Instagram Advertising in Dubai: A 14 Day Summary & Case Study

If you're reading this article, there's a good chance that you're looking for an answer to the following question:

Does Instagram advertising work for businesses in Dubai?

You'll probably be glad to hear that the short answer is a resounding "Yes.". But there are a number of factors to consider, so a more accurate answer is "Yes, but it may not work for all types of businesses". So, in order for you to decide whether advertising on Instagram is the correct approach for your business, we wanted to share the details of one of our campaigns so that you can make a more informed decision for your company.

What we know about Instagram Advertising in Dubai

For businesses that want to target a large audience of Dubai residents, Instagram offers this and at a increasing rate, or so it seems. At the time of writing this article these are the targeting volumes available:

Instagram Users in Dubai: 600,000
Instagram Users in the UAE: 880,000

Just over 10 days ago, when the test campaign was launched, the total number of Dubai users on Instagram that were targetable was 500,000. It therefore seems that the algorithm behind the advertising platform is still determining exact user numbers in specific locations.

The Test Instagram Campaign

For the test campaign, we decided to target a specific audience from the 500,000 that was on offer. The total audience that we decided to target was just over 25,000 people and the campaign duration was set at 4 weeks.

The Objective

For us, the objective was very simple:

Generate awareness to our target audience that Instagram Advertising is now available in the UAE
Generate a minimum of 5 sales leads
Convert at least 1 of the leads into a new customer

The Advert

The advert created by our team was designed to be simple. The use of a single image designed to attract user attention followed by 2 simple messages: "Instagram Advertising" & "Over 500,000 users in the UAE". For those interested in learning more, we also added more detailed content in the comments area of the screen. In addition to these, the all-important "Learn More" call to action was selected as appropriate.

Users who wanted to learn more were then re-directed to a purpose built landing page that provided instructions to those who wanted to create their first campaign on the platform.

Below - Mobile Screenshots of the landing page used for the campaign:

The Landing Page

Often overlooked, the landing page that we created for this campaign is the single biggest reason that we could determine this campaign as a success. Those that wanted to learn more were taken to a page, where they could do exactly that - Learn More.

Many advertisers, to their detriment, drive traffic from these types of campaigns to their website's home page. While this isn't necessarily wrong (although, we actually think this is wrong), this approach instantly decreases the likelihood that the click from a user will lead to a conversion. For our test, the conversion metric was again simple: A completed enquiry form.

An important point to note here.: Virtually all Instagram users will view adverts from their mobile devices, so it's vital that whatever page you take them to is fully optimized for mobile. Taking users to anything other than a mobile-friendly page will also decrease the chances of converting the user into a lead or customer.

The Results

Before we break down the full results, here is an overview of the campaign statistics provided by the platform:

To summarise:

The advert was displayed to 9,968 people from our targeted audience
Each person reached saw the advert just under 2.5 times
367 clicks were obtained where users wanted to "Learn More"
The total cost of the campaign (to date): AED 318.56 (yes, AED 318.56!!)
The cost per click: AED 0.85

The Real Results

26 sales leads generated from the campaign (so far)
2 customers converted (so far)
Return on Investment (so far): 212%
Expected ROI: In excess of 500%

What we've learned so far:

Instagram advertising is extremely cost effective
The targeting possibilities clearly worked for this campaign
The click-through rate is slightly higher on Instagram than other comparable social media platforms.

Tips for you:

Ordinarily, we would create between 5 and 10 different advert variations for each campaign to test the effectiveness of each advert. You should always do this for your campaigns.
We would also create different audiences to test the adverts to check effectiveness and aid optimisation. It's a good idea to do this for your business.