Instagram is one of the best platforms that every business considers to be one of the best ways to market their products or services for free organically.
But did you know that Instagram is also one of the best platforms where you can do paid marketing as well?
Why? Because it’s super underpriced and it has one of the most advanced targeting options ever.
And that’s why in today’s blog post I’m going to show you how to do Instagram marketing profitably even though you might not have a big budget.
So, are you ready to begin? If so, let’s dive in…
Benefits Of Paid Instagram Marketing
If you’ve considered doing paid Instagram marketing before, you know that the benefits of it are just incredible. With it, you’ll be able to get TARGETED traffic, grow your following, and if you have the right sales funnels and run the right ads…
…you’ll virtually get paid to do that.
However, paid Instagram marketing doesn’t necessarily mean only ads.
It also means influencer marketing. And the right influencer marketing is going to change EVERYTHING as it will let you get a ton of HOT leads immediately (yes, the people will see you for the first time and they’re most likely going to use their credit cards), and also you’ll borrow their credibility.
Because if an influencer endorses you, then it means that you’ll be able to get WAY more sales as more people will trust you.
And the benefit list goes on and on. Of course, another big benefit of both of these things is massive exposure and huge audience growth. However, that’s a slam dunk.
But now when you know that paid Instagram marketing is a really powerful thing to do, then let’s look at how you can actually do it…
How To Do PAID Influencer Marketing
Again, as I already mentioned, doing paid Influencer marketing is extremely powerful if you know how to do it the right way.
It’s a way to get a massive exposure to warm and hot leads (not cold), as the people that the influencer is going to promote you to, already know the influencer and they trust him or her.
And because they trust them, they will trust you as well as the trust is going to transition using the influencer.
It’s that simple, and that’s why it is so powerful. It also means that you can INSTANTLY get new customers without any nurturing part as the influencer’s credibility will cover your butt.
And that’s priceless as it makes the sales process several times faster.
But how are you going to use influencers for paid Instagram marketing the right way?
How To Pick The Right Influencer
This is a tough step, but it is absolutely CRUCIAL for your success with influencer marketing on Instagram…
…because if you’ll pick the right influencer you may get double or triple the results you expect. If you pick the wrong influencers, everything that you’ll do will fail to get you any results.
That’s why you have to look for the red flags and green flags before you decide to contact an influencer.
The Red Flags
Here are the red flags that you have to look for whenever you try to pick an influencer for your paid Instagram marketing:
- They’re not followed by your dream customers
- They have a big following but no engagement
- They get a lot of likes but little comments
- They are not consistent with posting
- They aren’t niched down
- They aren’t engaging with their audience
- They don’t have their own branded style
- They don’t show their face
- If you ask, they refuse to get on a call with you
If you’re going to see just one of these red flags, as a general rule, you want to terminate the deal. However, if you want to get a ton of leads and get the most results, this is not the only thing to look for.
You also have to look for the green flags so that you ensure the influencer is the right person or brand for paid Instagram marketing.
Green Flags
When you see those green flags, it says that you should contact the influencer and try to close an influencer marketing deal.
If not, it should be an alarming sign for you comparable to the red flags that you have to look for as well:
- They have an engaged audience
- They are consistently growing
- They have no follow/unfollow or spam activity (You can check that using notjustanalytics.com)
- They are responding to every comment that the audience shares.
- They are posting consistently and you can see that their posts sometimes go viral
- They are willing to create the promotional post themselves
- They have already collaborated with somebody else before
- Their content is outperforming everybody else
- They have their own branded style.
All right, do you have all of these green flags written down? Amazing! Now when you know how to pick the right influencer for your paid Instagram marketing strategy, let’s look at another important thing…
How To Set The Right Budget
The amount of money that you should be willing to pay for the right influencer if you want to use them for paid Instagram marketing is going to depend on two things: their audience size, and the engagement they have.
Now again, before you even consider using an influencer for paid Instagram marketing, you have to understand that you MUST go through the red flags and through the green flag and ensure that they have no red flags and as many green flags as possible.
If their engagement rate is average based on the follower number that they have, then in general you should set a budget of at least $10 for every 1,000 followers the influencer has.
If you wonder where you can check if the influencer’s engagement rate is average compared to the number of followers they have, then you can do it using notjustanaytics.com
It’s a free but super powerful tool that will let you quickly check the numbers.
Now, if the engagement rate is basically half of what the average engagement for the follower number should be, then instead of paying $10 for 1,000 followers you’ll pay only $5. If it is 150% of the average then you should be prepared to pay $15 for 1,000 followers, and on and on.
However, remember that this rate should be only used to set our budget.
The price is always negotiable and I highly recommend that you try to negotiate it. In 90% of cases the influencer is not going to tell you that it is fixed.
Now, do you see how cheap that is in comparison to ads? You get HOT leads, (not cold leads like with ads) and you basically pay the same amount of money or sometimes less.
It’s a fantastic way to do paid Instagram marketing.
But that doesn’t mean ads don’t work. Ads do work. And if you can run them the right way, they can far exceed the benefits of influencer marketing as you can use them to scale your business using Instagram like crazy if you do it the right way
So, let’s look at how to use them for paid Instagram marketing…
How To Run Paid Ads For Your Instagram Marketing
If you’re going to use Instagram ads the right way, then you’ll be able to scale our Instagram growth and the sales you make on a level like never before.
There’s basically an unlimited number of people that you can reach, and you can get paid to run them if you know how to do it profitably.
But it isn’t a secret that Instagram ads also make people lose money if they do them the wrong way.
But if you want to get at least $2 for every $1 that you spend, then this will be the turning point for your Instagram marketing as you’ll get a ton of new customers while getting thousands of followers as a byproduct.
So, who are you going to do it? Here are some of the top tips that you need to use…
Test Before You Go All In
This is an absolutely essential thing that you have to do if you want to use Instagram ads successfully for paid Instagram marketing.
Look, if an ad is profitable immediately then we have a term for it in marketing. It’s called a “ducking miracle”…except the D is replaced with F.
That’s why you must test before you’re going to back an ad with your entire ad budget for the campaign.
The best practice is to test an ad with about $50.00-$100.00 so that you can get data that will show you whether the ad is converting or not and whether or not you should keep running it.
If the answer is yes and the results that you get are great, then you should set a bigger budget for that ad and run it for as long as it’s profitable.
And better, try to test and find out MORE than one ad that works so that you can get consistent results for a long period of time.
So, if you got 3 ads that you make money on, back them all up with your budget. It’s way better than if you have just one ad that works.
But if you thought that you should run ads only to people who don’t know you, think twice. That is a mistake that would cost you everything.
If you want to use paid ads for paid Instagram marketing successfully and make a lot of money plus grow a massive audience using them, you have to retarget…
Retarget Your Ads
This is where most of your money is. If you want to make sure your Instagram ads are profitable, then you MUST show ads to those who already know you, showed an interest in you or just saw your ad before.
Because those people are already familiar with you and there is way less resistance for them to buy.
Oftentimes, those who see your ad don’t do anything. But they’re way more likely to do what you want when you show them the ad for the second or third time.
It is really an important thing, so retarget your ads if you want to use them for paid Instagram marketing successfully.
Create New Ads Consistently
This is not what people often talk about, but when you show the same ad over and over again to people, they will get bored out of the hook and they are not going to act.
But if you’re going to show them new ads, chances are that they are going to act even if they’ve seen your ads before.
The more hooks you throw in, the more fish you’re going to catch.
It is really, really important.
So, use ads that work as long as they are profitable, but create new ones in the process so that you find out more of those that work and you are even MORE profitable while getting thousands or tens of thousands of followers as a byproduct.
Filip Konecny 