Throughout the year, we’ll be highlighting ongoing creative insights, best practices and trends on Instagram. Today, the first topic in the Creative Series is defining good creative on the platform.

When it comes to advertising on Instagram, the way you approach creativity can be easy. Now that advertisers can use the same powerful targeting as Facebook, they can reach consumers with personally relevant ads. As a result, the creative we’re seeing from businesses is just as diverse and relevant as the interests of the community itself — there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. In addition to following common, tried-and-true creative principles, we’ve discovered additional insights to help advertisers approach creative on Instagram.

There’s no big secret to creating content for Instagram—good and effective creative is just good creative. The same creative principles that apply to any marketing channel apply to Instagram, like being well branded, concept-driven, well crafted and well targeted.

In fact, in assessing various Instagram campaigns that have run since we first introduced ads on the platform, we’ve found these three creative principles ring true on Instagram. Branding ads with your logo, colors or iconography drives awareness. Creating a concept that tells a story aligning to your business goal drives brand lift in areas like perception, message association and favorability. And making your creative polished and well crafted amplifies results overall.

Each of the clients above drove business results with ads that follow these creative principles. TRESémme Indonesia saw a 34-point lift in ad recall and a 9-point lift in campaign results. Burt’s Bees got a 16-point lift in ad recall and a 5-point lift in product awareness. And McDonald’s Taiwan achieved a 46-point lift in ad recall and a 14-point lift in campaign awareness.

In a recent study conducted by MetrixLab, we found out creative that performed well on Facebook performed well on Instagram. During the study, participants were shown strong-performing Facebook campaigns, like the GMC ad below, mocked up as Instagram ads. They were also shown Instagram-themed ads inspired by popular hashtags. Results showed Facebook-based ads rated just as highly as the Instagram-themed ads in areas like memory and recall, likeability and relevance, and stated intent and impact.¹ In other words, if you’re producing brand creative that works well for you on Facebook, it will likely perform just as well on Instagram.

As you can see, custom creative is not a requirement for running effective ads on Instagram. The key across Instagram and Facebook — or any other marketing channel — is relevant creative that’s well branded, concept-driven and well crafted.

The easiest way to start advertising on Instagram is by adding it as a placement in your existing Facebook campaigns. That way you can leverage the same creative already running on your Facebook ads, or you can upload creative custom-made for Instagram.

Visit Facebook’s Ads Manager to get started.