7 Essential Elements of Eye-Catching Instagram Ads

In the last few years, Instagram marketing has become a significant part of any digital marketing campaign as the platform is one of the fastest-growing social media networks with the most engaged user base of one billion active users.

For brands, this means an opportunity to market their products and services, reach out to potential customers on channels they use often, and turn fans into customers.

Look: 25 million businesses use the platform for product promotion, so it can be daunting for companies to cut through the noise and reach their target audience in-app unless they know essential elements of eye-catching Instagram ads and run appealing ad campaigns.

Why Create Eye-Catching Instagram Ads?

At first glance, practically every business can create an Instagram account and spread the word about the products on the platform.

But having an Instagram presence doesn’t mean achieving your business goals, so it can be a waste of time and effort if your content doesn’t reach your target audience.

Marketers and business owners seek out new creative ways to beat their competitors, so it’s no wonder that 2 million advertisers promote their products and services with Instagram ads. In fact, Instagram advertising generated 70% of Facebook’s ad revenue in 2020.

If you still wonder whether it’s important to create and run Instagram ad campaigns, check out the top three reasons to create eye-catching Instagram ads:

• Cut through the noise: Most people are visual learners, so eye-catching ads grab their attention which helps you interact with hooked audiences and therefore achieve your business goals while staying behind your competitors who don’t invest time and budget in ad creation.
• Reach more potential customers: Instagram algorithm prioritizes content from friends and family, so it’s difficult for brands to deliver Instagram content to their customers even if they follow your profile on the platform. With advanced settings, you can target the right audience and make sure your offer is seen by potential customers.
• Communicate with people who don’t follow your account: Not all fans follow your profile on Instagram. Around 96% of people who discuss your company online are not your Instagram followers. When you create eye-catching Instagram ads, you get an opportunity to communicate with users outside of your following.

Now that you know the importance of in-app advertising, let’s check out seven essential elements of Instagram ads:

1. The Right Ad Placement for Objectives

First things first: when running ad campaigns, businesses aim at meeting the right ad objectives.

From raising brand awareness to generating leads and driving app installs, there are various objectives you can reach. However, it’s also important to choose the right ad placement to make sure that your target audience sees your content.

Currently, there are five ad placement types:

• In-feed ads;
• Stories;
• Explore;
• IGTV;
• Reels.

The best way to choose the right ad placement that helps to meet the selected objective is to analyze your ad performance. But if you’re just starting out with Instagram ads, you can use Automatic Placements to maximize the ad delivery and budget.

2. Solid Visual Content

Once again: as visual learners, viewers pay attention to visual content. No matter what brand message your ad brings, you still have time to hook your audience if your ad is visually appealing. Thus, brands hire designers to create eye-catching Instagram ads and it gives results.

But if you want to bring your business to the next level, you can create dynamic video ads that give you an opportunity to tell more about your business and products while keeping your viewers engaged.

Moreover, it’s no longer a problem to make stunning videos, as you can rely on a video ad maker like Boosted (iOS/Android) that allows you to make videos that advertise your brand on social media. Using this app, you can choose from top-quality templates and customize them for your brand, adjusting the duration, soundtrack and color scheme as you like.

Any examples needed? Let’s take a look at Bulgari. When the company decided to boost awareness of its partnership with the nonprofit charity organization Save the Children, it made video ads that motivated users to donate money for the organization on #GivingTuesday.

Video content allowed Bulgari to tell more about the campaign, so it resulted in over 3-point lift ad recall and generated $368,100 in estimated media value.

3. Unique Selling Proposition & Marketing Offers

It’s no secret that the market offers a great number of options for modern customers. This means more and more competitors hope for the attention of the same target audience, so the importance of the unique selling proposition–something that makes your business any different from your competitors–is growing.

What is more, it’s important to include a specific marketing offer to entice users to buy from your brand. Here are several ideas:

• Free trial
• Free shipping
• Branded freebies
• Discounts

However, never forget about the benefits of branding as it can help to grab the attention of customers who know you and stand out from the crowd. As a result, your ad should include elements of your branding–both visual (logo, fonts) and marketing (offers, USP) ones.

4. Compelling Caption

When people consume information online, most of them don’t want to spend much time on your brand message, so they just scan it. Marketers claim that most Instagram ads should have a compelling caption.

Whether you create a video ad or a photo ad, it’s a good idea to write a caption to help your audience understand your message with the sound off or if you want to keep your visual without text.

Here’s a good example of a well-written caption:

This ad caption is great as it tells readers about the offer in brief and it also has:

• a company’s tag
• a market offer
• a time frame
• a unique code to share with other customers
• emojis

5. Social Proof

Targeting modern customers with ads, it’s significant to keep in mind that modern consumers trust peer recommendations more than branded content. As a result, they crave social proof and if you can include it in your ad campaign, you make your ad more eye-catching for your target audience.

There are several ideas on how to provide social proof in your ad:

• Feature happy customers
• Create branded ads with influencers
• Publish customer reviews

6. Arresting CTA

Any good ad example has an arresting call to action (CTA) that guides viewers on what action they should take next after watching the ad. It’s important to make your offer irresistible while keeping your CTA short yet sweet.

Let’s take Yoga International as an example. The company uses several Instagram Story features to spark viewers’ interest in their marketing offer.

Not only does the company ask the question about customers’ interest in the offer with the poll sticker, but it also includes a text question above the CTA button and makes a unique button that hints at what people can get after clicking on it:

If you plan to run a series of Instagram ads and you want them to fit your brand identity, you can think about using Instagram templates that allow you to add brand logos and fonts as well as write your compelling CTA on visual with ease.

7. Ad Performance Analysis

Instagram is a great marketing tool for businesses of all sizes and niches as it offers various business-friendly features that help companies make the most out of an Instagram presence.

When it comes to creating eye-catching Instagram ads, ad performance analysis is an important element of your campaign as it allows you to track your results and see what works best for your audience.

Instagram ad performance analysis helps to see your impressions, reach, likes, comments, and saves, so it works just like the right sales lead tracking which means you can understand how your ad works for your audience and therefore make changes in future campaigns if necessary.

In a Word

Instagram advertising is growing in popularity among marketers, business owners, and influencers. Ads bombard Instagrammers from all sides, so it is getting harder to grab their attention with paid posts unless you know the above-mentioned seven essential elements of eye-catching Instagram ads. It’s high time to bring your business to the next level with Instagram ads, so don’t miss this opportunity.