Should your business use Instagram to advertise?

It seems like everywhere I go these days, someone is talking about Instagram. Instagram’s user base grows daily with more than 400 million monthly active members, making it the fastest growing social platform around. As of November 2015 more than 40 billion photos have been shared on the platform. Instagram has integrated its advertising platform with user-friendly Facebook to make ad placement and targeting easy. With all this success, is it time for you to consider using it as an advertising medium?

Here are six questions to help you decide:

Where do your customers live? While Instagram has a huge following, 75% of their users are located outside of the United States. Though 25% of 400 million is still a huge group, make sure any ads you place target the geography of your core consumer. The smaller the geographic area you are targeting the smaller the ROI of Instagram.
How old is your target audience? 52% of all teens (ages 13-17) use Instagram. It is considered a platform that appeals to a young demographic. As we know, millennials are highly mobile — so if 13-30 year olds are your audience, Instagram is the place for you.
What are you selling? The types of businesses that perform best right now on Instagram are mobile app install ads, ecommerce, direct response ads and subscription based businesses. Brick and mortar businesses and service businesses don’t currently have the best success.
Do you have visually compelling creative? Instagram is visually driven. The success of a campaign is directly related to your photography. Instagram offers a variety of ad types including: photo ads, video ads and carousel ads. Lighting, composition, branding elements and visual messaging are all extremely important to using this platform successfully. If your creative is stellar, use Instagram. If it is just average, stick to Facebook.
Do you have a surplus of great imagery? Instagram audiences have a low tolerance for repetition. They experience ad fatigue or even negative reactions to your brand if your creative is not fresh and exciting. Regularly changing your ads is essential on Instagram.
Is it an effective use of your businesses time? When comparing time investment vs. return on investment, Instagram is much higher than Facebook. This is because it takes more time to create or curate great imagery for Instagram than to create great content for Facebook.

By asking yourself these questions, you can decide if Instagram is a good fit for your business. If you’d like to step out and be the first to try a new platform, these tips will help you get the most out of Instagram advertising.

Here are six questions to help you decide:

How old is your target audience? 52% of all teens (ages 13-17) use Instagram. It is considered a platform that appeals to a young demographic. As we know, millennials are highly mobile — so if 13-30 year olds are your audience, Instagram is the place for you.

What are you selling? The types of businesses that perform best right now on Instagram are mobile app install ads, ecommerce, direct response ads and subscription based businesses. Brick and mortar businesses and service businesses don’t currently have the best success.

Do you have a surplus of great imagery? Instagram audiences have a low tolerance for repetition. They experience ad fatigue or even negative reactions to your brand if your creative is not fresh and exciting. Regularly changing your ads is essential on Instagram.

Is it an effective use of your businesses time? When comparing time investment vs. return on investment, Instagram is much higher than Facebook. This is because it takes more time to create or curate great imagery for Instagram than to create great content for Facebook.

By asking yourself these questions, you can decide if Instagram is a good fit for your business. If you’d like to step out and be the first to try a new platform, these tips will help you get the most out of Instagram advertising.

Research provided by Pew Research.