How to Set Up Your Instagram Profile Before You Spend a Pound on Ads
Here's something that could save you a significant amount of wasted ad spend, and it's something we wish more founders knew before they hit publish on their first campaign.
Your Instagram profile matters just as much as your ads do. Possibly more.
Think about the customer journey for a second. Someone is scrolling through their feed, your ad catches their eye, they click and before they visit your website, a huge chunk of them are going straight to your profile. They want to see who you are, whether you're the real deal, and whether your brand is worth their time and money. If what they find doesn't immediately build trust and make them feel confident, they leave. And your ad budget absorbs the hit without a single sale to show for it.
So before you spend a penny driving traffic, get your profile ready to actually convert it. Here's exactly what needs to be in place.
Your bio is doing more work than you think
Your bio has roughly two seconds to tell someone what you do, who it's for, and why they should care. That is not a lot of space, which means every single word needs to earn its place. A strong e-commerce bio answers three questions without making anyone work for it: what do you sell, who is it for, and why is it worth having.
You also need a clear call to action and a working link. Your website, a product page, a Linktree - whatever makes the most sense for where you want people to go. Don't make them hunt for it or they’ll lose interest.
Your profile photo needs to look intentional
For product-based brands, your logo tends to work well here as long as it's clean, legible at a small size, and sitting on a clear background. If you're the face of your brand, a good quality headshot will build trust faster than a logo will. Either way, it needs to look like a deliberate choice. A blurry logo or a photo that's been cropped down from something else sends exactly the wrong signal to someone who's deciding whether to trust you with their money.
Your highlights are your brand's first impression
After your bio, highlights are the first place a new visitor's eyes go. They are your opportunity to tell your brand story, answer the questions people have before they buy, and build enough confidence that clicking through to your website feels like an easy and obvious next step.
Think about what someone completely new to your brand actually needs to know. What is your product and how does it work? What are real customers saying about it? What's your shipping policy? Do you have a FAQ? Build your highlights around those questions, keep them organised and easy to navigate, and make sure the covers look consistent and on-brand rather than like an afterthought.
Pin your best posts and make them work hard
Instagram gives you three pinned posts at the top of your grid and if you're not using them, you're leaving one of the most valuable pieces of profile real estate completely empty. Pin your strongest performing content, your most important product, or something that tells your brand story in a way that makes people want to keep looking. When someone lands on your profile for the very first time, pinned posts are what they see before anything else, so make sure what's there is doing a proper job.
Your grid needs to feel intentional, not perfect
The pressure to have a flawlessly curated grid has largely faded, and that's genuinely a good thing. But intentional is still important. A consistent colour palette, a consistent editing style, and a mix of product, lifestyle and value-led content goes a long way toward making your brand feel credible and considered rather than thrown together. When someone scrolls through your grid, they should be able to tell within a few seconds exactly what kind of brand you are and what you sell. If they can't, that's worth fixing before you start paying to send people there.
Not sure where your profile stands right now?
This is exactly what our Social Start Up service is built for. We go through your profile completely from top to bottom, bio, highlights, pinned posts, content structure and posting guidelines. We get everything set up to support sales before you spend a single pound on ads.
The best ad creative in the world cannot do its job properly if the profile it's sending people to isn't ads-ready. Get the foundation right first, and everything you spend on ads after that works so much harder.
