How to Run Instagram Ads – A Complete Guide

To run an Instagram ad that turns leads to customers, you must optimize your profile, choose the right audience and use the right budget but, even these alone cannot deliver the ads in most cases. And here’s why.

Having managed Instagram ads in different industries, including luxury goods, real estate, ecommerce, personal wellness etc. One lesson we have learned is that there is no single advertising formula that works for every business but there are advertising principles that cuts across industries.

This is why I approach Instagram advertising as a process of making informed decisions, observing results and adjusting where necessary.

And in this guide, I will explain how to approach each of these steps, including audience targeting, budgeting, payment and the practical decisions that can make a difference to your results.

What are Instagram Ads?

Instagram ads (or Instagram advertising) are paid promotional posts, created by brands on Instagram to reach a larger audience for a specific purpose.

An Instagram ad can be set in the form of a boosted post or a complete paid campaign with a specific budget. It usually appears naturally with other posts in the timeline with a tag that designates it as an ad in most cases.

Now, the following are the steps to set up an Instagram ad:

Step 1: Decide what you want to achieve with your Instagram ads

Before you spend money boosting a post or running a campaign on Instagram, decide what you want the campaign to accomplish. This is one thing a lot of our clients fail to do.

Find out if you want more followers, whether you prefer to generate enquiries, sell products, attract people to a training program or increase awareness for a new business?

The reason is simple. Every goal requires different approaches.

For example, an ecommerce business selling luxury watches may want to attract potential buyers who can afford its products. A campaign that generates hundreds of profile visits but very few serious enquiries may not be particularly useful to that business.

A digital marketing trainer, on the other hand, might want to promote an upcoming class and generate enquiries from people interested in learning the skill.

Common Instagram Goals for Advertising

The following are the common Instagram used by most brands and what they measure

Do not confuse these outcomes. A campaign that generates plenty of likes may not necessarily generate customers.

Equally, a campaign with relatively few interactions might still be valuable if it attracts qualified prospects who eventually buy.

Choose your campaign objective based on what you want people to do, and evaluate it accordingly.

Step 2: Optimize your profile before Advertising on Instagram

After someone sees your ad, becomes interested and visits your Instagram page. What will they find when they arrive?

If the page does not clearly explain what your business offers, the visitor may leave without taking any further action. In low trust markets, it might leave a negative impression on your brand.

Before running ads on Instagram, make sure your profile gives people enough information to understand and evaluate your business.

For example, you want to do the following:

• Clarify your offer. Your bio should explain what you do and, where appropriate, whom you serve.
• Publish relevant content. Show your products, demonstrate your expertise or explain the services you provide. Just make sure there are content on your page.
• Make contact easy. Check that your contact information, website and relevant links work.
• Give people a clear next step. Tell visitors whether they should send a message, visit your website, book an appointment or place an order.

Your ad may introduce someone to your business, but your profile gives them an overall impression about your business. Take it seriously.

Should you use Instagram Boost or Meta Ads Manager?

There are two ways to run ads on Instagram. One is using the Meta Ads Manager and the other is using the Instagram boost option.

You can promote Instagram content directly through the app using the Boost feature, or create and manage campaigns through Meta Ads Manager.

Both options have their uses.

• Instagram Boost is convenient when you want to promote an existing post without dealing with a more elaborate campaign setup. Depending on the options available to your account, you can select a goal, audience, budget and duration.
• Meta Ads Manager on the other hand offers more control over campaign structure, audience testing, placements, optimization and reporting. It is particularly useful when you need to compare different approaches or manage more involved campaigns.

Usually, we use both methods but my overall choice depends on what a client is trying to achieve.

If you want to promote a post and direct people to your profile, Boost may be okay for that. But if your goal is to organize and evaluate multiple audience or creative tests, Ads Manager may be the better fit.

You can learn more via Meta for Business.

Whichever option you choose, remember that the tool does not determine the entire outcome. Your audience, offer, creative, budget and follow-up process are very crucial.

Step 3: Target the right Audience for your Instagram Ads

Audience selection is one of the most important parts of Instagram advertising. From our experience, changing the audience can make a significant difference to performance.

I have seen some audiences deliver better results than others. I have also seen audience changes produce disappointing outcomes, even when the intention behind the change was reasonable.

This is why we do not recommend choosing an audience simply because it sounds right. If you want to run ads on Instagram successfully, consider who is most likely to respond to your offer and then evaluate the results, accordingly.

• Start with Geographic Locations

For a business operating in Nigeria, location can influence both the size and relevance of the audience you reach.

A brand with a digital training center in Ikeja, Lagos, for example, may need to focus on people who can reasonably attend classes at that location.

Alternatively, an ecommerce business delivering nationwide may have a wider potential audience.

In terms of locations, cities like Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt are always sought for and they can indeed be useful markets for certain products and services, but they are not automatically the right choice for every campaign or goal.

Consider where your customers live, where you can serve them, the price of your offer and where demand is likely to exist.

Should you target interests or use a broad audience for Instagram Ads?

Detailed interest targeting can help you define an audience, but adding more interests does not automatically improve your results.

A narrowly defined audience may exclude people who could become customers. A broader audience may give Meta’s advertising system more room to find people likely to take the desired action.

The available targeting options also depend on the campaign setup and the features Meta currently makes available to your account.

We usually do not recommend choosing between narrow and broad targeting based on ideology. Consider the offer, objective, location and budget, then use campaign performance to guide your decision.

For example, for a business promoting in-person digital marketing training, detailed interests may be worth testing. Depending on the location and economics of the offer, a broader audience could also work.

For an online training program, you might compare selected cities with a broader eligible audience to discover where relevant enquiries come from.

For luxury products, real estate or online training programs, the approach will focus on market considerations and not blanket targeting.

What happens when you change your Audience?

There’s an ecommerce company we managed whose original audience covered approximately five or six Nigerian cities. The campaign initially delivered encouraging results, but performance declined at some point.

I decided to narrow the audience to three cities that I believed could produce more relevant outcomes.

When I made the change, I also changed the creative and caption but kept the campaign objective, budget, placements and other settings the same.

The new setup performed poorly in the engagement and profile activity that mattered to the client. After some days of observation, we switched back to the original audience. The campaign subsequently delivered as expected and even better than before.

This experience reinforced a lesson we have encountered across other campaigns; audience selection deserves serious attention.

Because I changed the audience, creative and caption together, I cannot attribute the entire decline to targeting alone. But the wider pattern I have observed across campaigns is that different audiences can produce materially different results, and you must target accordingly.

PS: We also wrote a guide on Making Money on Instagram. Read it here, how to Make Money on Instagram.

Step 4: Get the right Ad Creative and Copy

Having the right audience is important, but people still need a reason to pay attention to your ad.

When you set up ads on Instagram, your ad creative communicates your offer visually, while the copy helps explain what you are promoting and why it may be relevant.

A visually attractive advertisement can still perform poorly if the offer is unclear. A simpler advertisement may work well if it communicates the right message to the right people.

Are Reels the best format for Instagram Ads?

No. Reels can be effective, but they are not automatically the best choice for every campaign.

A carousel may be more suitable for an ecommerce business that wants to showcase several products or explain different features. A clear image may communicate a straightforward offer quickly. Video may be useful when people need to see a product or service in action.

Your preferred ad creative format should support the message you want to communicate.

To get the right ad creative, before publishing an ad, we usually ask the following:

• Is the offer immediately clear?
• Will the intended audience understand why it matters?
• Does the creative show or explain what is being promoted?
• Does the copy give people a reason to act?
• Does the destination match what the advertisement promises?

You should ask the same questions. When testing different creatives, try to understand what each version is intended to achieve.

Avoid changing several variables at once if your goal is to learn which element influenced the outcome.

Step 5: Create your Ads Correctly: Steps to set up Instagram Ads in Nigeria

Now that you know the preliminaries, here’s how to set up an Instagram ad the right way.

For this setup, we will be using Meta Ads Manager because it offers more control over how you organize and manage your campaigns.

• Open Meta Ads Manager

Visit Meta Ads Manager and log in with the Facebook account that has access to the business assets you intend to use.

If you are managing ads for a business, make sure you have the appropriate permissions to access its ad account, Facebook Page and Instagram account.

• Create a new campaign

Inside Ads Manager, select the option to create a new campaign then choose an advertising objective.

Decide what you want the campaign to achieve. Depending on your business goals, you can choose objectives such as Awareness, Traffic, Engagement, Leads or Sales.

Your objective should reflect what you want people to do after seeing your advertisement.

• Set up your audience, budget and placements

Now, proceed to the ad set level. This is where you configure campaign settings, including your audience, budget, schedule and placements.

For your audience, consider the locations you want to target, the people you want to reach and the available targeting options that make sense for your business.

Next, enter your advertising budget and decide when you want the campaign to start and end.

After that, choose your ad placements. If you plan to advertise specifically on Instagram, make sure the relevant Instagram placements are selected.

• Create your advertisement

Now, let’s get to the ad level, where you put together the advertisement people will see.

First, select the right Facebook Page and connect the Instagram account you want the advertisement to appear from.

Next, choose whether to create a new advertisement or use an existing post from your Instagram account, where the option is available.

Upload your image or video, write your ad copy, add the relevant headline where applicable and select an appropriate call-to-action button.

Before proceeding, preview your advertisement to ensure that the creative, text and destination are correct.

• Review and publish your ad

After you have completed the setup, review your campaign to make sure everything is okay.

If you are satisfied with the settings, select Publish.

Your advertisement will then go through Meta’s review process. If approved, it can begin delivering according to the schedule and settings you selected.

How much do Instagram ads cost in Nigeria?

The cost of Instagram ads depends on the target audience, offer, creative, campaign objective, competition and how people respond to the ad. Your business’s ability to convert interested people into customers also affects whether the spending makes commercial sense.

Let’s say you have NGN50,000 to spend to get followers. Do not expect that you will gain 50,000 or even 5,000 followers just because another brand was able to gain that number.

The cost of Instagram ads or cost of acquiring a follower varies from one campaign to another. The same applies to messages, leads and purchases.

Instead of using the results of another ad to decide your own ad cost and outcomes, use that that to understand how the ad can work for you based on your own goal, industry, budgets etc. not necessarily expected outcomes.

Remember, if you have set up an ad before, you can also use your previous ads results to better understand the cost of Instagram ads before you run one.

Does a bigger budget deliver better performance for Instagram ads?

No. A bigger or smaller budget does not decide an ad’s performance.

While a budget that is too small to generate enough meaningful results can make it difficult to evaluate a campaign, increasing your budget will not automatically fix performance if an ad has a weak offer, an unsuitable audience or it fails to communicate its value.

You need enough in spending to learn something useful about your ads, while remaining conscious of the financial risk.

This is particularly important for small businesses that cannot afford to spend freely while waiting for a campaign to improve.

How to pay for Instagram ads in Nigeria

Usually, available payment methodsdepend on your account’s billing setup, currency and the options Meta (or Instagram) makes available.

For instance, Instagram can provide you with an option to connect the account to Meta’s advertising tools or enter payment details directly, using your Instagram App.

For personal accounts, or accounts you do not own, you may decide not to add your card details there. If that’s the case, you can go with the Meta advertising option.

After linking the Instagram accounts to a Meta Ad Manager, you can opt for the prepaid funding option. This option allows you to enter an amount and select from the payment method that works for you.

After choosing your preferred option, follow through with the instructions and transfer the money. Your payment will be credited instantly.

The exact same options may not be available to every advertiser especially if you have previously set up a different payment method on Meta.

If you are setting up your Instagram ad account, use the following steps:

• Connect the Instagram account to your Meta ads manager.
• Open the billing or payment settings for the ad account you plan to use.
• Review the available payment methods.
• Confirm the amount, currency and payment instructions.
• Keep your confirmation and verify that the advertising balance has been credited.

PS: ALWAYS use the payment instructions displayed through your Meta account.

How long should you run an Instagram ad?

Some digital marketers may recommend running a campaign for three to seven days before making changes. That can be a useful planning reference, but it is not a universal rule.

Meta’s delivery system uses a learning phase to understand how to deliver ads effectively. Performance can fluctuate while it gathers information, and significant edits may disrupt the learning process.

You can read more about campaign optimization here: Meta’s advertising resources. However, campaign decisions must reflect the realities of your business.

From experience, a company with a substantial advertising budget may allow a campaign more time to gather data. A small Nigerian business operating with limited funds may not have that luxury.

In some situations, approximately 48 hours can provide a useful window for early performance evaluation. But that does not mean every campaign should be stopped or changed after two days.

Overall, the decision should account for the amount spent, the results generated, the objective and the business’s ability to continue testing.

If an ad is producing promising results, you may want to let it run longer. If it is performing poorly and spending money without generating meaningful outcomes, you may need to review it sooner.

I do not believe advertisers should follow a fixed duration blindly. Nor do I recommend changing campaigns constantly without a reason. Make informed decisions based on the results and the budget you have.

PS: If you are not sure whether Instagram is one of the main social media platforms in Nigeria, we have written a full guide on social media platforms in Nigeria. Read it here: The Top Social Media Platforms in Nigeria.

How to know whether your Instagram ads are working

For someone running Instagram ads, likes and comments can tell you something about how people respond to your advertisement, but they do not tell the whole story.

The right metrics depend on your ad objectives.

For example, if you want more followers, track your cost per follower and profile visits. If you want enquiries, find out your cost per message and the quality of the conversations.

Also, if you are selling products, look at purchases, cost per purchase and revenue where the required tracking is available.

Compare your results with your own historical performance if there is such. An ad that generates fewer likes than another ad with same audience and budget may still be more valuable if it attracts better-qualified prospects.

When reviewing a campaign, consider:

• Are the results aligned with the objective?
• Is the cost per result acceptable for the business?
• Is the audience attracting relevant people?
• Are people taking the right next step after seeing the ad?
• Does the result justify continued spending?
• What can the campaign teach you about the next decision?

The point is to evaluate advertising as a business activity, beyond it being a way to increase engagement numbers.

PS: If after your review, you still want to try out other platforms for advertising, we have that covered. Read our full guide on the top social media platforms for advertising in Nigeria here.

Do not leave interested customers waiting

When you decide to run ads on Instagram, remember that your work does not end when someone clicks your ad or sends a message.

People may ask about price, delivery, availability, payment, location or the benefits of your offer. If nobody responds, some of those potential customers will move on.

Make sure someone is available to answer relevant questions and guide interested people through the next step.

If people are enquiring but rarely buying, find out, the issue may be the offer, pricing, response time, information provided or sales approach rather than the advertisement alone.

Victor Winners Instagram Ads Checklist – A checklist before launching your next Instagram ad

We created this advertising checklist to help our readers ensure their ads are well set up. So, before you run Instagram ads, do well to answer the following questions:

• What do I want this campaign to achieve?
• Is my Instagram profile ready for new visitors?
• Is the offer clear and relevant to the target audience?
• Does my audience selection make sense for this business?
• Does the ad creative communicate the offer effectively?
• Can I afford the budget I have set?
• Which metrics will I use to evaluate performance?
• When and how will I review the results?
• Who will respond to comments and enquiries?
• What happens after someone clicks, messages or visits my profile?

You do not need to predict every outcome before running ads on Instagram but you do have to understand why you are making each decision and how you will evaluate them.

PS: If you want to also learn about how to run Facebook Ads, we have a comprehensive guide on how to set up Facebook ads here.

Final Words

Running Instagram ads in Nigeria does not start and end with choosing a budget or promoting a post.

If you want to run Instagram ads successfully, you must understand your business objective, select an appropriate audience, communicate your offer clearly and evaluate the results against realistic expectations.

From experience, audience selection can have significant influence on performance. But targeting does not work in isolation. The creative, copy, offer, budget and follow-up process all contribute to outcomes. Also, you must make decisions that reflect the financial realities of your business.

Remember, the goal is not to follow advertising rules blindly. Understand what you are trying to achieve, learn from the results and make better decisions over time. Alternatively, work with our experts here, to explore how we can help your business build its online presence.

You can also sign up for our digital marketing training to learn how to set up Instagram ads yourself. Join here.

Now, it’s over to you. What up comes to mind when you think about setting up Instagram ads? Drop your comments below.