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.



� 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



� 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.

