Although Instagram may not have the same ability as Facebook in terms of optimizing for followers, you can still use advertising to grow a significant following. Here are five steps we propose for brands looking to increase their Instagram followers through paid promotion.

1st step: Create a Target Audience

Keep in mind that quality should always take precedence over quantity.

Because they’re engaged in your content, you want Instagram followers who will engage with your business, click through your stories, and follow the links to your website.

Here are some pointers on how to target your campaign:

Use related interests in each ad set to help you figure out what’s working and what’s not.

Use audience layering to make sure you’re reaching the most relevant people while also diversifying your main audience interests.

Consider the concept of look-alike audiences. People that follow and engage with your brand on Instagram are likely to have friends and followers who share similar interests. Look-alike audiences are a terrific technique to get more people to follow you.

Promote yourself to the audiences you’ve built on other sites. Your Twitter, Pinterest, and, of course, Facebook followers may want to follow you on Instagram as well. Keep in mind that your Instagram experiences should not be an exact replica of your efforts on other platforms.

Step 2: Determine which of your organic posts are the most effective.

The most straightforward approach to get started with your ad strategy is to look at what works effectively in organic search. Choose the posts with the most likes, shares, and comments as a jumping-off point for your ad design.

You can even use them as advertisements on their own.

Make sure the posts are relevant to your audience and that they may be tweaked to achieve your aim of increasing Instagram traffic.

Step 3: Begin Planning Your Campaign

The best strategy to increase user growth is to create ads that can be optimized for traffic. Users should be encouraged to follow your content by clicking a link that takes them to your Instagram channel.

Set a budget for your campaign, build audiences, and create material that motivates people to like and follow your business on Instagram.

Step 4: Evaluate, improve, test, and evolve your social media advertising strategy.

You’ll find ways to improve it after it’s up and running, just like any other sponsored social campaign. You need an agile approach to ensure your return on investment is worth the expenditure, from turning off specific channels and ad kinds to omitting or incorporating certain audience groups.

Because Instagram doesn’t reveal which paid posts resulted in new followers, you’ll have to establish your own benchmarks and make certain assumptions based on performance trends. However, if you notice higher cost per click or lower engagement rates, you can infer specific audiences or ads aren’t doing as well as they could and switch them off in favor of stronger performers.

Although your paid social media campaign is aimed at gaining Instagram followers, you can also use this investment to improve overall engagement.

That’s what you have to do so you can get more and more followers using ads on Instagram.