Instagram Video Ads For eCommerce (The Ultimate Guide)

With the rising competition in marketing and advertising techniques used by eCommerce businesses, you should always embark on new trends. Today, one of the recent trends is advertising through Instagram, which has 800 million active users, according to Statista. 

There are many ways you could advertise your eCommerce products or services on Instagram, such as Instagram influencer marketing, Instagram explore ads, and carousel ads. 

However, this is not the only effective way you can promote your eCommerce brand through the platform. Today, Instagram video ads can also help your eCommerce business increase its brand awareness, its engagement with customers, which can eventually increase its Return On Investment (ROI).

In this article, we will walk you through everything you need to know about Instagram video ads.

Table of Content:

• What are Instagram Video Ads?
• Types of Instagram Video for your eCommerce business.
• 5 steps to create and run Instagram Video Ads for eCommerce.
• Top tactics to run successful Instagram Video Ads that convert

What are Instagram Video Ads?

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Instagram video advertising is one of the paid services offered by Instagram to businesses that want to promote their products or services online. It allows them to post sponsored video content on the platform to reach more customers.

In other words, Instagram video ads are one of the many different types of advertising formats that the platform offers. Video ads on Instagram allow businesses to give customers a closer look at their brand, website, and products or services. 

Types of Instagram Video Ads you can use for your eCommerce business

As an eCommerce business, you have 4 different types of video ad formats that you can choose from: Instagram videos, Stories, Reels, and Live. Let us give you a closer look at each one of these formats.

1- Instagram Reels

Video ads on Instagram used to be scattered in different places. We used to have 3 different formats: 

• “IGTV”, which allowed the uploading of long-form videos that can be up to 60 minutes long.
• Instagram in-feed videos, which allowed the uploading of short-form videos that were only up to 60 seconds. 
• Reels, which were short clips ranging from 15 to 30 seconds and can be either created by Instagram’s camera or uploaded from your photo library. 

However, this has changed!

Today, Instagram merged all video posts into one format: Reels. This means that all new video ads will be shared as Reels and will have a length of up to 15 minutes. Also, now the video and Reels tabs are consolidated into one single tab.

So even though Reel ads are considered relatively new to Instagram, they have now become the most effective format for Instagram video ads. Your video ads will be marked as sponsored, and they will appear between non-sponsored reels. 

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There is another place where your audience can access your Instagram video ads, which is the “Explore” section. It is something that users regularly browse and target audiences with posts delivered specifically to them, which is why it might be a good place for you to place your video ads. 

Read more about: How To Use Instagram Reels to Grow Your Ecommerce Store

2- Stories

Instagram stories were inspired by Snapchat stories. They allow users to share full-screen vertical photos and videos that disappear after 24 hours. Of course, there is always the option of saving expired stories to the “Highlights” section in users’ Instagram profiles. 

Initially, Instagram stories allowed users to share up to 15-second videos. However, recently, Instagram has increased the story time limit to reach up to 60 seconds. 

Instagram stories’ video ads are served to the target audience of your eCommerce brand while they are browsing their Instagram stories. Additionally, instead of disappearing after 24 hours like personal stories, you are allowed to choose how long you want your video ads to run. 

According to Statista, there are 500 million people around the world who use Instagram Stories every day. This number proves that sharing your video ads on Stories can connect you to many customers. 

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3- Instagram Live

Instagram live allows you to stream live videos directly to your audiences’ feeds and to interact and engage with them in real-time.

This format has a very creative feature called “Live Shopping”. This option allows you to sell your products, directly from the Instagram app, during your live broadcasts. You can also save your live videos with the products that were featured in them so that your customers can rewatch them and continue shopping at any time they want.

5 Easy Steps To Create And Run Instagram Video Ads For eCommerce

You can easily create and run Instagram video ads for your eCommerce business through Facebook Ads Manager. Let us walk you through the major steps that you will need to follow:

1- Identify the objective of your advertising campaign

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The first and most important step of any advertising campaign is the identification of your marketing objective. There are three major categories of campaign objectives from which you can choose:

• Awareness: These impression-based objectives are designed for the top stage of the funnel, or we can say, the first stage of the customer’s journey. They are suitable for targeting the audiences that are unaware of your eCommerce brand, and that still do not know the solutions that your products or services can offer to their problems. 

You can choose between: 

1. Brand Awareness, which increases users’ awareness of your eCommerce brand.
2. Reach, which shows your Instagram video ads to as many customers as possible.

• Consideration: These objectives are suitable for the middle stage of the funnel, or we can say, the “Interest” stage of the customer’s journey, where your customers are already aware of your eCommerce brand, and you want to give them all the information that would make them want to buy from you. In other words, you want to share information about your products or services that would take your customers from the “Interest” stage to the “Desire” stage in their journey. 

Under this broad objective, there are several sub-categories from which you can choose, such as Traffic, Engagement, App installs, Video views, Lead generation, and Messages.

• Conversion: These are objectives used for the bottom of the funnel, or we can say, for the “desire” stage of the customer’s journey, where your customers know about your eCommerce brand and want to buy what you are offering. Here, you want to make sure that these customers purchase from you. 

Under the Conversion objective, you can choose from these three sub-categories: Conversions, Catalog sales, and Store traffic. 

2- Decide your budget and choose your schedule.

The second step is where you choose how much you want to spend on this Instagram video ad and for how long you want it to run. 

First, while choosing your budget, you will find 2 options:

• Daily Budget: here you set the maximum amount of money you want to spend daily.
• Lifetime Budget: here you set the maximum amount of money you want to spend for your entire advertising campaign.

Second, to choose how long you want your campaign to run, you will find an option called “Ad Scheduling”, from which you can choose to run your Instagram video ads whether continuously or at specific times of the day.

3- Choose your target audience

This is the step where you specify your target audience based on demographics, interests, behavior…etc.  Here you can choose from two options: Create New Audience or Use Saved Audience. 

4- Choose your ad placements

This is the most important step in creating and running Instagram video ads for your eCommerce business because this is the step where you decide exactly where your ads will appear. In this step, you will find two options: Automatic Placements and Manual Placements. 

To create an Instagram video ad, in this step, you will:

• Choose the “Manual Placement” option. 
• Choose “Instagram” from the platforms section.
• Choose one of the following formats from the placements section: Instagram feed, Instagram explore, Instagram stories, or Instagram reels. 

The reason why this step is so significant is that this is where you choose one or more of the Instagram video ad formats that we talked about in the previous sections of this article. 

5- Create your Instagram video ads

In this step, start by choosing the Instagram account on which you want to launch the advertising campaign. After that, do the following:

• In the “Ad Setup” section, choose the desired format.
• Add your videos and ad copy in the “Ad Creative” section.
• Choose a “Call-To-Action” button.
• Add a URL to your eCommerce website.
• Choose the payment option that you want.
• Review your ad.
• Click Confirm.

Top 10 tips and tactics to run successful Instagram Video Ads for eCommerce

Well, we have already covered how to create and run Instagram video ad campaigns. Now, let us tell you some tips and tricks that will make your Instagram video ads for your eCommerce business more successful. 

• Do not rush while deciding the objective of your Instagram video ad

As you can see in the steps we listed earlier, identifying the objective of your advertising campaign comes as the first step to creating and running an Instagram video ad. This step is very important, which is why you should take your time with it. 

Not rushing here means taking all the time you need to identify the stage of the eCommerce conversion funnel or the buyer’s journey in which your target audience is. After that, you should dedicate only one specific goal for each Instagram video ad.

What you shouldn't do here is merge all the available campaign objectives or incorporate them all into one ad. This might confuse your audience and make them feel overwhelmed by your ad, which will stop them from taking any action at all; and hence, lead to a low conversion rate. 

• Engage your audience in the first few seconds of the video

Remember, you are dealing here with audiences who probably have a short attention span. This means that you should use the first few seconds of your video ad wisely and in a creative way that acts as a hook.

In other words, make sure that your first few seconds have enough movement, catch the users’ attention quickly and compel them to stop scrolling and continue watching the rest of your video. 

• Optimize your landing pages for mobile devices

Always take into consideration that your customers are most probably viewing your Instagram video ad from their mobile phones. Therefore, you should always make sure that the landing page to which your customers will be transferred after clicking on the CTA is optimized for mobile devices. 

• Make your video ads look as organic as possible

The main aim here is to make your video ad seem less like an ad and more like an organic video that offers a solution to a problem that your target customers have. When we say organic, we mean that your video ads should not look like ads and should seem natural and blend with the feeds and stories.

The trick here is to know how to create a balance between delivering content that adds value to your customers and promoting your eCommerce store at the same time. 

For example, you could create educational videos with useful tips for your customers. Or you could make tutorial videos that show your customers how to solve a problem they have while using your product or your service. 

• Use on-screen text in your video ads but without going overboard.

Instagram audio is muted by default; therefore, you should find a way to grab the users’ attention before they even unmute the audio. This can be done through on-screen text. 

Create a text that transmits the most important messages that your eCommerce brand wants to deliver.

However, what you shouldn’t do here is go overboard and add too much text because this might drive the attention away from the video itself.  

• Do not underestimate the power of a creative caption and a strong CTA

Another thing that can convince users to turn on the sound of video ads on Instagram is your caption. Research shows that captions increase view times by 12% on average (Brandwatch, 2022). 

So, ensure your captions are clear, creative, compelling, and properly deliver the key points you want to communicate. 

Moreover, your Call-To-Action (CTA) is also an important factor in the success of your Instagram video ads. Your CTA directs your customers in the right direction. It shows them what you want them to do next and makes it easier to take action. Therefore, you should design it to be clear, specific, concise, and actionable. 

• Create a sense of urgency in your video ads

Creating a sense of urgency is always a good psychological trick for eCommerce advertising. For example, you can create this by:

• Adding on-screen texts, such as “limited offer”, “expires soon”, or “act now”. 
• Adding a countdown timer in your videos.

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• Be as creative as you can in your videos

There are so many ways you can be creative in your videos. You can, for example,  incorporate inspirational messages, use memes, tell a story, talk about your new launches, emphasize the value of your existing products, or even show your current promotions. 

Do whatever you need to do to keep the creativity alive and keep your customers interested. 

• Continuously test your video ads and optimize them

To ensure more success for your campaigns, create multiple versions of your Instagram video ad, and test them using the A/B test, for example. This will let you know which video ads work best for your customers and will help you in the optimization process. 

• Use Automation tools to facilitate the process of making Instagram video ads for you

Automation is the future. There is no reason for you to manually do the whole process of creating and running Instagram video ads when automation tools can facilitate the process for you.

Converted.in offers you a very effective tool that will help you segment your target audience; and hence, map your customers’ journey. This will make the previously mentioned steps of creating Instagram video ads so much easier for you. 

What are you waiting for? Book your Demo now and start creating Instagram video ads with the help of this great marketing automation system.