Digital Marketing Blog

Instagram has over 1 billion monthly active users and counting. 

Imagine how successful your business could be if there were a way to share your products, services or life story with all of those people or even a fourth of them. 

Instagram is continuously rolling out exciting new features that help businesses and marketers crush social media marketing, all while having the opportunity to make some serious cash. 

But, at what cost?

Instagram uses the same advertising tools like Facebook, which makes it pretty easy for any business to start advertising on the platform. 

Just like with Facebook, you have the opportunity to drive brand awareness, get more followers, increase product sales, mobile app downloads and even get more visitors to your website and social media. 

However, keep in mind that it can be challenging to compare Facebook to Instagram. The results from Facebook can be utterly different from the results you get from Instagram, so don't expect your advertising costs or ad campaign to be the same from both of the social media channels.

In this blog post, we will go over the different types of Instagram ads, targeting options, the factors that affect your Instagram advertising costs and explain the average cost of Instagram advertising.

What Affects The Price Of Your Instagram Ads & Campaigns?

Instagram ads have been proven to have 10x the engagement of any Facebook ads. However, this can vary depending on what industry or niche your business is in. 

Since engagement on Instagram is so much higher, the costs on the platform tend to be more expensive than Facebook, even when you have the same target audience.

Just like with Facebook, there is no set price for how much your Instagram marketing will cost, but there are many factors that can affect the price of your ads.

Here are a few factors that could affect the price of your Instagram ads and advertising campaigns:

• Targeting specific age groups

• Targeting based on gender

• Targeting based on placement

• Targeting based on country

When creating ads for your customers, try to create eye-catching images or videos to catch their attention.  Using user-generated content and social media influencers have proven to lower ad campaign costs.

Instagram Ad & Targeting Options

Now let's talk about the different types of Instagram ads you can use for your marketing campaign. The ads you can create are very similar to the same ad types you can create for any Facebook campaign.

On Instagram, you have the option to create these types of ads: 

• Carousel Ads (multiple side-scrolling images or videos)

• Slideshow 

• Single Photo 

• Stories Ads

• Video Ads

When advertising on Instagram, you can reach your desired audience with any of these targeting options:

• Location: Target people based on locations like states, cities or countries.

• Demographics: Narrow down your audience based on age, gender, and languages.

• Interests: Reach people based on the apps they use, accounts they follow and ads they click.

• Behaviors: Define your audience by what activities they participate in.

• Custom Audiences: Run ads to customers you already know based on email addresses and phone numbers.

• Lookalike Audiences: Find people who are similar to your ideal audiences and existing customers.

The Costs Of Instagram Advertising

Adstage analyzed over 390 million and 5 million clicks on Instagram in Q1 of 2018 and found that on average advertisers will spend:

• The average CPC is $1.41 per click

• The average CPM is $7.91, but all within the $8-$10 range

• The average click-through rate (CTR) on Instagram was 0.52%

Other studies compared the average CPC (cost per click) cost between popular social media platforms. Here's a picture showing what they found.

 Here are some other basic costs of Instagram advertising.

• Advertising is most expensive during the weekdays (engagement is higher during the week).  Wednesday has the highest CPC at $1.03, followed by Tuesday at $0.98 and then Friday at $0.92.

• On average, females are more expensive to target than males.

• CPC tends to be higher during the holidays, and the fourth quarter has been proven to be the most expensive because of holiday shopping.

• The U.S. has the 3rd most expensive CPC of all countries at $3.56.

• Across all ages, ages 25-34 have proven to be the most expensive age range to target with an average CPC of $1.07.

• AdEspresso found that if you want to target 25-34 year olds, you should expect to pay an average of $1.23 per click.  

• The cheapest age group to target was 13-17 years at $0.47 per click.

An Instagram Success Story

When using Instagram to advertise for your business, there are so many opportunities to generate a profit for your business. 

For example, the underwear and loungewear brand MeUndies have sold over 8 million pairs of underwear worldwide with the help of Instagram advertising. 

MeUndies reached over 1.4 million people with Instagram advertising, saw a 97% increase in overall purchases and had an 18% increase of people who added a product to their cart. 

All Summed Up

Depending on each of the factors above, the price of your Instagram marketing campaign and over-all advertising can either be pretty high or affordable. 

There are so many variables that can cause the cost of your Instagram campaign to rise or fall.  Instagram marketing is something that requires trial and error, split testing and patience to see what works best for your ad campaigns and business.

Some audiences have shown to be expensive while other audiences have shown to be pennies on the dollar. Based on what type of product or service you offer will affect how much you spend.  

Typically, costs are higher when many people are targeting the same audiences, or the audience you are targeting is a super small niche.  With trial and error, there are ways to lower your ad costs and campaigns. 

There is no secret sauce to running ads, it all varies depending on what your business needs and what your target audience shows you they want and need. 

Make sure to keep track of your customers' journey.  It is important to show the right message to the right person at the right time.  When you have the buyers process down, that's when you will see your ad campaigns really succeed.

Good luck and we hope this helped! Let us know in the comments if you have any questions! Make sure to join the Entrepreneur Cooperative below!