1. Use Facebook Ad Manager
When you launch an Instagram Ad for your hair business, it’s so tempting to just hit the “create ad” button next to your post and let the rest play. It is the easiest way to launch an Instagram Ads campaign for your new hair brand, however, it is not the most effective way. It may even make you lose your campaign budget if the post itself isn’t well designed.
We recommend connecting your hair business Instagram account to a business Facebook account and use the Ad manager to launch your Instagram campaign so you can see all the statistics. If you haven’t created a business Facebook account, you can create one from your Instagram account in settings. Learn how to connect Instagram to Facebook Ad account.
2. Have a realistic goal for your Instagram Ads
After setting up the groundworks of your account. You should then determine what goals you want to achieve with your Instagram Ads. Of course, as a profiting business, you want your ads to translate into more sales and money, but if you are a new hair brand with limited credibility, we suggest that you first start an Instagram campaign to boost brand awareness and credibility rather than a sales-focused campaign.
Don’t you hate it when you step into a store and salesperson only wants to close a sale but doesn’t want to spend the time to explain the product to you? It’s the same reason why you should first focus on brand awareness instead of sales related campaigns.
Truth is, Instagram will make you choose your campaign goal before you can launch. Here is a list of campaign goals that you can choose from when you set up your ads in Facebook Ad Manager.
3. Use great visuals in Instagram Ads
The most important thing about your ad is the visuals whether it’d be an engaging video or a stunning image. Your ad should be able to visually tell the story about your hair business.
Instagram Ad is simple, you don’t need a big budget to shoot a commercial, but you should definitely try to create the best visual. You can promote a model photo or record a video of your friends and customers talking about how good your hair can hold curls. Either way, this is where you can get creative. You can also simply put a well-shot image of your product in your custom branding.
Statistics show that viewers will only decide to click on your ad link within the first 3 seconds of your ad. The visual in your ad is the most crucial thing to catch the viewer’s attention within those few seconds.
Let’s use examples. Below are both hair business Instagram ads that want to deliver similar content.
Obviously a customer is more likely to click on the model picture and make a purchase. A bad ad or a text ad made under 10 seconds will not only waste your budget, but it may also damage your brand’s credibility. People can always tell when you don’t put effort into your ads.
4. Define your audience in Facebook Ad Manager
Within the Facebook Ad Manager, you can define your audience’s age, location, gender and demographic.
As for hair companies, it is obvious that our customers are women. Younger customers may not have the money to buy expensive hair while older customers can afford expensive custom units easily. You should set the age according to your brand’s image.
You can set many specific filters to get your perfect audience. While it is good to set a very detailed audience, you don’t want to make your target audience too small. A small audience campaign with 20,000 reach might result in a pause on your ad.
We can’t tell you how big your audience should be or can be because everyone has different budget, but you can start running a campaign with one defined audience and use the Ad Manager analytics to fine tune your target audience.
5. Set a campaign budget
The great thing about using Instagram Ad and Ad manager to launch your hair business campaign is that you can control how much you want to spend.
You can set a lifetime campaign budget or a daily budget. This depends on the type of campaign. If it’s a timely campaign such as a holiday sale, you should set a lifetime budget. Instagram will use your budget in the best way as soon as possible. If you are running a brand awareness ad, you can use a daily budget. Instagram will make sure to spend less than your daily budget and keep your campaign running for however long you’d like.
The great thing about the daily budget is that, for small hair businesses, you can spend $5 a day and reach hundreds and thousands of potential customers.
Setting the budget at $5 doesn’t mean that Instagram will spend that much. If your ad has too much text or is badly designed, nobody will click on the ad andd Instagram can pause your ad without notice.
6. Set up website pixel to track your ad’s performance
We recommend that you use a Facebook pixel to track the performance of your ad. This way, you know which page of yours is the most visited, which content is the most popular. The Instagram Algorithm uses your pixel result to pitch your ad to more people who are willing to interact with your content/website/product.
7. Write a simple and clear phrased caption
Ad caption is often neglected by entrepreneurs who are new to Instagram Ad. Your caption is where people can understand why you are putting out the ad.
Your caption needs to be short, simple and straight to the point. The caption needs to fit your campaign goal whether if it’s a holiday sale boost or brand awareness ad.
Here is an example of Branded Hair Extensions‘s Instagram Ad caption. In this campaign, our goal is to boost brand awareness and let more people know that we can help them start their hair business. We used a picture of our sample pack paired with a simple and short caption describing what we do. Our ad leads to an Instagram Instant Experience where we promote a discount code and a form to collect emails.
Your caption should include a call to action so interested customers know what they should do next. A discount code or a signup form can be utilized to collect their information. You don’t want your customers to browse on your account and leave without giving you any of their information.
You can also use some hashtags to boost the views. Remember to keep the hastags short so your ad shows perfectly on Instagram Story too.
8. Test your hair business ad
Once you launch the ad, you should monitor your ad closely. In the first 3 days, Instagram will use your budget to deliver your ad to the followers randomly. During this period, your cost per impression/click might be really high. The it will drop to a comfortable amount around $0.3 USD -$1.5 USD. After the ad runs for a while, you can run a split test to see if another image/audience/caption does better than your current ad.
You can easily monitor all your ads in Facebook Ad manager.
Instagram Ad is the best way to grow your hair business
In this digital age, if you want your hair business to stand out, whether you are a hairstylist, beauty supplier or others, you should definitely utilize Instagram and Facebook Ads to build brand awareness. Instagram ads will attract real customers to your social account. The more followers you have, the more customers will likely follow your account and purchase your product. What’s even greater is that, with $5 a day, you can grow your account in a way that manual reach just can’t compete with.
Want to start a hair business with beautiful custom branding? Check out our hair packaging.
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Facebook has blocked my account/ restricted my content . Can i still run these ads primarily with an Instagram account?
Hi there, you can’t run ads on Instagram without Facebook. Unfortunately you may have to register for a new facebook business account then link it to your Instagram to be able to use the paid ads features.