Instagram and Facebook ads: part I
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The previous two articles aimed at helping you with how to become better at “getting things done” in order to make faster progress towards your career goals. The first one introduced you to the method itself and the second one explained how you could implement the method using Trello.
Today, I’m changing gears for a first article on Instagram and Facebook ads. Don’t worry though, I’ll write the article I promised you on how you can complement Trello with GSuite to become even better at “getting things done”.
However, I thought a little break to focus more on the business side of your career would be welcome.
Why you should care about Instagram and Facebook ads
Instagram and Facebook have around 500 million and 1.5 billion daily active users who spend around 1 hour per day on each of these two platforms.
That’s not a surprise to anyone, but that means that reaching a few thousands people is actually an incredibly easy thing. 5000 people represent respectively 0.001% and 0.0003% of these platforms daily audiences. Selling one work to just 1% of them every month means selling 50 works a month. Not too bad!
Compare this to going through a traditional art gallery. If you’re lucky, during your solo show which takes place once a year or so, at most 200 to 500 people will get to see your work. If 10% of them buy a work, that’s only 20 to 50 works that you sell in a year through your gallery!
You may rightly remark that the competition for people’s attention on Instagram and Facebook must be so fierce that your ads are unlikely to ever make it to the relevant people.
However, there are several things that play in your favour.
First, you can define incredibly fine-grained targeting for your ads. This alone ensures that not many other businesses will compete with you on the exact same segment.
As an example of how refined audiences can be, you can restrict it to people who:
- have studied at Goldsmith in London
- have a female friend whose anniversary is in 0–7 days
- are using an iPhone X
- have expressed an interest in historical reenactments
- and many more things
Second, there aren’t yet that many artists promoting their work with Instagram and Facebook ads. It’s currently mostly gigantic consumers brands such as Nike, H&M, Ikea, etc. which are trying to find the customers they can’t reach anymore with TV advertising. I wouldn’t advise you to start selling sneakers on Instagram for example.
As an anecdote to show you how powerful these ads can be when done right, I’ve recently bought works from two young artists based in London whom I had never interacted with, and whom I wasn’t even following on Instagram, simply because I saw ads for their artworks in my feed. Their ads led me to their Instagram profiles, and I sent them direct messages to enquire about the availability the works I liked most. A few days later, they were on my mantelpiece!
