As an agency we have been advertising with Instacart for about 2 years. They originally released it in Q2 of 2020 to larger brands (the prime months of COVID lockdowns).
When they finally announced their rollout to all advertisers (smaller shops like us), we knew immediately this would be a big win for the emerging F&B space. Similar to Amazon, it would give smaller brands a fighting chance when consumers are searching for broad categories relevant to their brand (EXP: “plant based seafood”, “keto-friendly bread”), and also open up the opportunity to steal sales from consumers directly searching for the Nabisco/Pepsico owned big-budget brands. A consumer searches for “peanut butter” thinking their typical JIF will show up, but can now be swayed to try a healthier nut butter, or protein packed alternative that they had never heard of before.
The first 6 months or so of the ad platforms existence, the platform allowed for basic PPC advertising in a manual campaign format. Type in basic keywords and manage the bids and budgets. Since then the platform has done an outstanding job rolling out new features that will help emerging brands drive stronger in-store velocity, here are a few:
Automatic Campaigns:
The new automatic campaigns from Instacart have been nothing but successful for us. Taking another page out of the amazon advertising book, the auto campaigns are finding tons of “fringe” keywords, that we as advertisers likely would not have thought of, that are driving a high ROAS. An example could be, we have a produce brand (coconut) getting a 8x ROAS from the search term “dessert”.
Display Ads:
This is your brands chance to show-off your product creatively. Include imagery of your products in use. If its a recipe product, show the most associated dish it goes best with. If it’s a broader category, use the display ads to educate consumers, etc. This is the first of many tools they have launched that will help brands with stronger creative abilities (see examples below)
Product Image Library:
Are your retailers uploading low quality, crappy images of your products? And you don’t want to overpay a Syndigo type company to take the pictures for you and upload them? Use the Instacart Product Library tool to upload HQ images of your product, so they look clean & credible to new consumers who just learned about your brand.
Brand Pages:
The Brand page is in the beginning stages of what an Amazon Storefront is now, which is extremely exciting for advertisers and brands. This is an actual shoppable landing page for consumers, both to leverage in your Instacart PPC campaigns AND from an outside source such as an Instagram or TikTok Ad. Geo-target consumers who live within range of your retailers, serve them an ad that drives them to the brand page to add to cart and include in their grocery order later in the week. We are just rolling these out with clients, so see the below example provided by Instacart.
The point of this article is to inspire brands of ALL SIZES to start leveraging this platform to drive higher velocity in-store sales. We personally have an efficient service fee for Instacart advertising. If you are interested in discussing further email info@gawronskimedia.com OR fill out a form on this page.