How to grow Instagram followers with ads?

We tell you how to grow Instagram followers with ads for those who have not worked with targeted advertising before.

Facebook believes that the need of grow Instagram followers through ads is not a priority for marketers. The social network believes in the power of algorithmic feeds and calls for attention to reach, not the number of followers.

Therefore, the tools for promoting an Instagram account are so inconvenient; there are not enough statistics, metrics, and goals for following a profile.

And while Facebook is right about the algorithms, followers still have value — even if not all of them see posts in the feed but still, the more followers, the more potentially free coverage you can get.

In addition, a follower expresses loyalty, and it is much easier to work with an audience that is already interested in your profile, even if you raise posts in the feed.

The first choice when starting an Instagram ads campaign is to run targeted ads from a profile or from a full-fledged Facebook advertising account. The first option seems simpler, but it significantly reduces the functionality.

We recommend doing this:

In your Facebook ad account: prepare audiences and launch campaigns to attract followers to your profile.

In Instagram profile: boost posts by already created audiences. That’s how get more followers on Instagram with ads.

How to manage your Facebook ad account from your phone

The prospect of working through Facebook is inconvenient for those who are used to doing everything from mobile devices. The Facebook ads application will solve the problem.

It doesn’t have as many features as the desktop version, but you can quickly manage advertising campaigns — turn off unnecessary ones, change budgets, adjust the display schedule, and much more.

How to exclude your followers

Existing followers complain that they see ads in the feed, although they have already seen this post in the regular issue. To avoid this, set up an audience exclusion. An important step in getting more followers on Instagram with ads.

Go to the Facebook advertising account, and go to the Audiences section in the main menu.

You need to create a Custom Audience with users who interacted with your account. It is impossible to exclude followers, so you will have to exclude, in general, all people who logged into your account or saw publications (in advertising or recommendations).

In some cases, this is a significant disadvantage - for example, followers who are already familiar with the profile would be more willing to subscribe. In addition, when increasing your Instagram reach of posts, you need to remind yourself and followers who missed the publication due to the fact that the news feed algorithms did not add your post to the SERP.

Click the Create Audience - Custom Audience button. Here, in the sources, select Instagram Business Profile.

Select the type of interaction (logged into the profile, interacted with the publication and advertising, sent messages, saved publications) and the statute of limitations for this action.

An audience can be created in advance in the same section or when creating a campaign at the Ad Group level (in the same place where you specify all targeting - gender, age, place of residence, and interests).

To create an audience in the same section, click Create Audience - Saved Audience.

Here, in the Custom Audience section, click Exclude, and in the drop-down list, select the created audience of people who interacted with your Instagram profile. This will also help reduce the cost of promoting on Instagram.

How to get more Instagram followers using Facebook Ads 2024?

To increase your Instagram reach, you can reach more viewers with ads. All audiences created inside Facebook will not be displayed in the Instagram Business account. Through it, you can only select the audiences you created in it. But in the opposite direction, it works differently - the audiences created on Instagram are displayed in the Facebook advertising account.

Therefore, to exclude followers when running targeted ads from Instagram, you need to edit the audience. For this to be possible, the campaign must not be running at the moment. We explain step by step.

1. Go to Instagram, select a post to promote, and click the "Promote" button.

2. Go to the "Audience" section. Select "Create your own".

3. Enter the desired parameters, click "Finish". You will be returned to the general campaign settings page.

4. Now, without clicking the "Create promotion" button that will launch the campaign, exit this section (click on the arrow in the upper left corner).

5. Go to the Audiences section in the Facebook ads account. Here you will see the created audience, labeled Created with Instagram.

6. Click on the name of the audience, then click on the "Edit" button. And exclude the audience of users interacting with your profile, as described above.

7. You can now return to setting up targeted ads on your Instagram profile and complete it.

We must make sure that the Instagram profile of our brand must be focused on the segmentation or Buyer person that we want to reach so that a significant percentage of these visits end up becoming followers on Instagram.

How to creating the Instagram Ad campaign (Some Recommendations)

Then we go on to configure our campaign and define our budget, as we say, you can dedicate a minimum of a part to growing Instagram followers with ads and measuring the results.

We can use the segmentation that we already use for our regular campaigns or use a similar one excluding those who have already interacted with our Instagram Account, to force the Facebook algorithm to search for new visitors, who do not know you at all yet.

Another important issue is that in places or Placements, we only consider or leave Instagram active and deactivate Facebook, Messenger and others.

It is unlikely that someone from Facebook when seeing your ad will be willing to leave their Facebook account to go to Instagram, those app changes are not usually good experiences for the user.

Be direct and concise

Your audience needs to know what you're offering them right away. They need a reason to follow you, so make sure you give it to them from the start.

You can offer them an offer for a product or promote an Instagram live event that will take place on your profile. You could even sell them your content by convincing them of its value.

They need to know what benefit they will get from following you and engaging with your content.

Use examples from your mailing list

To grow your email list you had to have found new offers to offer your audience. You can use these same ideas and adapt them to get more Instagram followers with ads.

The benefits that we usually offer for people to subscribe with their email can be from private content such as PDF documents to discount codes or limited offers. We can use these same techniques to grow Instagram followers through ads.

Ask them to follow you

There is nothing better than a good call to action to get those Instagram followers.

Don't be afraid to make your goal clear to them. Ask them to follow you with an attractive CTA, always making sure they know what value they will get from this action.

How many followers can you get from Meta Ads?

There is no minimum or maximum amount of followers you can get from Meta ads. It depends on the duration of the ad and how well it is curated. Additionally, you must focus on things such as consistency and organized content in order to gain followers.

For that, we suggest you use a scheduler. Planly is the overall best Facebook scheduler that allows content creators to auto-post TikTok videos, Instagram posts, stories, reels, and carousel posts from a single platform.

Bottom line

Growing Instagram followers with ads need a well-established ad campaign. Before launching ads, you have to identify your social media goals, budget, and Instagram KPIs so that you can effectively measure the success of Instagram ads.

The easiest way to see their impact is to check your Instagram analytics in your phone. But for detailed examination, you need to compare goals with actual results which might require you to use a desktop and a lot of docs and sheets. Remember, growing Instagram followers with ads or organically has to have a clear purpose and place in your marketing. You need to be able to turn Instagram followers into customers in the end. If you can’t probably, you need to try other Instagram ads or marketing strategies.