What You Need to Know About Instagram Promotions

Instagram promotion is a partnership between advertisers and the platform. Promotion allows you to turn your photos, videos, carousel, Stories, collections, etc., into ads.

Instagram then displays these ads strategically to help you get increased reach, visibility, and engagements.

This rewarding feature opens you up to possibilities, which include new followers, brand promotion, and product/service sales. Depending on your goals or objectives, you can fine-tune your Instagram promotion to achieve those goals.

You can set your Instagram promotion budget, ad types, and the length of time you have chosen to run the promo.

A good case can be made for the usefulness of IG ads. Reports show that up to 72% of users have bought a product they found on Instagram.

Now when you consider the 1 billion active users (the most on any social media app), the usefulness of Instagram promotions cannot be underestimated. 

This article will look at what a promotion on Instagram means, the cost of running one, how to pay for IG promotions, how long it takes to get your ads approved, why your ads are being disapproved, and the next steps to take if your ads get disapproved.

Hope it helps you grasp the entire process of using Instagram Ads.
 

Paying for your Instagram ad

Very few things in life are free. Instagram ads aren't one of them. According to Thrive Hive, the cost per thousand impressions on Instagram is, as of date, $6.70.

This price might go up or go down, depending on the supply and demand of the company. Influencer Marketing Hub added that you can expect to pay somewhere between 20 cents and $2 per click (CPC) on an Instagram campaign.
 

You can pay for your ad via your Facebook Ads account. If, however, you don’t have an Ads account, you can pay on Instagram. Once you create a promotion, you’d be able to add a payment method.
 

Challenges faced using Instagram promotions 

Running Instagram ads isn't entirely straightforward. Like most things in life, it comes with its own challenges. Some easier than others.

The first bridge you need to cross when dealing with Instagram ads and promotions is getting your promotion improved. This is no easy task.

Approval can take from 30 minutes to more than 24 hours at times. Instagram hasn't come out to address this issue, leaving room for speculative information that, honestly, can be misleading and frustrating.

Nobody knows why the times are random or why they take so long as of now, but we hope in the future, review times will be significantly shortened.

Not all Instagram promotions are allowed, though. A high number of ads are usually rejected. There are some rules in play. Trying to advertise tobacco, drugs, and drug-related products, unsafe supplements, weapons, ammunition, and explosives, etc., are some of the products Facebook listed under “prohibited content on their ad policies page”.

And since Instagram uses Facebook's advertising network, you can cross-advertise on the two platforms. This also means you must adhere to the same guidelines. 

If your ad gets disapproved for no reason or all the reasons in the world, you might want to spend time on Instagram’s Terms of Use page. The reason for disapproval might just jump at you.

It’s worth mentioning that the likes of Google, Twitter, and even Facebook all offer paid advertisements and their ads go through a process of approval. These networks often reject ads, so this isn't unique to only Instagram.
 

Getting your Instagram promotion approved

To reiterate, while not all ads get flagged, most don't get a seal of approval from Instagram. There's a simple 3-step process to help you get that Instagram promotion approved if you were denied the first time, with no stress at all.

Start by:
 

• Submitting an appeal

• Redoing your ad 

• Trashing the ad and starting from scratch
   

When you submit an appeal to Facebook/Instagram, you’re saying that your ad was flagged wrongly and you want them to take a closer look at it.

If they have a manual look at your ad and it doesn’t violate any policies, it'll start running automatically; otherwise, it'll be binned (you get just one appeal per ad).

If your appeal is denied the second time, you'll need to go back to the drawing board and rework the content. Your decision to fix and resubmit your rejected ads shows your full understanding of Instagram rules and community standards and your commitment to the content of your ad. Luckily this option allows multiple resubmission, which gives room for some serious testing.

In trying to troubleshoot your rejected ad, you'll want to test one variable at a time. From changing the landing page to changing your ad text. Try everything. Make sure you are familiar with the ad guidelines so you don’t waste your time.
 

Final thoughts

Instagram is the largest social network with 1 billion-plus active users (38% of which check Instagram multiple times a day and like up to 4.2 billion posts). Not only that, but 80% of users follow at least one business—driving interaction rate up 2.2% as compared to Facebook’s 0.2%. Do you still wonder why brands are so invested in running Instagram ads

Instagram promotion means paying Instagram to allow you to turn your content into ads, paid using a Facebook ad account or Instagram business account. 

Right now, for a thousand impressions, you can be charged anywhere from $5.

That mentioned, review your ad for compliance with Instagram’s Music Guidelines, Platform Policy, Community Payment Terms, and Instagram Community guidelines. (If you don’t have time to check those links individually, Instagram has summarized the content of those links in their Terms of Use. Go over and check it out.)

Once you're sure your ads comply with the rules, submit them for approval. The approval period can take hours or days.

When your ads get approved, don’t forget to track performance using Instagram in-built Analytics. But if your ads get rejected, you can either file an appeal, fix and resubmit your ad, or bin the ad and create a new one.

It’s a three-step process and these steps have been detailed under the subheading on how to get your Instagram promotion approved. Hopefully, you find those three steps helpful in running these social media ads on the platform.

Once you’ve got all these down, you’re all set to start promoting your business with Instagram Ads. Sit back and let your money work for you.