How Do I Target Audiences On Instagram? — Part 1

Published in

Inside Revenue

7 min readSep 26, 2018

The Beginner’s Guide

Instagram was launched in 2010 as a photo and video sharing site. After its launch, Instagram rapidly gained popularity, with one million registered users in two months, 10 million in a year, and ultimately 800 million as of September 2017.

In April 2012, Facebook acquired the service for approximately US$1 billion in cash and stock. As of October 2015, over 40 billion photos have been uploaded to the service. When this happened a lot of Instagram’s regulations and ad options mimicked Facebook’s.

In this article set I will be going over the targeting options that are available to you on Instagram. As your Instagram ads are created in the Facebook interface, your targeting options are the same as those you have for Facebook.

“Customers don’t care at all whether you close the deal or not. They care about improving their business.” — Aaron Ross (Author of fromimpossible.com and predictablerevenue.com) @motoceo

In this article I will cover:
#1 What Is Targeting Audiences On Instagram?
#2 Why Should You Care About Targeting Audiences On Instagram?
#3 How Can Targeting Audiences On Instagram Help You Hit Your Revenue Targets?
#4 What Should You Watch Out For When Targeting Audiences On Instagram?

Let’s dive in…
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#1 What Is Targeting Audiences On Instagram?

As I stated above, Instagram was bought out by Facebook in 2012. When this happened, the creation of Instagram ads moved over to the Facebook Ad Manager platform. Allowing you to create ads which appear on both the Facebook and Instagram networks.

Instagram ads have 3 core objectives. These are awareness, consideration and conversion.

Awareness

Drive awareness of your business, product, app or service. These are measured by

Reach
Reach and frequency
Brand awareness
Local awareness

Consideration
Make potential customers more aware of your products or services.

Website clicks
Video views
Reach and frequency

Conversion
Increase product sales, mobile app downloads and even visitors to your shop.

Website conversions
Dynamic ads on Instagram
Mobile app installs
Mobile app engagement

Getting started with Instagram ads is quick and easy. Instagram uses the same powerful advertising tools as Facebook. This way, you can set up, run and track campaigns in the same way as you would for Facebook ads. If you’re new to advertising on Instagram or even on Facebook, below is a quick breakdown of how you can get started.

1. Create A Business Page And Profile
You must have a Facebook Page to run ads and create a free business profile on Instagram. If you don’t have one yet, create a Page.

2. Set Up Your Ad
Select your ad objective, target audience and ad format within Ads Manager.

3. Determine Your Budget
Decide how long your ads will run for and what budget you’re comfortable with spending.

4. Create Your Ads
Upload existing ads or create new ones, and use the ad preview tool to see how they will appear on the Instagram placements.

5. Publish
Now that your ads are ready to go, click Publish. You’ll receive a notification when your ads have been approved and are ready to run.

For a more in depth look at Instagram as a platform read our guide, “What Can I Do With Instagram? — Part 1 (The Beginner’s Guide)”.

#2 Why Should You Care About Targeting Audiences On Instagram?

Whatever your goals are on Instagram, if you’re using the platform to market your business in any way, you need to make sure that you’re reaching your target audience on Instagram.

But how do you find them? Where are they? How are they using Instagram? How do you reach out to them?

Here are some ways to go about finding your target audience on Instagramand actually connecting with them.

Follow Event Hashtags
Whatever your industry, there are events related to it. They could be conventions or conferences. They could be seminars or announcements. They could be shows or celebrations. Whatever your events are, find the event hashtag(s) and follow them on Instagram.

But you have to do more than just follow the hashtag. You have to be active. It can be as simple as liking a bunch of photos tagged with the event hashtag. Go through the stream and “like” photos and posts.

Take some time to read the captions of the posts and engage in response. Answer a question. Offer a helpful piece of advice. Compliment the user. Or ask them a question about the event.

Taking the time to engage with these event attendees will usually result in a significant bump in those who follow you — and best of all, they’re your target audience!

Follow Interest or Hobby Hashtags
Much like the method for event hashtags, follow hashtags related to hobbies or interests that are relevant to your business.

If you provide health and nutrition coaching, follow tags related to health, like yoga, or pilates, or barre, or P90X, etc. If you sell pet specialty items, follow tags related to pets, pet fashion, grooming, etc.

Knowing your target demographic, you should know what they are interested in. Use this information to find those people on Instagram. Then use the same methods discussed above to engage, like, and have conversations with them.

See Who’s Following Your Competitors
If you’re looking for your target audience on Instagram, chances are they’re already engaging with and following your competitors. This makes it easy — they’re in one place.

Go to your competitors’ profiles, and click on their “Followers”. You can see the whole list of people who follow them. Depending on how many people follow them, this could be more time intensive than other accounts.

Scroll through the list of followers and find people that are your ideal clients. Look for people that are active, engaging, and match your ideal customer profile. Then scroll through their posts, like some of their posts, and join in the conversation by responding to comments, complimenting them, or answering a question.

This method is more time consuming than following hashtags but works just as well.

It’s important that you have the right, engaged followers on Instagram. Having 5000 followers who don’t care about your business or who never actually use Instagram are useless to you. Instead, focus on finding and building relationships with your ideal target customer to see real results on Instagram.

#3 How Can Targeting Audiences On Instagram Help You Hit Your Revenue Targets?

Instagram is a widely used social media platform that is growing from strength to strength. It is quickly becoming one of the most popular social media sites. According to Instagram, 80% of users say they follow at least one business on the app, with 60% hearing about a product and service through the platform. As of March 2017, over 120 million Instagram users visited a website, got directions, called a business, emailed or direct messaged a business.

Each of these activities signifies some level of interest, and in many ways, these Instagram fans can be considered as leads. In my next article I will discuss the targeting options available to you on Instagram as well as how you can target the right audiences on Instagram. Read it here, “How Do I Target Audiences On Instagram? — Part 2 (The Intermediate Guide)”.

#4 What Should You Watch Out For When Targeting Audiences On Instagram?

If you’re looking for a reason to get involved with Instagram advertising, now is definitely the time. According to data from Klear, there were 171,000 Instagram ads in December 2017 compared to 134,000 in July the same year. That’s a massive 28% growth in just six months.

To go even further, the total amount of ads from December 2016 to 2017 increased by 85,000 (almost double). Instagram is continuing to prove itself as an extremely valuable advertising avenue for marketers.

It is for this reason that I want to show you the best ways to use Instagram to target the right people with the right message. Read the article “How Do I Target Audiences On Instagram? — Part 3 (The Advanced Guide)”, for tips on using Instagram targeting.

“People share interactive content about twice as much as passive content. Interactive content opens up a new opportunity between free open content and traditional gated content.” — Scott Brinker (VP platform ecosystem HubSpot; editor of chiefmartec.com ;author of “Hacking Marketing”) @chiefmartec

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In my next article, “How Do I Target Audiences On Instagram? — Part 2 (The Intermediate Guide)”, I will cover the targeting options available to you as well as how to target the right audience on Instagram.