Storytelling through Instagram Ads: How to register in minds of potential customers?

Saajan Jain, founder of Growthpep, lists the various formats of Instagram ads and how they can enable a brand in telling its story.

Performance marketing prior to 2021 was all about how to win the auction over competitors by doing niche targeting and bidding, beating the Facebook algorithm and getting our ad in front of a potential customer. 

This doesn't hold true anymore.  

Performance marketing platforms like Facebook and Google are moving towards automated targeting options with quite limited controls for the brand to advertise. The new iOS privacy update by Apple (users on iOS 14 and above can opt-out of Facebook ads) has made things troublesome for advertisers leading to a drop in their potential customer base. How does a brand sell then?

Storytelling

Storytelling is not a buzzword anymore.  As your potential customer is being targeted by more than a hundred other brands, your ad needs to stand out when you are advertising through social media channels, especially Instagram which is the most powerful channel for Gen Z. Even Instagram rewards a better-looking ad or a video over a shabby ad when targeted to the same user. 

If you are an Indian D2C brand selling your products through Instagram, you should know that India has the highest Instagram users in the world and its user base is growing at 16% quarter on quarter. Also, it's a great discovery tool. Almost 50% of people use it for discovering new products, services and brands. 

Hence, a brand needs to start thinking of how better they will do storytelling than their counterparts,, especially, via Instagram ads in turn leading to growing customers. Here are some basic pointers:

1) User-Generated Content

User-generated content is content created by users which might include influencers or your loyal customers. An ad endorsed by one of their customers,  or a well-known founder in the community who himself is a user of that brand advocates trust-building for the potential viewer. UGC is the central part of the creative strategy of Instagram ads for almost every consumer brand out there. UGC's act as a great way to do storytelling as here the 'user' who is telling a story matters more than the story itself. A skincare influencer with 100k+ followers talking about using a sunscreen lotion of a new brand can get a lot of new eyeballs for that brand. Ultrahuman in its series of ads have done this wonderfully well by taking startup founders who are their users as well and getting their story out of how their product helps them run the day.

2) Being 1on1

If you are on Instagram and active, you must have seen the viral  Owl ad. Not sure how successful it was in getting conversions but it did go viral. The ad was quite interesting as if they were talking to 'you' personally and mentioning that they spent X amount of money to show you the ad, please go ahead and click on 'shop now'. This can be a great tactic to break from the clutter as the brand is accepting without any guilt that they want to grow sales hence we are showing you ads. This is something you can definitely test with your products or category on Instagram. 

3) Founders  First

Gone are the days when only the product was the king in the ad. Nowadays, many startups have their founders straight-up talking about their products.  Truth Foods did this often wherein CEO Shashank Mehta used to appear on all their ads and how can we forget The Trivago Guy. Abhinav Kumar was the country head of Trivago & used to come in all the TV, print and digital ads. This type of creative strategy works great when you want to let the users know about leading from the front. Also, it builds a good brand recall as users start associating the brand with the face of the brand which in the case is the leadership team or founders.

4) Instagram Reels

Instagram with reels feature has become quite powerful when it comes to building excitement with the users & also being the real trendsetter. People are discovering new music, trends & creative hacks through Instagram reels. Brands have started taking this placement seriously as it gives the highest views as compared to other placements in the same amount. If you as a brand are not producing reels & pushing them as sponsored ads, you are missing out on a huge opportunity.

5) Use Case

Easiest and smartest way to get the best creative ad across is to explain the use case of the product. There are some product categories wherein you can build excitement among users by showing use cases like food & beverages. Master Chow as a brand does a fantastic job in showing how to use their sauces and noodles by launching recipe videos of the particular products. This is actually needed if you are trying to build a new category which didn't exist till now for the market. Hence, showing the use case in the ad helps with awareness + conversions both.

Credibility:

Solving for credibility should be the brand's core purpose when advertising across all mediums. Due to the clutter of ads being shown to a single user on an everyday basis, it becomes tougher for a user to trust a brand & they are not going to bet on a brand which is not credible or shows low brand promise. Credibility can be shown in various ways & one of the best ways to show is to walk to talk. Travel brands do this in the best manner. Tripoto's recent Instagram ads showing their users actually showing how to travel within a budget or what are the do’s and don'ts on a backpacking trip builds credibility straight up from the first frame.

Storytelling in itself is not a byproduct of marketing your brand on Instagram but the core purpose of it. In conclusion, the brands need to keep defining what ‘storytelling’ means to them and what purpose it serves in the long run. Just focusing on sales like ads will have a wall which will become difficult to climb once a consumer finds a better competitor who is good at storytelling & they will turn to this competitor for their future loyalty.

Saajan Jain is the founder of Growthpep, a performance marketing agency based in Mumbai.