Visual storytelling with instagram’s new ads

VISUAL STORYTELLING WITH
INSTAGRAM’S NEW ADS
Presented by:
Higher Education Marketing

1.  Instagram Opens Advertising to All Businesses
2.  Big Changes with New Instagram Ads
3.  Why Choose Instagram?
4.  Understanding Instagram’s Unique Character
5.  Natural but High Quality Images
6.  Best Practices for Instagram Higher Education Marketing
7.  Creating Ads on Instagram
Overview

„ Photo-sharing mobile app Instagram is emerging as one of the
best student recruitment platforms.
„ The app hit 400 million users last month, propelling it well ahead
of Twitter’s 316 million monthly active users, with more than 80
million photos being shared on the service every day.
„ Nearly three-quarters of Instagram’s user base is between the
ages of 15 and 35, making it a particularly appealing channel
for education lead generation.
Source: HEM – Visual Storytelling With Instagram’s New Ads For Colleges
Instagram Opens Advertising to All
Businesses

„ Instagram’s emphasis on an uncluttered and intuitive user
experience has resulted in far higher engagement than other
social media channels (4.21% engagement per post compared to
Facebook’s 0.07%).
„ Higher education institutions have leveraged its power for giving
an instant yet in-depth glimpse into life on campus.
„ With Instagram, the context is exclusively in the pictures you post
– well chosen storytelling visuals can compellingly convince
prospective students that they belong at your school.
Businesses

„ Instagram has been slow to introduce advertising to its
community, cautious to avoid alienating its user base.
„ When they began experimenting with highly controlled ads from
certain major brands in 2013, the company’s CEO personally
reviewed each one to ensure they looked organic and natural.
„ The social media company has opened up its paid advertising to
all, with exciting new business-friendly services focused on three
key areas:
1.  Expanding ad offerings to include action-oriented formats
2.  Enabling more targeting capabilities
3.  Making it easier for all businesses to buy ads on Instagram
Businesses

„ Marketers can coordinate Instagram campaigns with other
automated social media ad purchasing, using third-party
platforms to organize, cross-promote and monitor their Instagram
activity.
„ The switching on of Instagram’s advertising API (application
programming interface) comes with many new marketing
capabilities for education institutions.
„  As it’s owned by Facebook, prospective students can be
targeted on Instagram using Facebook’s sophisticated
demographic and interest data, with conversions tracked and
measured using Facebook’s conversion pixel.
Big Changes with New Instagram Ads

„ New targeting opportunities include searching out prospects with
similar persona characteristics as your present data, and connecting
your school’s existing email data to Instagram, so you can reach
students who have already engaged with your college.
„ Advanced targeting improves return on investment by delivering
relevant ad content to the right audience, at the right place and time.
Big Changes with New Instagram Ads

„ The soaring popularity of social media apps like Instagram,
Snapchat and Whatsapp have coincided with smartphone
ubiquity, as devices become affordable and wireless networks
faster.
„ According to OnCampus Advertising, mobile is the top medium
where millennial students see and respond to relevant ads, so
ensure that landing pages connected to Instagram CTAs are
optimized for mobile.
„ Of smartphone users, this demographic is significantly most likely
to research relevant brands and complete mobile purchases.
Why Choose Instagram?

„ Consider these stats for what they’re worth:
„ Millennials check their smartphones an average of 43 times per day!
(Understanding Global Millennials)
„ Instagram is generally their social media of choice, with teenagers
50% more likely to be active on the channel (GlobalWebIndex)
„ 48% of high school seniors surveyed were researching colleges on
Instagram, up 20% from 2014 (Chegg)
„ Clickthrough rates on Instagram ads are 2.5 times higher than on
other social media platforms (Kenshoo)
„ Ad recall from Instagram sponsored posts was 2.9 times higher than
Nielsen’s norms for online advertising (Instagram)

„ While novelty is inevitably a factor when evaluating advertising
engagement levels, Instagram’s outreach potential is hard to
ignore.
„ Over 75% of its 400 million users live outside the U.S., with rapid
user growth in popular source countries for
international student recruitment, such as Brazil.
„ Inspiring images, targeted towards students in top global
markets, are a great introduction to your beautiful campus and
school spirit for prospects who aren’t able to visit in person.

„ See what prospective and current students are already saying
about your school and which aspects they choose to share on
Instagram and other social media platforms.
„ Social media monitoring can help identify relevant location tags
and hashtags, which can reveal what interests your target
audience(s).
„ Develop personas for your various Instagram audiences and
attempt to qualify these niches by accompanying your images
with questions relevant to this group.
Understanding Instagram’s Unique
Character

„ Establish your organic presence and strategy on Instagram
before leaping into paid advertising.
„ Leverage existing inbound marketing efforts to adapt your core
messaging, varying your themes to engage your diverse
audiences at different times.
„ Choose themes that can tell your story through a consistent
stream of powerful imagery.
„ In both organic posts and ads, it’s important to respect the
social media company’s raison d’etre, an intimate space for
engaging with high quality, artistically-styled pictures.
Understanding Instagram’s Unique
Character

„ Student photo contests are an excellent way to accumulate a
variety of effective images, engage your community, and gain
followers by imposing rules like “follow us to enter.”
„ Make the most of Instagram’s editing features and square format
to experiment with layout, colour and composition.
„ Bold and vibrant colours often earn the most engagement.
„ Seek to capture those experiences that will make a
prospective student pause their scrolling to empathize and click
“like”.
„ Aim to keep pictures on-brand but more candid and natural than
your typical glossy marketing.
Natural but High Quality Images

„ When showcasing your brand’s personality, ensure your
social media posts don’t stick out for the wrong reasons.
„ Instagrammers don’t take kindly to sponsored content that
infringes upon the traditionally ad-free aesthetic.
„ Prioritize your message’s clarity while creating great visuals that
feel at home on Instagram.
„ For Example: Congratulate your sports teams, profile student and
alumni successes, and find those humanizing behind-the-scenes
moments at campus events.
Best Practices for Instagram Higher
Education Marketing

„ Hashtags are very popular on Instagram as well as other
social media platforms.
„ Adding hashtags liberally is the best way of gaining exposure
online.
„ Keep Instagram posts short and sweet, inserting at least a few
hashtags and perhaps some humour.
„ Promote your Instagram account across your marketing channels
and interact with other users.
„ Try capitalizing on trends and popular hashtags like
#ThrowbackThursday.
Best Practices for Instagram Higher
Education Marketing

„ To start advertising on Instagram, first connect your Instagram
account to your Facebook page so you can create ads with
Facebook Power Editor.
„ This process allows you to create ads that run on both or either
social media platform.
„ Under Settings on your Facebook page, click to add an account
under Instagram Ads.
„ You may choose to add an existing Instagram account or create
a new one directly in Facebook.
Creating Ads on Instagram

„ Consider what you wish your social media ad to achieve and
choose from Instagram’s new interactive features, many of which
can only be accessed by advertisers.
„ Features include videos of up to 30 seconds long and CTAs that
can link to external content, such as installing new apps or
university landing pages.
„ There are three types of ads that colleges and universities can
employ:
1.  Image (Direct Response)
2.  Carousel Ads
3.  Videos

1.  Image (Direct Response)
„ Instagram’s new action-oriented ad offerings include clear
CTAs that allow prospective students to click directly through.
„ Links could previously only be placed in profile bios.
„ Five different CTAs are possible.
Example: Lewisham Southwark College ran the first Instragram advertising
campaign in the UK education sector, surpassing expectations with colourful
images focusing on their community. The campaign yielded over 9,000 likes
with great feedback for future improvements. Their website saw about 6,000
clicks from about 300,000 impressions. “Make sure your content is going to
resonate with your audience and how they engage on the platform,” advises
Sonia Furley, marketing head at the college

2.  Carousel Ads
„ Earlier this year, Instagram introduced “carousel ads,”
enabling businesses to share multiple photographs per ad.
„ Schools can include up to four images in a single ad on the
social media platform.
„ A CTA can also be added for enhanced storytelling,
highlighting various aspects of a college or program, behind-
the-scenes insights, tutorials or procedures, or lead up to a
surprise ending.

3.  Videos
„ Brands are generally recommended to make photos 80-90%
of their content but videos can be highly effective on
social media.
„ Remember: audio doesn’t automatically play on Instagram and
videos run on a loop, so think twice about your visuals.
„ Choose a video cover photo that intrigues with an essential
moment, keep filters consistent and strive for authenticity.
„ A new app called Hyperlapse could be valuable for schools
making high-quality time lapse videos, even while in motion.

„ Instagram’s new business tools provide better measurement of
impressions, reach and engagement and it’s likely that these will
continue to improve as the social media platform adjusts to
increased advertising.
„ It’s easy to recommend creating “native” ads that don’t disrupt the
user experience, but the challenge for schools will be to develop
concise and captivating images, carousels and videos that invite
Instagrammers to further explore their communities.

Visual storytelling with instagram’s new ads

Visual storytelling with instagram’s new ads

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