5-Day Instagram Ads Experiment: Does it Work for Small Accounts?

The issue (and solution):

Earlier this year I quit my job to be a creator and media agency owner.

The ride has been… bumpy. But the one constant has been learning. I’m ALWAYS learning things and I’ve tested A LOT of things around content creation, and paid ads has also become a part of the game.

Why? because my clients also want to how ads are working and where they can see more results. So I feel like it’s my duty to run tests on my own accounts and build my brand, just like they are.

Upon returning to Brazil, my content strategist told me that she’d done a IG boost on her account, and that she saw some pretty interesting results. It was a hiking video that converted into a lot of like-minded folks following her. The only issue is that she wasn’t trying to build that exact audience.

”I think you should know, and maybe test it.” She said.

Gosh. What a woman. You can thank her for the insights over here.

The Strategy:

Our paid vs. organic media strategy is pretty simple:

1. You don’t REALLY know what’s gonna resonate with people when you’re starting out.

2. And you also have to admit that there are a ton of “low-budget” videos that go viral, so it’s not just about making highly-edited, pretty content

3. So your job as a content creator is to TEST and win on QUANTITY, given that QUALITY is subjective.

4. With that in mind, you need to create a lot of strategic organic content (i.e. do your research so you’re not reinventing the wheel)

5. Post it all and analyze the videos that are doing well relative to your other post (look for saves, comments, and follows)

6. The content that does well, turn them into ads for your business or boost them in a way to create more engagement.

You can thank Gary Vaynerchuk’s “Day Trading Attention” for this strategy.

Ok, Luís, what was the video you decided to do all this with?

This one: https://www.instagram.com/p/C9vTdEDyhdM/

Let’s talk about the results?

Before and After:

Before

Screenshots taken on July 26h, 2024.

After:

Screenshot taken on Aug 14th, 2024

About the Ad:

Overview:

I put 25 USD for 5 days and let meta decide who to show the video to.

Lessons:

• I have a sense IG knows exactly who should be watching my videos

• They also decided to push my video mostly to Brazilians, probably because I had a following split that favored that… From a business standpoint, I can see why they’d try to push it more that route. Also, I believe it’s cheaper for them to show it to Brazilians, but I don’t have hard data to prove that.

Details:

What was the actual Growth?

Per my IG’s stats, I grew about 297 overall followers, assuming I spent the 25 bucks, that puts us at 11.88 followers per dollar, which mean means about 84 USD to get 1,000 followers.

Again, these were people engaging with the content (like, share, comment, save) and then following and sometimes engaging with me via DMs.

Conclusion:

What do I think?

• TOTALLY worth it. In fact, I decided to message every single person who followed me, and it worked quite well. No, I didn’t automated that (I just had a sample message I’d adjust for each person). Not everybody responded but the ones that did seemed really excited about it. This is probably a good insight for anyone trying to grow a community (learning this from the “Superfans” book)

• I later ran the a similar ad for just U.S. viewers, and my results were much lower (I think about 80 followers). I think I’m gonna run another test and let IG show whoever they think best, but within the US or other English-speaking countries)

• My account more than doubled, and with some very engaged folks.

Do I think you should do this yourself?

• Well, if you’re over here thinking about it… maybe? I was going through the same situation and now I’m glad I have this experience. I’m glad I did it.

You should know:

These posts of mine are always a combination of Minimalism, Time Management, Effective Learning, Philosophical Introspection and a ton of insights on growing my business.

Sounds confusing? You’ll get used to it and you’ll probably enjoy the “confusion” too hahah

Take care, thanks for spending some of your time with me.

Best, LP