If you don’t already know, I am running an E-Commerce store through Shopify where I sell Trump T-Shirts. I’ve created a series of project updates that can be seen on my Medium profile. This week, I focused on creating Instagram Ads that can be posted by influencers on the app.
Advertising with Instagram
I’ve successfully created an online store and found a supplier to ship my merchandise. Now, it is time to market my brand. I began with FB ads which are ads posted on both FB and Instagram. I discussed them previously. However, now I am running ads with Instagram influencers.
To market with Instagram influencers, users post your ad from their private accounts. The main difference between that and FB ads is the actual company (Facebook) markets your ad while influencers post it on their accounts. Instagram influencing is great because the Instagram user possesses credibility with their audience. If Instagram user XYZ is running an ad for a product, that means the fans of XYZ must think it is a good product.
I went ahead and direct messaged five political Instagram accounts to feature my ad. Out of the five, only one account responded. To engage some more interest from the other accounts, I created a preview ad. I used Canva to produce that ad which is pictured below. Still, only one account responded. That account had 125,000 followers and charged the following:
1 hour = $30
2 hours = $35
4 hours = $45
8 hours = $55
12 hours = $60
24 hours = $80
They would post that image with a link to my Shopify store for the aforementioned amounts of time.
In the end, I decided to save my money during this Corona Virus pandemic. Honestly, for that amount of money, I could not justify running ads through them. However, creating advertisements and reaching out to popular political accounts taught me a lot about marketing. Next week I will run ads on another platform that is more affordable.
