Tips and tricks for running Instagram and Facebook ads

TL;DR: test different ads, double down on performing ones, and stop underperforming ones ASAP, after carefully analyzing key metrics.

Performance marketing is like a drug. But not all drugs are bad (just ask diabetic people about their life-saving insulin!). A moderate use of your marketing budget on Instagram and Facebook ads can go a long way towards making your digital business much more effective.

As a content creator, in fact, there aren't many other ways to dramatically boost your business growth, attracting new potential customers while growing your community.

So, let's jump straight into some actionable tips, based on my past experience, about what you can do to squeeze more out of your marketing budget. This blog post alone can save you hundreds of dollars in mistakes!

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1. Use Meta Business Suite

First of all, let's make sure you are using Meta Business Suite (also called Facebook Ads Manager). It's cheaper, and much more detailed, than activating your ads straight through the "Boost Post" button on Instagram.

The set-up may take a few minutes, but it's worth it for the detailed insights it gives you, also allowing you to test much more and to also promote across Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger (Meta).

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2. Select what to promote

When you create an ad on Meta, the first problem you will encounter is: what to boost? You have different options:

• Boost Instagram content
• Get more calls
• Get more website visitors
• Get more messages
• Boost Facebook content
• Promote your page
• Get more leads

My suggestion is to either choose "Get more website visitors" or "Boost Instagram content". I personally prefer the latter.

Then, select your carousels or reels which have had the highest level of engagement, measured by metrics such as likes, saves, and comments. It's what your community has appreciated the most, and thus it makes sense to promote it to find other like-minded individuals! Your followers have already vetted it. So, try activating ads for 3–4 of your best performing posts, even better if they are recent (or talk about recent events).

As for the other options, I have tried them, and I personally found them not as well-performing as simply boosting your organic content, getting followers, and then convincing them of your offerings. It's a trust game, after all, and it's usually only after building an audience that people start finding value in what you sell or distribute. Yes, that's valid for free content too! Few will care about downloading your free files or links, unless they trust that you are the right person to solve their problem.

More in detail, "get more calls" will hardly get you anything. Who wants to call someone they don't know? "Get more messages" is slightly better, but I have found it does not really convert well (but if you think it's worth it, give it a try). People prefer to wait before randomly messaging you out of the blue, and pushing it in their face is not good.

"Boost Facebook content" naturally doesn't work if your presence is mostly on Instagram. The same applies to "Promote your Page", which is for Facebook pages.

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3. How to promote

Now that you've chosen what to promote, the how is quite simple. My suggestion is to keep the Advantage+ creative toggle on, which will use Instagram's data to automatically deliver different ad creative variations to people when likely to improve performance.

And I also suggest using Advantage+ audience, a new tool by Meta. This will let them target the best possible audience they can find for your ads. Not convinced? Then, before committing to it, as with every other ad, you can try A/B testing different audiences before, comparing the results.

Of course, in case you want to test different audiences, you should try some minor changes here and there. For example, if your content is strictly in one language or very local, you may think it makes sense to restrict to that geography or city with the location selector. And if you sell products with a mostly male or female audience, you might also believe that it makes sense to specifically target a gender. The same is true for age.

You can also do more detailed targeting by demographics, interests, and behaviors. If you really want to try, my suggestion is to just write in the search box whatever you feel fits your audience.

Example: my "Finance Bro" audience includes men, aged 18–30, with "Interests: Finance or Business, School: Finance, Field of study: Finance, Job title: Finance, Industry: Business and Finance."

But did this work better than the standard Advantage+ audience? Not at all!

Thus, my advice is to trust Meta's standard Advantage+ audience. It's their job, after all, to optimize ads. And their incentives are fully aligned with yours: to get the best ROI out of your ads, so you come back for more!

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4. Push different ads and track KPIs

My suggestion is to try and push out three different ads, selecting a period of at least 4 days. But keep track of them! Then, after a day or two, measure what's converting better.

My advice is to track these KPIs:

• Cost per click (CPC)
• New followers and Cost per new follower, for Instagram content (you must calculate it, simply dividing your spend by the total new followers)
• Click-through rate, the % of views which have translated to a click (e.g., on your website or Instagram page)

You can track them either straight through Instagram, in case you boosted a post there (just click on the post's Insights), or from https://adsmanager.facebook.com/.

And while many usually suggest to only invest ahead of demand, which is the safest thing (which for a content creator usually means when you have something to sell or distribute, or once you have sold content and have budget to reinvest), sometimes it can be helpful to anticipate it, due to the possible second-order effects of other people seeing your community as more valuable, which can be useful for partnerships, collaborations, and for converting new followers in general!

In case you already have demand, you can increase your budget and be more focused on different advertising KPIs, such as conversion rate, CAC, and ROAS. You can also do some calculations ex-ante. For example, if your cost per new follower is $1, the click-through rate is 10%, and conversion is 10%, your CAC will be around $100. If you are selling content above that price, after considering the direct costs involved, your unit economics will be positive and it will make sense to keep on with your investments!

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5. Cut the weeds to water the flowers

What has worked best, for me, is to take off the ads which aren't doing well as soon as it's clear they will not reach my target cost per follower. As I cut the weeds, I make sure to water the flowers by doubling down with more marketing spend on my best performing posts.

I always make sure I stay in my guardrails for my target cost per follower, and measure it against my opportunity cost. That is, my best performing one. For example, if one of my posts is averaging €0.30 per new follower, I can keep on ads on other posts doing around €0.50, but if they perform worse than that, it usually makes no sense to keep pushing them, unless they serve a different purpose than finding new followers: better to focus my efforts on my best ones!

Naturally, I keep trying different ads to improve my opportunity cost, based on the content I push over time. But I always benchmark them with my next best alternatives—my opportunity costs. As long as they keep performing well, I have no problems always activating ads on them, even if it means going all in on just one post, but I make sure I also keep testing new ones as they might end up performing better!

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Conclusions

Running Instagram ads is a great way to boost your audience growth. To maximize your efficiency, remember to boost different ads, double down or triple down on the best performing ones, and cut the underperforming ones ASAP. Remember to always carefully analyze key metrics, and try different posts.

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