Instagram ads?
James Puckett
Posts: 1,998
Does anybody have experience paying for advertising on Instagram? I’m not opposed to paying for ads; Facebook does spend billions of dollars keeping Instagram running. But I’d rather not throw a thousand dollars at Instagram if nobody who sees the ads buys type.
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I tried it recently, paid about $50 to get my posts shown to a couple thousand people for a week. It got me a few dozen followers, but I don’t think any of it resulted in sales. All in all, it didn’t seem worth it to me—instagram is a dying platform anyway.5
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since our customers are mostly businesses and since instagram is owned by facebook and everyone hates them (with good reason) I was thinking of doing linkedin adds.1
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I've been doing pretty well just posting on IG. I've heard that people's accounts have tanked after they promoted a post. (They want you to keep throwing money at it, surprise, surprise).
So if Instagram is dying, what's the next big thing I should be chasing? I don't really need to be where the cool kids are, because they generally don't have two bits to rub together
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TikTok perhaps.
So if Instagram is dying, what's the next big thing I should be chasing?
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When I look at these advertising platforms in terms of conversion probability, it doesn't make sense to me to advertise on a device on which you can't download, install or properly preview fonts. If someone's on a phone, scrolling through Instagram and they see an ad for a font they like, there's not much they can do about until they get to a computer. Sure, it's possible to buy a font from a phone but I don't think that happens often. If that same person sees an ad while they're at the computer, they might look closer and download, and install the demo version. They can test in in their application of choice. Maybe they'll check out the web font performance at monitor size. I know there's more to ads than merely conversions but if I put in $X I want to get more than $0 back in sales.6
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I think there are a lot of assumptions here to unpack.
First, we're not selling sneakers. And, at least for me, our actual customers are large businesses that make decisions slowly. So, conversions are essentially untraceable.
I generally think that the value of any marketing we do is to remind people we exist, to reassure people that we are stable and will maintain our software, to accumulate good will, and to have enough of a brand presence that we have a clear stake to our products if we have to go up against a pirate or license violator.
That last one deserves a little unpacking. I've helped a bunch of people with license violations and I'm always shocked by how much more trouble they have getting big companies to return their emails and to negotiate. I eventually realised it's because it's hard to tell that they actually are the creator of the given font. Darden Studio, in large part because our library is small but not exclusively, has never had that problem. As I grow our library and publish fonts by people other than Josh it's important to keep up the presence. I've also been told by lawyers that showing you have made a marketing investment in your brand and your trademarks can be important if you ever have to go to court.
I agree that Tiktok is for the cool kids but I think that it's a mistake to blow off cool kids because they don't have money right now. I do think that cool kids can have influence over font branding choices (though indirectly) and, of course, some of them will be important design directors in five years. I'd be on Tiktok myself if I thought we had any cool kid appeal, but we just don't. That's a decision for each foundry to make based on its customer base.
Hence my current interest in Linkedin. It's an experiment and I don't know if it will work. Linkedin now makes it very hard to grow a following quickly and I'm behind (having only just started the business page this week). If you have a linkedin account and feel like doing me a sold please follow the studio.6 -
The cost of getting somebody to look at your web page via an ad on Instagram varies from approximately $0.35 to $2.00.5
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Linkedin is weird. It started as a platform primarily for individuals and focused on the job market: a way for people who actually knew each other, mostly through work, to recommend each other to potential new employers. And the whole concept of ‘following’ or establishing contacts through Linkedin has remained different from that in a typical social media platform like Twitter or Instagram. In all the years I have been on Linkedin, I have never invited anyone to be a contact, and I have mostly, until recently, only accepted invitations from people whom I actually know. From conversations with other people who have been on the platform for a long time, I think quite a lot of people have treated it the same way. I suspect newer members may be more likely to use it like the social media platform it is clearly now trying to be.0
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@John Hudson that was how I treated it at first too. But maybe about six years ago I realised it was starting to function as a yellow pages. If someone sent me an email inquiry and didn't give their job title I could usually find it on Linkedin, and I noticed other people looking me up the same way.
That was when i started to take it more seriously because I wanted to look proffessional. Though, I remember at the time that when people noticed my activity they would ask if I was job hunting. In the last couple years I've seen more use of it by people who are trying to be thought leaders in their own industry, posting articles or faqs or whatever.
But yeah, I think it's starting to pivot to being more traditional social media, but still work focused. That makes a lot of sense to me in a pandemic era.
The idea of using it to promote Darden Studio started as a joke. I was talking to James Edmondson about how our clients are businesses and not the cool kids and he literally said "you should be on linkedin". He was just taking the piss, but over time Quinn and I started to think it might actually be possible to do it in a fun way. I've been slowed down by fonts not being a product category, but we shall see.1 -
Have you written to their staff about it? They might just decide to create a categoryJoyceKetterer said:I've been slowed down by fonts not being a product category, but we shall see.
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A couple of years back TypeNetwork decided that LinkedIn was the platform for them, and have focussed almost completely on it. I like what they've done there.
https://www.linkedin.com/company/type-network/posts/
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@Vasil Stanev yes. I did0
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@Miles Newlyn are you sure? TN has 216 followers on Linkedin. I've been doing this about a week and Darden Studio already has 64 followers. I'm not saying it's easy to get followers but I'd expect a company of their size, if they were putting all their social media energy there for 2+ years, to have way more followers than that. Especially given that Linkedin only recently tightened the rules about how many invitations to follow you can send in a month.1
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Who knows. But I wasn't talking about Instagram. I'm simply speculating that if a company of TN'S size is putting any energy at all into any platform for more than a few years 216 followers is very low. So, I was questioning your information
So far I've barely posted. All I'm doing is one to one outreach. Using my own mailing list to send invitations to follow, which is the obvious first step0 -
I'm saying that TN hasn't done well on IG, and this also looks to be true on LinkedIn. It's a pity, perhaps wrong strategies on both platforms. So, despite effort and time (size is irrelevant) you can still loose. What is important is strategy.0
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I believe that IG is the wrong audience but with regards to linkedin this number is so small as to suggest no effort. Any effort at all should be better than 216.0
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PS- size tends to lead to a bigger contact list, which is what one uses at first to establish yourself on any social media0
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I empathize with those who use look to Instagram to reach an audience: Of all the social networks it has the most active following in the creative fields. But it won't be on top for long. TikTok already has the momentum, and something else will in turn take its place. Also, IG’s linking policy is the antithesis of the open web. Letterform Archive has 120k more followers on IG than Twitter, yet a tweet with the same content as an IG post often generates more traffic to our site. With the rare exceptions of story stickers and bio links, IG has trained users to never leave the app, and that isn’t good for anyone but Facebook. Put your time and money elsewhere.10
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Great insights above.
As a user/buyer of type I often get inspiration from IG, but I try to disregard the ads even if FB tries to disguise them as much as possible. I have made a few purchases of fonts that were directly influenced by IG but I’m pretty sure those were regular posts rather than ads. And, mostly, motivated by compelling images of well designed materials using the typefaces.
With all this, combined with the general aversion to the parent company, I would advise to treat IG as a way to showcase your work/company rather than to drive sales -- if you are inclined to buy ads, treat them as a way to increase your presence rather than to pitch product.0 -
TN has over 50 posts all with well designed visuals - considerable effort. What do you mean by 'Any effort at all should be better than 216'? Do you mean that LinkedIn isn't working as it should, or what?JoyceKetterer said:Any effort at all should be better than 216.0 -
I see whatever advertising I do now as "branding".
There was a time in 2008-2010, just after the recession started, when a lot of big businesses stepped away from pay-per-click advertising. Google AdWords became dirt cheap, and there were few restrictions. I made a bunch of display ads and proceeded to drown my website in traffic. It was glorious. I paid somewhere around 40,000/year to Google, but it was well worth it. Alas, that golden age didn't last long. Online advertising in general got out of hand. Soon the backlash started, adblockers came on the scene, and everything went south. Google started pushing targeted advertising, which narrowed my audience and placement choices extremely.
As a result I had to fine-tune my campaigns until they were only shown to people who already had my fonts. Sales dropped precipitously, costs rose to unsustainable levels.
I've pretty much abandoned AdWords altogether. It's unfortunate, but I see how it came to be this way. Few things irritate me more than online ads
So now I'm trying to establish category authority and brand awareness through social media. It's a lot more effort, and the results are not anywhere near as fantastic as AdWords used to be, but eh, it's getting the job done.6 -
I am a big fan of social media, but I have to be honest: I don’t want to “follow” a company’s profile on social media platforms. Surely I often do, especially when I work for an entity that has such profiles, but when it comes to places like LinkedIn and Facebook, I try my best to only follow people – as in, specific individuals – rather than companies/organizations/clubs etc. I don’t think there is a lot behind the argument that social media is great for society, the world, etc., but I started using it when it started, and that was to connect with specific people (friends, colleagues, etc.). Like most social media users, I don’t click on ads and I don’t like to feel that I’m being marketed to.2
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I quite agree. That's why I'm injecting a good amount of personal stuff in my IG posts. Yes, I want to get the word out, but I also want people to know there's a person behind it all. So follow me, and, in addition to my work, you'll learn about the joys of boarding dogs, metal detecting, strange books, New England, and more 😄 @the.walden.font.co
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