A Guide to Advertising on Instagram and What it Costs

In many ways, advertising on Instagram is the same as advertising on Facebook. This should come as no surprise since Instagram is part of the Facebook network. One of the most important parts of your company’s marketing is to appear online and this includes advertisements on Instagram, and so it is natural that as a new entrepreneur consider what it costs to advertise on Instagram?

Advertising on Instagram will cost you anywhere between $ 1.92 and $ 20 per click (CPC) for a campaign. If you prefer to run your ads on a cost per mile (CPM) basis, with a focus on impressions, you will probably pay about $ 48 on average per 1,000 impressions.

When do I know how much it will cost to advertise on Instagram?

There is no specific price for what an ad costs, so you can pay anywhere from a cents to a ten thousand EUROS.

In short, you can say that it costs as much to advertise on Instagram as you are willing to pay.

On Instagram, you pay for how often you want to be seen and you decide how much you want to pay. The higher budget you have for your ad, the more people it will reach.

Using Instagram means that you get a visual marketing channel, which is very appealing to most potential customers. There you can show what you sell or offer with the help of image and text.

With Facebook’s Ads Platform Ads Manager, you get a simple and free tool to use to create your ads. On Facebook Ads Manager you see how much your ad will cost. If you want, you can also promote your photos directly from Instagram if you have a business account there.

How much it will cost to advertise on Instagram you find out right when you create your ad in Facebook Ads Manager. Then you set a daily budget for your ad and it can be as low as just a few bucks.

If you want to test an ad to see how it converts, you may want to start with a lower budget and then optimize it based on the results you get. If you want even greater control over your budget, you can choose to set a lifetime budget instead of a daily budget.

A daily budget is an average amount of what your ad will cost. However, a lifetime budget is the total cost of your entire ad. You decide for yourself how long your ad will run with your Ad Set schedule, and you can enable or pause it whenever you want.

For example, you can have EUR 50 as a daily budget and thus spend a maximum of EUR 350 per week, or have EUR 350 in a lifetime budget.

When choosing a budget for Instagram, you can also choose what optimization you want for your ad delivery. Here you can choose between link clicks, daily unique reach, exposures, and landing page impressions. You can also choose to set a cost control for your optimization.

Once you’ve chosen which budget you want, as well as your target audience, Facebook Ads Manager will automatically calculate what your possible budget range is and how many clicks you’re expected to get.

This way, you get not only an overview of how much your ad will cost but also how much it will reach. The higher your advertising budget, the more conversions you can get.

What should you consider when setting your budget?

When you set your budget on Instagram, you choose between a daily budget and a lifetime budget. The daily budget can be good to choose since Facebook Ads Manager then controls how much money is spent each day, depending on how much chance it is for you to get good results.

Thus, more money can be spent on certain days when you are expected to get good visibility. However, if you choose a lifetime budget, the budget is the maximum amount for your ad for the entire period of time it is active.

When choosing a budget on Instagram, it’s a good rule of thumb to start low and then see how well your ad is reaching. That way you don’t risk losing money.

So after you test your ad, you can raise your ad amount. Often, less money is needed than you think to advertise on Instagram. Everything is about how well you know your target group and can limit it.

Therefore, when setting your budget, it is important to remember not to put several thousands of dollars in budget. If your ad is not optimally designed and appealing, it will not convert more than it did if you instead spent a few hundred bucks.

Your budget should be based on the goal you have with the ad, but it is highly relevant to test it first before setting a high one.

Advertising VS sponsoring

If you want to get the goods and services you sell on Instagram without arranging ads, you can instead explore the option of sponsoring. When you sponsor on Instagram, you sponsor a regular post or Stories.

To sponsor simply means that you contact users with a large following, so-called influencers, on Instagram and ask to buy a post from them. Following influencers is popular and many of them today work professionally.

You can choose to either create your own sponsored post or ask the influencer to create content for you. Everything depends on what you prefer. Allowing the influencer to create content can in some cases make it a marketing experience that is perceived as more reliable by its followers.

How much the price difference is between paying for an ad or for a sponsored post depends on who you want to buy a sponsored post from. The more followers an Instagram account has, the more expensive it is to sponsor a post.

Often you can choose to pay the sponsored post based on the number of followers or based on the level of engagement it creates. Here it is important to negotiate with the influencer you want to sponsor. It is important to keep in mind that the influencer has no responsibility if they do not deliver what you paid for.

A general price for a sponsored post is from EUR 150 1,500 per post for 2,000 followers up to EUR 1000 for 100,000 followers. However, there are no fixed prices but all Instagram accounts themselves decide how much they want to pay.

Generally speaking, sponsoring a post is more expensive than arranging an ad. However, there are greater opportunities to reach out with a sponsored post, and that you are more confident that you reach the right target group. However, it all depends on how many active and real followers the Instagram account has.

Instagram ads VS Instagram Story ads