Instagram Stories have recently become one of the most popular additions to any social media platform, with over 300 million daily active users. While Stories are currently mainly used for regular social media sharing, businesses on Instagram have now begun tapping into this new source of creative marketing. In fact, half of these businesses create at least one story per month.
Creating Stories for a business can be tricky though, as can the process of getting used to the verticals and how to best share your media in an appealing way.
Fortunately, Facebook recently researched what users who view Instagram Stories ads respond best to and broke it down into 5 central considerations.
These are:
1. Relevance
On average, relevant ads which were able to capture the viewer’s attention, were easy to follow and fit the brand, performed better than ads with less relevance to the brand.
2. Time
Top performing Stories ads were found to be shorter and promoted the brand earlier on, than lower performing ads.
3. Fast Pace
In the case of Stories ads that contained multiple scenes, the ads with shorter spans performed better.
4. Product Demos
While only half of the Instagram Stories used for the research utilised product demos, these ads performed better on all key metrics.
5. Mobile Optimised
Even though almost half of the ads tested had been built expressly for Instagram, most did not make it into the top performing ads. This was because the ad message was not revealed upfront and the scenes were longer than top performing ads’ scenes were.
The common theme here seems to be similar to the recommended regulations for videos, as Faceboook so succinctly put it:
“The earlier you can place your brand and the clearer you make your message, the better.”
Meaning, keeping it short and clear with an early introduction to the brand is key.
Try it out and see how you can optimise your Instagram Stories for maximum engagement and all the benefits that follow.
