Hi! My name is Dmitry Matvienko, and I am the founder of the digital agency TopTarget. I was approached by a good friend who works with a tutor for "Unified State Examination" History and Society with a problem: you need to set up an advertisement on Instagram to get subscribers targeted each 8 cents.

My friend is well versed in VK targeting but does not know anything about Facebook targeting, so he asked me to set it up.


1. Task

To bring to the account Instagram subscribers for 8 cents - students 16-17 years old who take the Unified State Exam in History or Social Studies.

2. Execution

Audience Selection:

Allocated 4 audiences to launch ads:

1. Those involved in 90 days are people who interacted with the Instagram account. In 90 days, because there's no point anymore. Since there will be those students who have passed their Unified State Exam, we only need those who will pass.
2. Similar to engaged in 90 days (Look-a-like)
3. Students aged 16-17 with Interests in History, Social Studies
4. Students 16-17 years old

I excluded others from each audience so there would be no overlap between them and not be a competitor to myself.

Important point:
Don't forget to exclude audiences from each other, so there are no intersections. Many people don't know about this, and many forget to do it.


Making ads

Initially, there were high-quality photos of the tutor who teaches. I decided to go from a personal brand of a tutor because their Instagram account is maintained in the same manner and invites them to subscribe on his behalf.

These are the creatives that turned out. My approach to creating creatives is maximum simplicity, full meaning, and minimum design not to blur the eyes and catch the audience right away.

Here is the text I wrote. A catchy headline at the beginning — are you taking social studies? Also, the advertising campaign tested 7 different headlines, and the main text was unchanged.

In the text, I first introduced myself on behalf of the tutor and told about him and his advantages. Then explained why it would be useful to subscribe to this account.

One of the best and most working schemes - a catchy headline, benefits, and call to action (account subscription).

Tip: Be sure to link in the text through @account_name to get more clicks and thus save your advertising budget.

3. Results

Campaign statistics from September 19, 2018, to September 29, 2018

Statistics on the number of subscribers for the advertising campaign period

Total clicks: 1889

Average CTR: 1,52%

Average click price: 2.7 cents

Total spent: 50.92 dollars

Total subscribers for the period: 852

Subscriber's price: 5 cents

4. Conclusion

The task was completed — target subscribers for 5 cents and cheaper for a tutor on the Unified State Exam History and Social Studies.

The best audiences can be unexpected - the best that worked was just 16-17-year-olds with no interests at all. Perhaps due to the fact that they haven't decided what they're going to do yet, or maybe because of the imperfection of Facebook's algorithms.

I continue to work with a tutor and think that we can reduce the price of a subscriber to 4-5 cents by using other creatives and using the best audiences only.

5. Job Review