There are three things you need to know if you want to create effective, high-converting, and profitable Instagram ads. First, you need to be using the right kind of ad format. You see, Instagram has changed a lot over the past few months, and there's one kind of ad format that's working better than pretty much any other kind of Instagram ad right now. If you choose the wrong ad format, or worse, just go along with the default settings and leave it up to Instagram to decide where to show your ad, it doesn't matter how smart or funny or creative your Instagram ads are—they're just not gonna work.
Next, you need to script your ad in a very specific way, known as P-A-S-O (or PASO). This is going to hook your viewer right from the start, keep them engaged throughout your ad, and get them to take action at the end. But don't worry if you've never heard of this before; most people haven't. So, I'm going to show you exactly what it means and how you can incorporate it into your Instagram ads.
Lastly, you need to use something called sequencing. Sequencing is an advertising strategy that not a lot of people know about, but it's been proven to increase your ad's consumption by 87% and the amount of conversions you get by 56% or more. Understanding how sequencing works won't just make your Instagram ads more effective, but you'll see how you can apply this to any and all marketing and advertising you create from today forward. Sequencing really is the closest thing to a marketing magic bullet. So, let me show you how it's done starting with the all-important ad format.
Fun fact: You probably already knew this, but Instagram is no longer a photo-sharing app. Now, they're all about that video life. The head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, said this last year, but they backed it up by changing the algorithm and pretty much wiping out any hopes of organic reach from photos and replacing everybody's feeds with video. But not just any kinds of videos—a very specific and very familiar looking kind of video known as the Instagram Reel: a short-form vertical video with all the makings of its competitor TikTok. In fact, it's pretty obvious that Instagram Reels is a direct copy of TikTok. But all is fair in love and war, and this is war. Anyway, I guess Instagram figured if you can't beat TikTok, you might as well join them, or at least copy exactly what they're doing. And so, Instagram hopped on the TikTok bandwagon, essentially leveraging the popularity of this new format and did everything they could to get their existing users to adopt this new Reels feature.
Now, this next part's worth paying extra attention to because it's going to serve you for many years to come. Anytime an app like Instagram or Facebook or TikTok or whatever launches a new feature, they give that feature a bit of a head start, a little extra push, and some algorithmic support in order to try to get it to catch on a little faster. Essentially, the way it works is that they reward the creators and advertisers who use their new features by giving them a disproportionate amount of new reach in order to help them get this new feature in front of as many people as possible. And that's what happened with Reels, exactly like what happened with Lives and Stories and Carousels and, well, anything and everything they ever launched. This is why while you want to be careful to not chase after too many different shiny objects, you also want to be able to capitalize on new trends because they often offer these massive first-mover advantages to the people that adopt those early technologies and early tools.
Long story short: people like Reels, and Instagram wants you to use Reels. And not just organically either, but as a powerful advertising tool that right now is getting better results than pretty much any other placement on Instagram. You can safely test out story placements alongside your Reels placements with just the click of a button. Creating an Instagram Reels-only ad is really pretty simple.
Now, if this is your first Instagram ad ever, then it's important to understand that Facebook owns Instagram, so the way that you create Instagram ads is actually through the Facebook Ads Manager. So, in order to run Instagram ads, the first thing you need to do is sign up for a Facebook Ads Manager account. Once that's done, you're pretty much off to the races. To set up an Instagram Reels ad, all you need to do is first log into your Facebook Ads Manager account and once inside, choose your objective and targeting options (I'll talk about that more in just a minute), and then choose manual placements and select Reels. You can upload an existing Reel that you already have, or you can create a brand new Reel from scratch, which is usually what I recommend. This is because when you're upgrading your marketing strategy from free organic traffic to paid online advertising and real money is on the line, you want to make sure that you're doing everything in your power to optimize this ad for the highest likelihood of success.
Okay, next up, let's talk about how to script your ad for maximum impact because make no mistake, the advertisers that are getting the best results with their Instagram ads right now are thoughtful and strategic and very careful about what they say and how they're saying it. If you're the kind of person who's comfortable just getting in front of the camera, hitting record, and trying to nail it in your first shot, that's awesome; you have a gift, my friend. Most people, though, myself included, are gonna benefit by just a little bit of prep work and some planning to make sure that we say the right things in the right way at the right time.
In fact, even after having created thousands of ads over the past 10 years for brands and businesses of all shapes and sizes, I still spend most of my advertising time on writing and editing my ads in order to make them as powerful and impactful as possible. And over the years, I've found that whenever I get stuck or just can't seem to get inspired or come up with anything new, all I need to do is go back to one of my favorite copywriting frameworks of all time: PASO. So let me show you what that looks like.
Now, PASO stands for Pain, Agitate, Solution, and Outcome. This is a proven formula because it gets right to the core of what's really important with your message, which is your customer and their problems. You then agitate the problem by showing them just how bad it is before moving on to the solution—your solution—and then wrapping it all up with the outcome and the results that they'll experience. Now, obviously, you're going to want to jazz it up just a little bit more and make it specific to your business and your market and your industry. But to show you what this might look like in the real world, here's an example of a grizzly bear self-defense course known as Bear Jitsu: a popular and practical martial art up here in Canada.
Now that we've got that covered, next, let's talk about sequencing, a strategy that's been proven to increase the consumption of your ads by 87% and your conversions by 56% or more. There was a US-based advertising research study done by Adaptly, Facebook, and Refinery29. Their goal was to try to find out what advertising strategy worked best. Option A was to create a single ad with a single call to action, essentially one ad, one call to action, which is pretty standard in how most people do their advertising. Option B, on the other hand, was to guide the customer through a marketing funnel and a series of sequential steps—each ad, each step, each part of the sequence continuing to build up more of that ever-important know-like-and-trust factor in order to get someone to take action at the end.
The results, as you probably already guessed, is that option B: the sequencing option won by a lot, and as I've said a couple of times before, led to an increase in the consumption of the content of the ad by 87% and an overall conversion boost by 56%. These are big numbers, and this is a huge improvement.
So, here's what this means in a more practical and actionable sense: when you create an Instagram ad, you could just do what most people do, which is create a single ad and then launch it out to the world and hope for the best. Now, if you follow everything that I've told you up until this point, you're still going to do better than 90% of other advertisers out there. But if you really want to take your results to the next level, then you need to think less in terms of ads and more in terms of campaigns, which are a strategic series, a sequence of events, a marketing funnel, a customer journey—something that guides your customer all the way through the process from having no idea who you are, ending up at the other end where they're buying from you or doing business with you in some way.
Here's what that process looks like using two different ads: for your first ad, you want to script it out using the PASO framework I shared with you earlier. Aim for around 120 to 140 words, which should enable you to make it through all of the points in less than 60 seconds. The goal of this ad is to provide as much value as possible to your target audience; that's it. Then, run this reel as an ad with the video views objective. You can start with a budget of 5 bucks per day, and if you want faster results and faster feedback, you can increase this. Once that's done and it's been running for a day or two, create a custom audience based off people who watched three seconds of your reel. Then, create another ad, follow the same PASO framework, but this time, put a clear call to action at the end that promotes your offer—whatever it is that you're selling.
Q: How do I choose the right ad format for Instagram ads?
A: You need to be using the right kind of ad format that works better than any other kind of Instagram ad right now.
Q: What is the PASO formula for crafting an effective ad script?
A: It stands for Pain, Agitate, Solution, and Outcome. It hooks the viewer, keeps them engaged, and gets them to take action.
Q: What is the benefit of utilizing sequencing in ad performance?
A: It has been proven to increase ad consumption by 87% and the amount of conversions by 56% or more.
Q: How can I transition to video content using Instagram Reels?
A: Instagram is now focusing on video content, especially Instagram Reels which are short-form vertical videos similar to TikTok.
Q: How do new features on Instagram enhance reach?
A: New features are given algorithmic support to push them to catch on faster and offer new reach opportunities for creators and advertisers.
Q: How can I create an Instagram Reels ad?
A: You can set up an Instagram Reels ad through Facebook Ads Manager by choosing manual placements and selecting Reels.
Q: What is the importance of the PASO framework for ad copy?
A: The PASO framework helps script ads for maximum impact by focusing on the customer's problems, the solution, and the desired outcome.
Q: What is the strategy behind implementing sequencing for ad success?
A: Sequencing guides customers through a series of steps to build trust and increase conversions, resulting in better ad performance.
Q: How do sequential steps enhance ad results?
A: Utilizing sequential steps involves running multiple ads using the PASO framework to provide value and promote offers to the target audience.
