Hi there,
Thank you for your enquiry about increasing engagement on your Instagram carousel posts. It's a common frustration, and I'd like to offer some initial thoughts. You've got a great piece of content, but the 'boost' button gives you expensive traffic, and Ads Manager seems confusing. The good news is there's a much better way to approach this, but it involves a shift in thinking from simply chasing 'engagement' to driving actual business results. The problem often isn't the ad placement, but the entire objective behind the campaign.
I'll walk you through why optimising for engagement can be a trap and show you a more effective framework for using your carousels to find people who will actually become customers, not just casual likers.
TLDR;
- Stop using the "Boost Post" button. It's designed for simplicity, not performance, which is why your CPMs are high. Always use the full Ads Manager for control.
- The "Engagement" campaign objective is often a trap. You're telling Meta's algorithm to find the cheapest people who like and comment, but these users rarely ever click, buy, or become customers.
- The most important piece of advice is to change your objective to one that reflects a real business goal, like 'Traffic' (for website visitors) or 'Sales' (for purchases). You will still get organic engagement, but it will come from a much higher-quality audience.
- Structure your campaigns properly by separating prospecting (finding new people) from retargeting (reaching people who already know you). Start with detailed interest targeting before moving on to more powerful lookalike and retargeting audiences.
- This letter includes an interactive calculator to show you the massive difference in business value between an 'Engagement' campaign and a 'Sales' campaign, plus a flowchart visualising audience quality.
We'll need to look at your objective, not your placement...
First off, let's address the technical part of your question. You absolutely can promote an Instagram carousel using the proper Ads Manager. The issue you mentioned about it only allowing images and reels might be due to a specific placement selection (like Stories, which handles carousels differently) or a sub-objective within the platform. If you set up a campaign in Ads Manager and at the ad level, choose 'Use Existing Post', you can select any carousel from your Instagram grid to run in the feed. So, technically, it's very doable.
However, the bigger issue is the one you hinted at: efficiency. You're right that native boosting leads to high CPMs (Cost Per Mille, or cost per 1,000 impressions). The 'Boost' button is essentially a simplified, high-markup version of Ads Manager. It's built for convenience, stripping away all the controls that allow experts to run efficient campaigns in favour of a few simple clicks. By using it, you're paying a premium for less control and, usually, worse results. So, rule number one is to commit to using the full Ads Manager interface.
But this brings us to the core of the problem. Even inside Ads Manager, if you choose the 'Engagement' objective, you're stepping into a well-laid trap. You're telling one of the most powerful machine learning systems ever built to go and find one specific type of person: someone who will engage with your post. And it will do that job brilliantly. The problem is, who are these people?
I'd say you're paying Facebook to find non-customers...
Here’s the uncomfortable truth about how these platforms work. When you set your campaign objective to "Engagement," you are giving the algorithm a very specific, and very literal, command: "Find me the largest number of people who will perform a cheap engagement action (like, comment, share) for the lowest possible price."
The algorithm, being ruthlessly efficient, does exactly what you asked. It scours your target audience and identifies the users who are most likely to mindlessly double-tap on a picture but are simultaneously *least* likely to click a link, visit a website, fill out a form, or pull out a credit card. Why? Because those valuable actions are in high demand from other advertisers, making those users more expensive to reach. The users who just 'engage' are not in demand. Their attention is cheap. You are actively paying Meta to find you the worst possible audience for your business goals.
Think of it like this: there's a segment of users on social media who are 'professional browsers'. They like, they comment, they share, but they never convert. They are a cost centre for advertisers. An 'Engagement' campaign specifically targets this group. A 'Sales' or 'Leads' campaign actively avoids them. This is probably the biggest and most costly mistake I see businesses make when they start with paid social. They chase the vanity metric of engagement and wonder why their sales aren't increasing.
You probably should define what 'engagement' actually means to your business...
The solution is to stop thinking about "engagement" as the goal and start thinking about the *business action* you want someone to take. What is the purpose of your carousel post? Is it to...
- Get people to visit a specific page on your website?
- Have people sign up for a newsletter?
- Encourage people to buy a product?
- Get them to book a consultation?
Each of these is a concrete, measurable business outcome. And for each one, there's a corresponding campaign objective in Ads Manager that is far superior to 'Engagement'.
| Your Business Goal | Correct Meta Objective | Why It Works |
|---|---|---|
| I want more people to see my blog post or landing page. | Traffic (optimised for Landing Page Views) | The algorithm will specifically find people who not only click links but also wait for the page to load. This weeds out accidental clickers. |
| I want to collect email addresses for my newsletter. | Leads (optimised for Conversions) | This tells Meta to find users with a history of filling out forms. Your cost per lead will be far lower than just sending general traffic. |
| I want to sell products from my eCommerce store. | Sales (optimised for Purchase) | This is the gold standard. The algorithm uses immense data to find people who are in a buying mindset and have purchased from ads before. |
| I want people to book an appointment or demo. | Leads (optimised for a custom 'Booking' conversion) | Similar to email signups, you're targeting users who take high-commitment actions online. |
When you use these more specific objectives, something interesting happens. You will still get likes, comments, and shares on your carousel. But now, that engagement is coming from a pre-qualified audience of people who are genuinely interested in your offer, not just people who like pretty pictures. It's high-quality engagement, a byproduct of a campaign focused on what really matters.
You'll need a proper campaign structure for this...
To implement this properly, you need to move beyond single boosted posts and think in terms of a structured campaign. Based on our experience running hundreds of campaigns, especially for software and eCommerce clients, a funnel-based approach works best. Here’s a simplified version:
1. Top of Funnel (ToFu) - Prospecting: This is where you find new customers. Your goal here is to run your carousel ad to a 'cold' audience – people who have never heard of you before. You'd use a 'Sales' or 'Leads' objective and target audiences based on:
- Detailed Targeting: Interests, behaviours, and demographics that match your ideal customer. For example, if you sell hiking gear, you'd target interests like 'Hiking', 'Outdoor recreation', and brands like 'The North Face'. Be specific. Targeting 'Sport' is too broad; targeting 'Trail Running Magazine' is much better.
- Lookalike Audiences: Once you have some data (e.g., a list of 100+ past customers), you can ask Meta to find millions of other users who share similar characteristics. A lookalike of your best customers is often the most powerful audience you can build.
2. Middle/Bottom of Funnel (MoFu/BoFu) - Retargeting: This is where you convert interested prospects into customers. It's much cheaper and more effective to advertise to people who already know you. Here, you'd show your ads to 'warm' audiences, such as:
- Website Visitors: Anyone who has visited your site in the last 30-90 days.
- Instagram Engagers: People who have liked, commented on, or saved any of your previous posts.
- Add to Carts: For eCommerce, this is a critical audience to retarget with an offer to complete their purchase.
You should always have separate campaigns for prospecting and retargeting. They have different goals and will have very different performance metrics. Your prospecting campaign will have a higher cost per result, but it feeds your retargeting campaign, which should deliver a much higher return on ad spend (ROAS).
To demonstrate the impact of choosing the right objective, let's look at some numbers. Use the calculator below to see a typical comparison between a campaign focused on engagement and one focused on sales.
My main recommendations for you...
So, to bring this all together, here is the actionable process I would recomend you follow instead of boosting posts. This is the same foundational strategy we've used to help clients scale from their first ad campaign to generating significant revenue.
| Step | Action to Take | Rationale / Why this is important |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Define Your Goal | Decide on the single most valuable action a user can take after seeing your carousel (e.g., make a purchase, sign up for a list, visit a key page). | This aligns your ad spend with a tangible business outcome. Without a clear goal, you're just spending money for visibility with no ROI. |
| 2. Choose the Right Objective | In Ads Manager, create a new campaign using the objective that matches your goal ('Sales' for purchases, 'Leads' for signups). Do NOT use 'Engagement'. | This instructs the Meta algorithm to find high-intent users who are likely to perform your desired action, not low-intent users who just 'like' posts. |
| 3. Build Your Prospecting Audience | At the Ad Set level, create an audience using specific, relevant interests, behaviours, or a Lookalike of your past customers. Start with your best guess of who your ideal customer is. | Effective targeting is critical. Reaching the right people with the right message is the foundation of a successful campaign. Don't go too broad. |
| 4. Set Up the Ad | At the Ad level, select 'Use Existing Post' and choose your Instagram carousel. Ensure your copy has a clear Call to Action (CTA) and the link goes to the correct destination page. | This uses the 'social proof' (likes/comments) from your organic post in a performance-focused campaign, giving you the best of both worlds. |
| 5. Analyse and Optimise | After a few days, review the results based on your true goal (e.g., Cost Per Purchase, ROAS), not on vanity metrics like CPM or Cost Per Engagement. Test new audiences and creatives over time. | Paid advertising is a process of continuous improvement. What works today might not work tomorrow, so ongoing testing and optimisation is the only way to achieve long-term success. |
I know this is a lot to take in, and it might seem more complicated than just hitting 'Boost'. But this strategic approach is what separates campaigns that burn cash from campaigns that build businesses. It's not just about setting up an ad; it's about understanding the machine you're operating and giving it the right instructions to find your future customers.
Navigating this can be tricky, and making a mistake with objectives or audience selection can be a costly learning experience. It often pays to have an expert set up the foundational structure correctly from the start. We specialise in this and offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation where we can look at your specific business and help map out a strategy like this for you.
Either way, I hope this detailed breakdown has been helpful and gives you a much clearer path forward for promoting your content effectively.
Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh
