Instagram Ads Not Working? 5 Quick Fixes to Try Now

Not Targeting the Right People

Targeting is really the first place you should look when trying to improve on your current Instagram ads.

Many people understand targeting to an extent, but something we see a lot of is ad targeting with too narrow of an audience and not reaching enough people.

Too many brands will cast a net that is either too wide or too narrow but struggle to find that sweet spot in between the two.

Example of what to do:, if you are a brand who is selling men’s ties, you don’t want to just be targeting people like bankers and financial advisors right? You want to be targeting their significant others, people who have big life events coming up, people who are in peak wedding season, etc.

Figuring out how large to cast your net as well as other factors such as where to cast your net (location based targeting), who to target (different demographics) and how these people act (behavior based targeting) all help you fine tune exactly who you are targeting.

Avoid Cognitive Dissonance

Humans are hardwired to crave consistency. Cognitive dissonance occurs when information comes along that is inconsistent with your pre-established beliefs.

Your advertising creative needs to be balanced with your product: pricing, branding, messaging etc. If these are out of balance and contradictory they will significantly turn off your customer.

You can imagine how jarring it would be to see a Ferrari advertisement filmed by an amateur college team, with bad lighting and cheap bad acting. Everyone already believes that Ferraris are luxury, sporty, cool and expensive works of art. Making sure that your creatives align with the goals for your ad is paramount for having a successful Instagram campaign.

For example, if your ad is designed to get people to make a purchase, you wouldn’t want your call to action to read “Learn more”. The same goes for the creative itself, if your ad is about a specific product, you don’t want to have your image portray something general about your company, you want it to be of that specific product.

Keeping your ads in line with your overall brand image and promise helps customers feel like they are not being sold to, but just looking at a new product, style or emotion that they want.

Creating that product pricing and creative quality dissonance helps keep all of your creatives in line, as well as helps keep customers comfortable with the price of your product. If they see a premium ad, they will feel better about paying a premium price.

They Clicked. Now What?

So you’re getting clicks on your ads and people are going to your product and landing pages, but they aren’t converting, now what? The lack of conversions could be due to a variety of reasons.

• Load Time– If your site has issues like poor loading time, it really throws a wrench into the customer experience, causing people who would have otherwise made a purchase to back out and go back to regularly scrolling Instagram instead.
• Copy on landing page doesn’t match ad creative– When someone lands on your page, they are expecting to see copy that is in line with what they have already seen on your advertisements. If your ads are a very funny and light hearted tone, people will expect to read copy on the landing page in that same vein. If your landing page copy is too different from your ad creative, people will be turned off from the page and end up not making a purchase.

• Does the landing page match the audience intent for the Ad ( top of funnel, middle, bottom)- Different ads go after different points in the buyer’s journey. If your ad is targeting people that have already visited your site, you’ll want the page they land on to be pretty far along the funnel since they already know your brand. If your ad is made to target potential customers, the landing page should be general as well, not a specific product page.
• Mobile Friendly– Most of the time when people are using Instagram they are going to be on their phones. If they click on your ad and land on a page that is not mobile friendly it will be a huge pain point during the buyer’s journey.