On October 28th I paid $10 to promote the following post for 2 days.
This isn’t the most scientific experimentation. I literally promoted a single post with a small $10 budget. But maybe, just maybe it will give you some insight before you drop any of your own cash.
Before the promotion, the post had 157 likes and 0 comments and my account had 843 followers.
When you select to promote an Instagram post you have some options. First, your budget, then your objective, where clicking the ad takes the visitor, who you want your audience to be and how many days you want the promotion to last. As you’ll see in the screenshot below, for $10 Instagram estimated my promotion would reach 3600 – 9600 people.
11:59 PM on 10/28 here’s where my post stats stood:
+7 likes (164 total)
+0 comments
+7 followers (850 total)
11:59 PM 10/29 with 10 hours left on the promotion:
+10 likes (174)
+0 comments
-1 followers (849)
By the end of the promotion:
+18 likes (175)
+0 comments
+5 followers (848)
Very intreesting read! Thanks a lot! (You need info, check out Tourmaline!)
lol thank you so much!
Thanks for sharing this experiment! I recently did a similar thing myself on my photography Facebook page. They gave me a $30 coupon to “boost” one of my posts. I was similarly let down by the results; I think FB (and Instagram) definitely oversell on how many potential people you reach. Mine said upwards of 11k, but it only ended up reaching a little over 1.5k, and I didn’t gain ANY extra likes on my page. People shared and liked the post, but it did very little for my “brand” in the long run. Luckily I didn’t lose any money on it since it was a coupon, but it definitely didn’t sell me on putting my own cash toward boosting in the future.
Like you said, a focused campaign with several images definitely yields better results. I’ve worked in marketing, especially social media marketing, and it’s pretty powerful stuff. However, you have to be willing to put a lot of money towards it, and the truth of the matter is that if you’re a small brand or just have a personal page, it might not be “worth it” for a long, long time.
Thanks for the insight. They really do oversell it. I️ believe in social media marketing for sure but the little stuff just doesn’t seem worth it.
Never have done it, but I really appreciate this article because I’ve been curious about Instagram, and other social media, advertising.
Glad it’s been some good info for you. And for that and this blog post I’ll deem my $10 worth it, just not for the ad itself :P