How to Create an Instagram Story Ad in 2021

Key Takeaways

hey it's andrew hubbard here welcome back to the channel in this video you're going to learn how to create instagram stories ads that convert i'm going to show you every step of the way from how to create the ad itself whether it's an image or a video to how to set it up and get it running inside the facebook ad manager now the beauty of instagram stories ads is that you can create really effective ads that convert really really well and inside our agency we actually see the simplest and the most organic looking instagram stories ads converting better than everything else in the vast majority of cases so what that means for you is even if you don't have a big studio a big budget or if even if you've got no idea where to start with instagram stories ads you can still create something fantastic that performs really really well for your business and that's exactly what you're going to learn in this video i'm also going to show you my favorite type of ad the one that we see working better than most other ads in the vast majority of cases i'll show you that exact ad type how to create it and set it up later in this video so make sure you stay tuned for that now if you enjoy this video all i ask is that you give it a thumbs up click that like button if you decide you want to hear more from me click the subscribe button click that little bell and you'll get notified whenever i release a new video on facebook advertising or digital marketing alright so let's get into it the first thing you need to know is that instagram stories ads they appear in the instagram stories section or feed inside instagram just like native instagram stories what happens is you're going through your instagram stories and every now and then a sponsored instagram stories ad pops up alright now they can be one of three different types you can have an image you can have a video or you can have a carousel now an image is exactly what it sounds like a video is up to 15 seconds and a carousel is three different videos one by one so you can have three 15 second videos each running one after the other and that's an instagram story carousel so you can effectively create a 45 second video chop it up into 15 minute chunks and create a carousel all right so the first ad type we're going to talk about is the video ad so again it's a 15 second vertical video that's the first thing i want to make really clear here is that it's always important to create these ads using the native format in this case it's 9 by 16 vertical images or vertical video so when we record our video all we need is an iphone or an android phone grab your phone put it in the vertical setup so here's my phone we're going to have it vertically record the video and then save it and we can go from there so i'm going to record one right now and show you how to do it first step open up the camera or the instagram app on your phone i'm going to go to the camera i'm going to switch it to portrait mode and i'm going to get ready and record my video right now want to learn how to grow your business effectively with instagram ads my name is andrew hubbard i'm hosting a free master class where i'm going to show you step by step how to get up and running with instagram ads to bring more leads and sales into your business all you need to do is swipe up to register today that's it simple as that now i've just recorded that video now what we need to do is edit and prepare that video my preferred way to do this is using an app on your phone called in shot so let's jump over and look at that now and i'll walk you through the process as i do it okay so here we are inside the in shot app from here i'm just going to click video i can click new and then i can select my latest video that i just recorded now first thing i want to do is click canvas down the bottom left and i want to change it to a 9 by 16 format because that's our nice tall instagram stories ad format now if we click the text button i can go ahead and type some text and all i have to do here is just type it i can change the size i can change the colors uh to whatever i want as you can see and we can add any text that we want now you can see down the bottom here i actually have the ability to choose where in the video it pops up so i can have this running i'll have it running for the first little bit and there are lots of different things we can add we can add music stickers filters we can speed up the video slow down the video all here within the in shot app which is why i really like it it's got a great free version as well which is what i'm using right now to record this and i can add things like stickers and stuff like that too so the beauty of this is we can make this look really organic which is essentially what we want see i can put a little arrow here to tell people to swipe up go across and we can decide where we want that arrow to appear so i can have it in the whole video i can have it in in just one section over here and we go through and as you can see i'm just going to go through design this set it all up and then hit once i'm done i hit this little button at the top and click save and then once you've got your videos saved to your phone simply send that across to your computer so we can use that in the ads later on okay now we've seen how to create a great video ad in just a few minutes using your phone we're going to have a look now at how to create a great image ad again this is all using free apps on your mobile device and it's really quick and easy to do and these work really well so first thing we want to do is go back to your mobile phone and we're going to open up an app called adobe spark post okay a free app again really easy to use this is how we do it when you open adobe spark post it's going to look something like this the first thing you want to do is click that big green plus button down the bottom to open up the options for creation now we're going to choose something from our photo library and i'm going to choose the photo that i have prepared for this so it's just a plain photo okay i'm going to use a plain photo of myself as the base for this ad now we want to choose down the bottom here instagram story and you can see here that it's actually zoomed in and cropped so we need to zoom out a little bit simply by pinching and click done now double tap to edit text okay so i'm going to say learn how to create instagram ads that convert done okay now what i can do is i can change the way this appears as well so change the font something that i use in mine i use lato font and i'm just going to make some adjustments to the color and things like that to get it exactly how i want it next i can add some things like icons so i click add sorry i'm going to add a sticker and i can search the whole gifi library here and find what exactly what i want to add okay so you can see how simple that is i've just added my text changed the font the color added a few stickers and things like that i can also add uh any branding that i want as well or logos so i'm just going to add my logo pop that in the top corner there like that and we are done so i'm going to click done i'm going to click this button in the top right and i'm going to share post as a still image as you can see the i had the video animation option so the beautiful thing about this app which is adobe spark post is i can actually create an animated video just like what you saw earlier inside post and i can save it as well so it's another option for you to use now i'm going to click save image simply save it to my camera roll and we are good to go right now at this point you've seen us create a video you've seen how we create an image for our instagram stories ads and if you want to create a carousel it's exactly the same process as we used for the video except you can record up to 45 seconds same process same editing process everything is the same just record up to 45 seconds instead of 15 seconds and then you just split that video into three different pieces afterwards it's as easy as that to do an instagram story so once you've got your creative assets ready to go let's jump over to the facebook ad manager and we can have a look at exactly how to set up your brand new instagram stories ads alright so now we've got a video ad ready to go and we've got an image ad that's also ready to go now let's jump over to the facebook ad manager because that's where we actually create our instagram stories ads we don't create them from instagram itself we do it through the facebook ad manager interface so we're gonna head over there and look at exactly how we set these ads up and get them up and running all right here we are inside the facebook ad manager now if you don't know how to get here facebook.com forward slash ads forward slash manage should get you here otherwise if you're already experienced with this you know how to get to the ad manager now what we're going to do first is we're going to create a campaign now a campaign is simply a container that holds out our targeting and our ads so at the campaign level we set our objective so we tell facebook what we want to achieve so i'm going to click create and i'm going to give our campaign a name so i'm going to call it that and i'm going to choose an objective now the objective is where we tell facebook what we actually want to get from this campaign so the two i usually choose are conversions that's by far the one i select most often and what that's telling facebook is i want you to show ads to people who are likely to convert into a lead or a customer the other one that i use a little bit is traffic it tells facebook hey i want you to put ads in front of people who are likely to click the ad and visit my website now the thing with traffic is often those people will visit the website but they're not likely to enter an email address and become a lead or buy from you so you'll get website traffic or visitors which is exactly what you're asking for but not necessarily leads and customers and that's why i like to choose conversions most frequently because of the types of ads that we run now the next thing we'll give our ad set a name ad sets are where we set up the targeting and the budget and the ads down here at the bottom that's where we actually set up our creative like our image and video so i'm going to give the ad set a name now and i'm going to give my first ad a name as well once that's done click save to draft and you can see what's happened is i'll just collapse this side pane window now i can see i've got my campaign and if i click my campaign it goes down to the ad set level i've got my ad set and i've got my new ad now each of these have some more setup to complete the campaign that's done we don't need to do that but at the ad set level we need to click here click on our ad set whoops select our ad set and click on this little edit button over here now this is where we set up the targeting in the budget as i said so here we want to choose what our conversion event is so for me website and let's say i'm aiming for leads so choose my conversion event if you need to learn more on that i'll put a little link at the top now you'll see something that will send you off to a video that will show you how to set up conversion tracking for your facebook ads if you haven't done that and if you don't understand exactly what events and conversion tracking is all right so down here we set our budget very simple i like to go with the daily budget option and set how much we want to spend a day our start date and if you want enter an end date next up we set up our targeting so who are we going to target with this i'm going to choose united states and canada next we set any age restrictions that we want to set for our audience so depending on your avatar you enter the particular details here so i'm going to say 21 to 65 and all genders i'm not going to put in a language i don't usually do that if i'm targeting predominantly english-speaking countries that's normally fine but if you do want to only target a specific language enter that here and then add detailed targeting with this one i'm going to select some interest to target and i've put influencer interest so for me i want to get in front of people who are interested in growing their business using instagram ads and i help online course creators and digital product owners with their ads so i want to find those audiences i'm going to use influencers in that space as a way to do that if you want to learn more about targeting i do have a video on that as well that looks like this so find that in the channel and you can check out how to how i choose good interest to target as well all right so interest targeting here i'm just going to put in a few uh detailed targeting expansion i do use that sometimes in testing but i generally don't select that unless i'm fairly well advanced with a campaign and it's a specific thing i'm trying to test and we don't need to put anything in connections either now down here this is where it gets important you can select automatic or manual placements in this example we're going to use manual placements because we want to run this ad only on instagram stories now i'll show you how to set it up only for instagram stories and you can also use the all placements option if you specifically customize the ad and like i said i'll show you this way first and then i'll show you how to do the automatic placements way just afterwards so we're going to go here we're going to uncheck all these platforms except for instagram we'll go down here and i'm going to uncheck the instagram feed and instagram explore and just choose instagram stories now we can also choose facebook stories and you can also choose messenger stories if you want the requirements are the same for all of them so there's no real downside to doing this but for this example i'm just going to select instagram stories because that's where we're going to run these ads and then down here i'm just going to choose conversion window one day click that's because i want people to click these ads and convert into a lead straight away i don't expect people to click an ad and then leave the page open and maybe come back and enter their email address and and details later it's likely they're going to convert into a lead within one day of clicking the ad all right so that's our ad set done let's collapse this window and go down to the ad level here and select our ad this is where we get to set up the actual ad itself first thing i'm doing is selecting my facebook page and then selecting my instagram account next i'm going to scroll down here and i'm going to use our video so i'm going to go add media add video and i'm going to choose my brand new ad here click continue and you can see in the preview our ad appears so i've got the in shot branding there in shot is just as a side note it's like 20 bucks for a full year of access to that so um i was using the free version in this example but i just generally use the premium version which doesn't have the watermark so just as a heads up there in case you looking at that okay enter a url so i'm just going to go okay so you can see we've got our preview our ad is playing i've entered the url so when people swipe up that's where they're going to go we actually don't need to enter anything in the primary text here because there is no text on these ads okay so we don't need to enter that all we need to do now is go down we don't need a display link now this little call to action button we can change that's what appears right down here at the bottom of the ad it says learn more in white so if i change that and let's say something like sign up you can see that now changes to sign up i generally generally run with learn more okay just make sure you've got your pixel and conversion tracking turned on here and that's it you've got your instagram stories ad ready to go but this one is our video now we're going to create our image ad so i'm going to just uh go here i'm actually going to just duplicate this ad okay hit duplicate i'm going to change the name call it image clear videos i'm going to add media add an image and i'm going to select my image so you'll remember we created this image earlier centered across and now we've got our image ad that's literally all we need to do so that's how our image will look a couple of things to note with both of these uh just make sure that things like the learn more down here aren't covered you can see i deliberately left space so that when facebook or instagram automatically overlays to learn more here that's not covered up so one thing to note another thing to note here is that up here where your page is listed just make sure you know that's readable as well which it is in this case and you're good to go really not too much there to take a look at okay so now you've got an instagram stories video ad and an instagram stories image ad all set up and ready to go literally all you need to do is hit review and publish and you're away but the last thing i want to show you is my favorite which is the instagram stories carousel i mentioned this at the start of the video as being my favorite type to run and the highest performing ads that we generally run on instagram stories so here's how you set one up it's really really simple really easy what i'm going to do is i'm going to start by duplicating my existing video ad you can create a new ad if you want it's just quicker and easier for me to duplicate and of course i'm going to rename it as i always do now i'm going to scroll down a little bit and you can see here i've got my format and i can choose how i'd like to structure my ad at the moment it's set to single image but i'm going to select carousel now now you scroll down and it's automatically created these carousel cards i've got one two three different carousel cards that facebook ad manager has just created for me automatically now i'm going to actually clean these up and set up my video so they all run one after the other if i click the edit button next to this card you can see it says select image and the same for this one and the same for this one but we want videos so i'm actually going to remove this bottom one and you always need at least two cards in a carousel so it actually won't let me delete anymore so what i'll do is i'll add media and i'll add a video it says review error in card three nothing to worry about at this point card one and two images so we're going to delete those afterwards so i'm going to go to card three i'm going to select my video and i've got one here but i can use it as an example this is part one let's upload that i'm going to add media i'm going to add a video and in this one i'm going to select my video i'm going to choose part 2. i'm going to add media again add a video and this one it's going to be part 3. now i'm going to delete these two which are our images that we never wanted great now i've got part one part two and part three and they all run one after the other really really nicely now if you click on each card it's important here to add the correct url for each one so you don't need a headline or a description because as you know there's nowhere for those to display but we do need a url and generally you're going to send to the same place so make sure your url is correct in each of those cards if you're sending to different ones at different times make sure you do that now you do have this you've got show a fixed number of cards it says three cards will be shown before the option to expand or two for two card carousels this may increase your cost per result when not selected the number of cards varies to optimize for performance now what this is telling you is over here on the preview you can see it says andrew hubbard and then it says expand story and it's just showing one video there now what will happen here is it will show this first piece and if people don't click expand stories in this case it will flip to the next instagram story it won't show my full carousel if i take show a fix number of cards now you can see at the top here it's got three different sections just like an organic story carousel or an organic set of stories that someone posts and it shows one after the other that's what we want so we want to click show a fixed number of cards and that is going to ensure that it will always play out three different videos one after the other so it looks like one big long video you can see that's happening now in the example now automatically show the best performing cards first because this is one long 45 second video that i've split into three sections i do not want to automatically show the best performing cards first because what that will do is that will jumble them out of order and then my video won't make sense same as add a card to the end with your profile picture i don't want to do that either that's because what it simply does is it just tacks a card on the end let me tick that oh i can't actually yes i can uh it just tacks a card on the end and what that will do is that just kind of makes it a little bit too ad looking for my liking so i don't like to do that all right add the url and now it's just going to display a card at the end with my profile picture but again i don't recommend doing that okay so the c-more url i just like to again put a url in and of course it's the url that you want to go to not just any random url so when people swipe up they will go to that place okay so if we scroll down that's the last thing we do modify our call to action just like with all our other instagram stories ads and select our facebook pixel and we're good to go now you have three different ads you've got your carousel you've got your image and you've got your standard video ad you are ready to go with your instagram stories you've just seen how to create the ads themselves both video and image using some free tools that are available to everybody and using an iphone or an android device or whatever phone you've got to record them so it's really quick and easy to do really easy to set these up and start running them you can start running five dollars a day ten dollars a day depending on how you want to get started but again instagram stories ads are a fantastic way to get into paid traffic for yourself okay so you've just seen how to set up your own instagram stories ads from start to finish you've seen how to create the images and videos themselves and how to set them up in the ad manager these are a fantastic way to grow your business using paid traffic so if you like this video please give it a like that's all i ask that helps me grow the channel it tells me that you enjoy the content and it lets me know that i should create more content like it and if you want to hear from me whenever i release a new video click the subscribe button and click that little bell to get notified whenever i do release a video okay thanks again for watching appreciate you and i'll talk to you soon bye viewers whoops you want to learn how to grow your business with instagram ads my name's andrew hubbard i'm the founder of humber digital and instagram agency wanna learn how to grow your business with instagram ads after spending