfied customer is the best salesperson.
- Customer Reviews: Highlight positive testimonials, customer stories and testimonials to show (not tell!) how great your products really are.
- Informative Keep your followers informed with posts that explain or teach something.
Make your images stand out with stickers and filters
You can tag your products with Instagram shopping stickers to promote shopping on Instagram stories. This allows you to showcase product details without being too salesy or spammy. The good news is that you don’t have to be verified or have more than 10,000 followers to use them.
To encourage more engagement from your followers and people who see your stories ads, you can also use Instagram Stories stickers. You can ask questions, complete a poll, or request that users DM you.
Open the Instagram Stories camera, take a photo or a video, or choose one from your camera roll. Next, click the stickers button to select the one that interests you. You can also adjust the text and color of stickers.
To add a bit of color and life to product images, you can also use Instagram over stickers. Overlay stickers add graphic designs to images or videos. Posts are becoming more filled with bright lines, stars, clouds, rainbows, and flowers.
Don’t forget the classic Instagram filters. It’s important that you keep your brand consistent and use the same filter on all your images. All your images should look cohesive and belong together as a group.
Canva analysed the Instagram filters used in more than one million photos around the world and ranked them according their popularity. These are the three most popular filters:
- Clarendon – This filter is great for products. It brightens, highlights, and enhances photos to give them a bold, bright look.
- Gingham This filter is great for nostalgic images and has a vintage feel.
- Juno This filter adds warmth and saturation to lifestyle photos.
Popular filters can be a good option, but every photo is different. Make sure you choose the right filter to showcase your product and match your brand’s overall look and feel.
Conclusion:
When done correctly, Instagram ads can increase sales for dropshipping stores. It is important to persevere even if you have failed to achieve your goals with your ad campaigns.
Continue tweaking and testing your creatives until you have the perfect combination of copy and images to engage your target audience. It’s there!
Although it takes a lot of work to create a profitable paid advertising campaign that works, once you have your ads up and running, your ads will quietly attract the attention of people who may become your next customers.
