Ah, Instagram feeds. The camera-phone, digital, electronic, supersonic, younger to somewhat-younger generation’s answer to Facebook.
Actually, scratch that. Instagram users are of all ages, all genders, all species even (some animals have social media and feature photos or videos on an Instagram account).
While the target audience tends to be between pre-teen to parent-age, social media doesn’t run by any rules except its own. You can find a business profile, calls to action, celebrities and politicians; most anything and almost anyone you could be looking for, right on Instagram.
The ads on Instagram are taking a page from Facebook ads, but doing it their way.
Photo ads. Video ads. Show Ads. All found in ads on Instagram.
Drum roll, please. Introducing…new ads?
The ad campaigns for this, according to every ad manager for Instagram, describe their process as ‘slowly and thoughtfully’, as this form of business product marketing is new and only time will tell whether this is a win-or-lose for content marketing as a whole.
Andrew Hutchinson notes that half of Instagram’s billion monthly active users visit Explore each month, so it’s within the best interest of any ad manager to take advantage of this in-testing browsing activity add-on.
How Does It Work?
Let’s use tummy tucks, or abdominoplasties, for an example. In the explore tab, there’s the usual search bar to type in a query and get related results. So, Instagram users typing in ‘tummy tuck’ or ‘abdominoplasty’ or ‘tummy trim’ get pictures of people, maybe with multiple pictures lined up in the same post.
There can also be videos of fully-recovered surgery patients showing off the results of the tummy tuck from different angles, perhaps even in different outfits. Click on a certain photo or video of a newly flattened stomach and you’ll be taken to another page with relevant results and images. In that specific lineup, you’ll see an ad related to the post that you clicked.
Our particular situation will run ads for tummy tucks near you, or maybe even fat loss alternatives like Coolsculpting.
Sometimes these are carousel ads which are ads with several pictures in one picture or post, to maximize the amount of information in the hopes of gaining customers.
These are perfect for surgeons that need to relay before-and-after images of their procedures, or just examples of well-done tummies or nose jobs or lash extensions.
It’s important to note that any ads will only show in the relevant feed of a single photo or video.
This is to avoid ad campaigns of the Facebook variety, where the erratic and sometimes annoying ads follow your feed no matter where you are on Facebook. You get some reprieve on the mobile app, but once you’re on your own newsfeed or in the browsing tab, the ads are back in full force.
And that’s it. Just a few steps, let Instagram do the work for you, and you’ve gotten another tether for people to discover your practice, your patience, and your work.
Other Things To Know
As of late, Instagram has been building ad campaigns by pulling from one of its most notorious and popular demographics: Instagram influencers.
Influencer marketing is very much on the rise, pulled from the early days of YouTube users being able to gain followers and monetize that popularity upon agreeing to try products or services and leave reviews.
Many influencers use their money or popularity to obtain products or services, leave their honest thoughts, and as their moniker implies, influence their followers to also put money towards those same products and services.
Influencer marketing functions for marketing like reviews do for most medical practices.
Posts from Influencers can now be turned into ads. The more popular the influencer, the more people will learn about your business from that post-turned-ad.
New, fresh, culturally relevant content pours into Instagram, adding and filing away at the speed of light. Perhaps even faster. And Instagram wants marketers to take advantage of this free method of gaining exposure, staying current, finding customers, and building revenue.
Instagram also has the benefit of being able to be connected and merged with other forms of social media, like Facebook, Google, Twitter, Tumblr, and…pretty much any platform that will allow you to. You may now add Instagram to your list of steps to play your business’ algorithms to increase the exposure your practice is getting and, therefore, the amount of money rolling in.
Marketing surgeries and other treatments with Instagram will allow your promotions to spread on an active, image-based platform, while advertising with Instagram from the inside allows Instagram’s marketing to reach outside of the boundaries of its own feeds, outside of its Explore tab. A win-win situation, though one that will take time.
As many good things do.