Irrespective of whether you take photos for a creative or professional pursuit, Instagram is one of the greatest social media tools to be on. Ideal for amateur and experienced photographers, it is the best place for photographers to promote their work. Instagram is a visual social media app and, therefore, a compelling form to showcase your work, meet other photographers, find possible clients, and give and receive feedback to improve your practice.
However, as an experienced photographer, posting your work on your regular Instagram feed or Stories isn’t enough. The Instagram algorithm is programmed to give you access to only part of your followers organically. This means you can only reach a tiny segment of your audience.
How do you fix this to reach a larger segment? That’s where Instagram ads come into play. Adding advertisements into the mix of your marketing strategy can help you get eyes on your work, which can later turn into potential clients.
Here’s how to use Instagram ads to promote your photography business.
Keep your imagery consistent
Consistency in visual tone helps users know what your photography style is on social media. That means sticking to a similar subject, using a familiar color palette, using a consistent editing style, and more.
Post as consistently as you can
Another great thing to do is maintain posting consistently on social media. If you are strapped for time, you can use a third-party tool like SocialPilot. Instagram growth tools like SocialPilot meets all of your needs right from scheduling posts or reels, syncing with your drives, in-app image editing, and so much more. Similar to your Instagram feed’s consistency, your ads, too, should be consistent. Your posts and ads should reflect what your customers want most.
While all images cannot be the same and are bound to have some miscellany here and there, the general aesthetic needs to be consistent. Advertisements that stick to your brand aesthetic honestly represent your brand, and this, in turn, provides better results.
Choose an Ad objective
Select your Instagram ad objective based on your business goals.
Brand Awareness: If you’re looking for people to get familiar with your work or want your brand noticed by potential customers, then you run a brand awareness campaign. This helps more people see your work without committing to anything else.
Website clicks: If you’re keen on having customers check out your website and you are not just looking for customer engagement, then sending them to your attractive portfolio website is the right way to woo them.
Lead Generation: A lead generation campaign can help you grow your customer base by targeting potential clients. You can create an in-built form from Meta and customize it to ask clients for details such as what kind of services or shoots they would like from you, what price range they’re comfortable with, contact details, and more.
Instagram Ad Manager also has a dedicated section that navigates how you can choose an ad type or objective. You can find this by clicking the “Help: Choosing an Objective”.
Showcase your work through an ad
When using an advertisement to represent your business, you need to show your audience as much as possible in the shortest tie frame. While you could opt for your best-selling photo, remember that all audiences don’t think the same way. So choosing carousel ads, affiliate videos, or reels to showcase your work helps people explore more of your work style.
A carousel ad allows you to include several images in a single ad, allowing your audience to can scroll through them and get a wholesome perspective of your work. With carousel ads, you can feature the different styles or genres within your photography portfolio.1
You can also showcase the various services you offer – such as photography, editing, themed shoots, and more. If part of your services includes creating presets, then you can showcase before-and-after examples of your presets.
Video ads could include a collage of your work, but you can also use behind-the-scenes footage of you and your team working to show your audience why you’d be the right fit for their shoots.
Target your audience based on lifestyle specifics
Different people use photographers at different intervals in their life. So it makes sense to target them accordingly. If you offer wedding photography services, you can target people in a relationship or engaged. Similarly, you can set your target audience to people that could be mothers for their newborn’s portraits or pet parents.
You can also target people based on their interests, so if people are aspiring models or actors, you can search for targeting, like acting schools, acting classes, modelling tips, etc. Targeting helps you avoid spamming people, and it also keeps your potential audience relevant and in check.
Take advantage of location-specific features
As a photographer, you must be available in a particular city or region to do your job, so using location-specific features for your Instagram ads is important. This helps you reach people that need your services in the city. If you are a photographer who is travelling for a vacation or work and is open to taking on more shoots, you can tweak existing ads to the location where you currently are.
Instagram allows you to narrowly target locations to get more specific than just a state or city. You can also opt for zip codes, street names, etc. Another organic location feature you can make use of is on your posts as geo-tags; this helps people in the area stumble on your work organically. You can also go the extra mile by choosing hashtags that include your location, so for eg your hashtags, if you are a photographer from Los Angeles, can be #losangeles, #losangelesphotograher, #laphotographer
Summing up
Every social media platform has its advantages, but the platform that flaunted itself as being the most photo-centric platform is Instagram. While Instagram’s biggest trend is Instagram reels, the app still encourages photographers and promotes their aesthetic Instagram grids—making it the place to run your photography business ads. With the right photographs, grid, aesthetic ads, and well-calculated ad targeting, you can create the perfect Instagram ads to attract new audiences and customers.
