How to Advertise on Instagram

Running ads on Instagram is one of the most direct ways to reach new customers, drive sales, and grow your brand. This guide breaks down exactly how to get started, from the simplest one-click boost to a full campaign setup in Meta's Ads Manager. We'll cover everything you need to set up your account, choose the right objectives, target the perfect audience, and design creative that actually gets results.

First Things First: Getting Your Account Ready for Ads

Before you can spend a single dollar, you need to lay the proper groundwork. This takes just a few minutes and ensures you have access to all of Instagram's advertising tools.

1. Switch to a Professional Account

If you're still using a personal Instagram profile, you'll need to switch to a Professional Account (either Business or Creator). This is free and unlocks access to advertising, insights, and a contact button on your profile.

• Go to your profile and tap the menu icon (three horizontal lines) in the top-right corner.
• Tap Settings and privacy.
• Scroll down and select Account type and tools.
• Tap Switch to professional account and follow the on-screen prompts. Choose the category that best fits your brand.

2. Connect Your Instagram to a Facebook Page

To use the powerful Meta Ads Manager, your Instagram Business account must be linked to a Facebook Business Page. Meta owns Instagram, and all serious advertising is managed through their unified platform.

• From your Instagram profile, tap Edit Profile.
• Under "Public business information," tap Page.
• You can either tap Create Facebook Page or Connect an existing page. Follow the steps to link them up.

With this setup complete, you have two primary ways to run Instagram ads: promoting an existing post directly through the app or building a full campaign in Meta Ads Manager.

Method 1: The Quick and Easy Way - Promoting Posts in the App

Promoting (or "boosting") a post is the simplest form of Instagram advertising. You take a post that's already performing well organically and pay to show it to a wider audience directly from your phone. It's a great option if you're new to ads or just want to quickly amplify a popular piece of content.

How to Promote a Post:

1. Choose a Post: Go to your Instagram profile and find a post you want to promote. High-engagement posts (lots of likes, comments, shares) are often good candidates because they've already proven to resonate with an audience.
2. Tap "Boost Post": Beneath your chosen post, you’ll see a blue "Boost Post" button. Tap it.
3. Select a Goal: Instagram will ask what you want to achieve. The three main goals are:
   • More profile visits: Best for building brand awareness and growing your followers.
   • More website visits: Ideal for driving traffic to a blog post, landing page, or product page.
   • More messages: Encourages users to send you a DM, great for service-based businesses or generating leads.
4. Define Your Audience: This is where you decide who sees your ad.
   • Automatic: Instagram targets people similar to your existing followers. This is a good starting point.
   • Create Your Own: You can build a new audience based on location, interests (e.g., "coffee," "hiking," "small business"), age, and gender. This gives you much more control.
5. Set Your Budget and Duration: Decide how much you want to spend and for how long the ad will run. You can spend as little as a few dollars a day. Instagram will give you an estimated reach based on your budget.
6. Review and Launch: Give everything one last look, add your payment method if you haven't already, and tap "Boost post now". Your ad will be sent for review and typically goes live within a few hours.

The Trade-Off: Boosting posts is incredibly user-friendly, but it sacrifices control. You get fewer targeting options, limited placement choices (you can't just run ads in Stories, for example), and fewer campaign objectives than you do with Ads Manager. For more business-critical goals like generating sales or email signups, you’ll want to graduate to Meta Ads Manager.

Method 2: The Professional's Choice - Using Meta Ads Manager

Meta Ads Manager is the command center for all advertising on Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, and their partner network. It offers granular control over every aspect of your campaign, from sophisticated audience targeting to advanced creative formats and detailed analytics. While it has a steeper learning curve, this is where you run ads that can truly transform a business.

Here’s a step-by-step breakdown of how to create your first campaign.

Step 1: Choose Your Campaign Objective

Your objective is the single most important action you want people to take when they see your ad. In Ads Manager, you’ll be prompted to choose one. They are grouped into three categories:

• Awareness: The goal is to reach as many people as possible and make them aware of your brand.
  • Use When: You're launching a new brand, entering a new market, or promoting a major announcement.
• Consideration: This group encourages people to learn more about your business. Common objectives include:
  • Traffic: Send users to your website, blog, or app store page.
  • Engagement: Get more likes, comments, shares, or event responses on your post.
  • Leads: Collect information (like email addresses) from potential customers via an on-platform form.
• Conversion: This is about driving specific, valuable actions.
  • Sales: Drive purchases on your website (requires the Meta Pixel to be installed).
  • App promotion: Get more people to install and interact with your mobile app.

Step 2: Set Your Budget and Schedule

Here, you decide how much you want to spend and for how long. You have two main options:

• Daily Budget: Sets a maximum average amount to spend each day. This is good for ongoing, "always-on" campaigns.
• Lifetime Budget: Sets a total amount to spend over the entire campaign period. This allows the algorithm to spend more on days when it anticipates better results.

You can also set a start and end date for your campaign. This ensures you don’t accidentally overspend.

Step 3: Define and Build Your Audience

This is where Ads Manager truly shines. You can get incredibly specific about who sees your ads. You have three main audience types:

• Core Audiences: Define your audience based on their characteristics.
  • Location: Target by country, state, city, zip code, or even drop a pin and target within a certain radius.
  • Demographics: Filter by age, gender, language, and more.
  • Interests: Target people based on what they like, such as pages they've followed or topics they engage with (e.g., "organic skincare," "marathon running," "interior design").
  • Behaviors: Target based on past actions, like device usage or purchase behaviors.
• Custom Audiences: Target people who have already interacted with your business. This is powerful for retargeting.
  • Examples: Upload your customer email list, target people who have visited your website, or reach an audience that has previously engaged with your Instagram profile or saved one of your posts.
• Lookalike Audiences: Let Meta find new people who are similar to your best existing customers.
  • Example: You can create a Lookalike Audience based on your most valuable website purchasers or people on your email list to discover new potential customers who share similar traits.

Step 4: Choose Your Ad Placements

Placements are where your ad will appear. By default, Meta selects "Advantage+ placements," which automatically shows your ads across their entire network (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, etc.) where they are most likely to perform well. However, if you want your campaign to run exclusively on Instagram, you can choose "Manual placements." This lets you pick exactly where your ads show up:

• Instagram Feed
• Instagram Stories
• Instagram Reels
• Instagram Explore Page
• Shopping

Pro Tip: Ads for Stories and Reels should always be vertical video (9:16 aspect ratio), while Feed ads work best as squares (1:1) or short verticals (4:5).

Step 5: Design Your Ad Creative

This is the fun part: creating the actual ad. You can select an existing post or create a new ad from scratch. Instagram supports several ad formats:

• Image Ads: Simple, clean, and effective. Use a single high-quality photo that captures your brand's essence.
• Video Ads: Great for grabbing attention and telling a deeper story. Aim to hook viewers in the first 3 seconds, as many people scroll quickly.
• Carousel Ads: Showcase up to 10 images or videos in a single ad, each with its own link. Perfect for featuring multiple products or storytelling in "chapters."
• Stories & Reels Ads: Full-screen, vertical ads that feel immersive and native to the platform. Add interactive elements like polls and stickers to boost engagement.
• Collection Ads: An instant storefront that lets users browse and purchase products directly from the ad when they tap on it.

Tips for Ad Creative & Copy:

• Use High-Quality Visuals: Your ad’s success rides on its visual appeal. Use crisp images and clear, well-edited video. Authenticity often beats overly polished production.
• Focus on a Clear Hook: Whether it's the first line of your caption or the first shot in your video, you need to grab attention immediately.
• Write Concise Copy: Keep your main message short and to the point. Place the most important information upfront.
• Have a Strong Call-to-Action (CTA): Tell people exactly what you want them to do next. Use CTA buttons like "Shop Now," "Learn More," or "Sign Up."

Step 6: Publish and Monitor

Once you’re happy with all the details, hit the green "Publish" button. Your campaign goes into a review phase and will go live once approved. But your work isn't done! Regularly check your campaign's performance in Ads Manager. Pay attention to metrics like Click-Through Rate (CTR), Cost Per Click (CPC), and your primary objective metric (like Cost per lead or Return On Ad Spend). Use these insights to A/B test different visuals, headlines, and audiences to continually improve your results.

Final Thoughts

Advertising on Instagram is an incredibly scalable way to connect with your target audience, from a simple boosted post to a complex multi-layered campaign in Ads Manager. Start small, test what works for your brand, learn from the data, and build your confidence over time.

An effective ad strategy always starts with a strong organic foundation - great content, a consistent schedule, and an engaged community. At Postbase, we've designed our platform to make this foundational work feel effortless. By simplifying how you plan, schedule, and analyze your content, we save you valuable hours that you can then invest back into fine-tuning your ad campaigns and growing your business.