5 Steps To Run Instagram Follower Ads + 6 Best Tips (2025)

Looking to run Instagram follower ads? You have been in the right place! This guide covers all the basic steps and practical tips to build your influence with real and valuable Instagram followers. It also helps you understand the reasons and estimate the real cost of running Instagram ads to boost followers.

Why Should You Run Instagram Follower Ads In 2025?

So why run Instagram follower ads? Why is the follower count important on Instagram? Here are some important reasons to run Instagram ads to get followers.

Get more organic reach

The more followers on Instagram, the more free reach you can get through organic posts.

For businesses, more reach means more engagement, more traffic, and ultimately more sales.

For creators, more reach means more money you can make with affiliate marketing or content monetization. 

Importantly, these followers can be retained for the long term, while the audience you reach through paid ads might not see your posts anymore if you stop spending.

Improve purchase intention and brand trust

The more followers you have, the more credibility and authority on Instagram you get.

Although people won’t see the number of followers on your Instagram profile on the feed, many, including myself, have a habit of checking it before purchasing. 

Research pointed out that consumers have a higher purchase intention and trust for brands with a large number of Instagram followers (Dias, R., Martinez, L. F., & Martinez, L. M., 2021).

And it’s simple to understand, right? 

Followers express loyalty. Potential customers regard a brand with bigger followers as more legitimate and established, so they are much more inclined to open their wallets.

Enhance impact and collaboration opportunities

If you are a creator on Instagram, more followers can enhance your impact as an Instagram influencer. As a result, you can get more collaboration opportunities with brands.

Build a valuable source for retargeting and lookalike audience

Retargeting ads are typically cheaper, but to do retargeting, you must have some data first. And Instagram followers can be a valuable data source to employ.

The more followers you get, the larger the custom audience base becomes. You can also leverage custom audiences to create lookalike audiences and reach more potential consumers for future advertising campaigns.

What Are Benchmarks For Instagram Follower Ads (2025)

So what are the benchmarks for Instagram follower ads? First, let’s take a peek at the current benchmarks of Instagram ads in general.

Data from Instagram shows that for an Instagram follow campaign with a $2 daily budget, the estimated daily reach ranges from 140 to 380. So the CPM can fall between $5.2 and $14.3.

The real cost of your Instagram follower ads, however, mainly depends on how compelling your content is. By optimizing ad content, you can make the most of your budget and get better results.

Tip: Obtain a Facebook ad account for rent to optimize ad metrics like CPM and CPC and lower Instagram ad costs.

How To Run Successful Instagram Follower Ads In 2025?

There are 5 fundamental steps you should take to run Instagram follower ads and grow your brand successfully. 

Step 1: Find your target audience

Don’t waste money promoting your brand to people who are not interested in your product or service. By finding the correct target audience, you can make highly relevant ads for the right people, increase the click-through and follower rate, and optimize ad costs.

Here are some tips to find the perfect target audience for your campaign.

Use detailed targeting

Leverage Meta’s detailed targeting options to find people who may want to follow. Consider your product, service, or content to find your potential followers based on demographics, interests, or behaviors. For example, a sports shoe brand can target people who like Sports and outdoors / Fitness and wellness / Shopping and fashion. Combine different targeting options to get the most relevant audiences.

Make use of your Facebook followers

Because Facebook and Instagram are under the same umbrella of Meta, you can easily promote your Instagram profile to Facebook followers by creating a custom audience group using your Facebook page as a source.

Then select Accounts Center accounts who currently like or follow your Page. Remember to exclude people who currently follow your Instagram profile.

Consider lookalike audiences

If you have a certain number of followers on Instagram, you can create a lookalike audience group to target people who are the most similar to your current followers. It’s a great strategy to grow your followers.

Unfortunately, you won’t be able to use lookalike audiences if you don’t have at least 100 followers from a single country in your Instagram profile. 

Here is how to create a lookalike audience group:

Go to Ads Manager > Audience > Create audience > Custom audience > Instagram account. Then click Next.

Select Accounts Center accounts who started following this professional account. Name your new custom audience group. For instance, here, I’m naming it test-instagram-followers. Then click Create Audience.

Click Create audience > Lookalike audience > Select your lookalike source. Select the location and audience size > Create audience.

Step 2: Identify top-performing organic posts

To get more followers with Instagram ads, use top-performing organic posts, which have the most likes, comments, and shares, for your ad creative. Make sure these posts are not outdated and align with your brand. 

Based on these posts, you can create fresh content with the same concept to avoid ad fatigue.

While you can boost organic Instagram posts directly without a Facebook page, I recommend launching ads in Ads Manager to centralize all data and make use of custom and lookalike audiences.

Step 3: Run traffic ads for Instagram profile visits

Now, I will guide you to launch Instagram follower ads in Ads Manager. 

First, go to Ads Manager > Campaigns > Create.

Select Traffic for the campaign objective, it’s good for Instagram profile visits and will optimize ad delivery for your results.

Keep setting up the campaign as normal. I will only focus on the different points for Instagram follower ads. 

In the Ad set level, select Instagram profile as the conversion location. So when people click your ad, it will drive them to your Instagram profile. 

In the Advantage+ audience section, search the previously saved audience group (in Step 1) under Custom audiences, like the following screenshot. 

In the Ad level, select the Facebook page and the connected Instagram business/creator account.

Now with the ad creative, you can use one of the top-performing organic posts identified in Step 2. Set the CTA button as Visit Instagram Profile. 

Step 4: Match your Instagram profile to the ads

So you have successfully attracted people to your Instagram profile, what’s next? People visit your page but don’t click follow because they find no value in your Instagram profile. 

Let’s say you own a clothing brand and your ads tell people to follow your Instagram profile for fashion tips. There should be daily posts about seasonal outfit ideas, the dos and don’ts when wearing jackets, how to dress for body types, etc. Give them a reason to follow you. 

Ultimately, organic content rules. People on Instagram love fresh, interesting, and relevant content and are more willing to follow pages that post regularly, so continuously feed them with your creativity to retain your followers. 

Step 5: Test, analyze, and optimize

For Instagram ads, you must never stop learning. Run test ads with different ad creatives, audiences, and campaign settings. Analyze key metrics like CTR, CPM, and CPC to know where to adjust or optimize. 

With continuous refinements and efforts, you will be able to find winning Instagram follower ads!

Expert Tips For Instagram Follower Ads In 2025

Apply expert tips from GDT Agency to enhance the effectiveness of your Instagram follower ads.

Think about your audience first

If you want people to follow you, you must think about them, what they need, or what problems they encounter first. Focus on what benefits they can get, not your products’ best features. Help them solve problems and deliver valuable content. For example, if you sell air fryers, share healthy air fryer recipes.

Learn from your mailing list

What techniques have you used to grow your customer mailing list? Free resources, trial products, or limited discounts? Whatever you find effective for your business, you can apply for your Instagram follower ads. 

For example, if you run a local restaurant, think of offering a 20% discount to people who follow you on Instagram. 

Make use of video ads

Video ads often get higher click-through and engagement rates than static image ads. Try to make a good hook to capture more attention. See the list of video concepts below for more content ideas.

Ask them to follow you directly

Don’t be afraid that your intention will chase people away. Be direct, honest, and transparent. Ask them to follow by proving the value. Let them know what benefits they can get from following you. Use a strong call-to-action to increase the desired action. 

We have discovered that one of the most effective CTAs is the one on high-performing video ads that reads: Follow us on Instagram for more content like this.

Communicate with your audience

The advantage of Instagram is that consumers can interact with businesses on a personal level. This allows brands to build emotional connections, deliver better customer services, and create strong customer loyalty (Siregar. N, Nursyamsi S.E., Algellia F., Hamboer M. J. E., 2023).

Thus, don’t waste any opportunities to communicate with your customers. Try to reply to all customer comments and messages to make them happy and build brand loyalty. They may introduce you to their friends and families. That’s the power of word-of-mouth marketing. 

Take up popular trends on Reels or TikTok

Keep up with the latest trends on Instagram Reels or TikTok and apply suitable trends for your advertising campaigns and organic posts. 

>>> You may also be interested in: Content Tactics For Bra Ads On Instagram

Bottom Line

If you’ve read this article thoroughly till the end, then running effective Instagram follower ads should be no problem for you. To learn more about Instagram ads in particular and Meta ads in general, you can visit our blog. There are plenty of tips and guides to run ads for different industries and niches for you. Happy advertising!

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