Interested in how social media can attract new customers and amplify messaging to those currently in your database? Social Network Advertising is key to any strategy involving increased engagement, traffic, and conversions.
For those just getting started, let me take you through a brief refresher course on how to build an advertisement on social media, and all of the essential lingo you’ll need to get started! For the purpose of popularity, I am going to use Facebook as an example.
On Facebook, there are three key components of an advertisement:
The Campaign Objective allows you to choose the overarching goal of your campaign. Common goals can be website traffic, post engagement, and conversions – however, there are plenty to choose from.
Underneath your campaign objective, lies an Ad Set, which provides pertinent information about your advertisement, including the target audience, daily/lifetime budget, and placement options. The Ad Set is the meat of the ad – allowing you to accurately target and allocate spend into the content you are amplifying.
Below the Ad Set is the Ad itself, both the creative image, copy, headline, and Call-to-Action.
The first item to settle on when creating a campaign is your Campaign Objective. What are you looking to achieve throughout this campaign? It is of utmost importance that you choose the objective that meets your needs. If you do not, Facebook will not optimize advertising performance to your desired outcome.
Now, you might be thinking – what is the difference between the website traffic and conversion objective? Won’t both drive to my site for sales? Yes… and no. A website traffic ad will optimize your ad to individuals who often click on ads in your target demographic. However, only because a person clicks – does not mean they are behaviorally likely to convert. Whereas a conversion ad optimizes for those, who click AND often purchase.
Once your campaign is in action, make sure to check back every two-three days to gauge performance. Pay particular attention to your Cost Per Result column, which will tell you how much you are spending to reach your goals. This metric is extremely helpful to comprehend what your continued investment in advertising should be to achieve the ROI you’re looking for.
Within the first few months, you can optimize your advertisements based on where you see the lowest Cost Per Result. This will help you to see a steady decline in costs throughout your first quarter of advertising on social media.
Now that we’ve wrapped up the key features and “how-to” of Facebook ad campaigns let’s discuss strategy. Not only is it important to learn how to build, optimize, and complete ad campaigns – but it is imperative that before doing so, you understand the strategy around your brand advertising.
Here are some of our top tips for those ready to begin social media advertising:
First and foremost, create a plan for advertising on all social networks. An advertising strategy will help to ensure you will progress your plan as you move forward. For brands who are not well-known, an advertising strategy allows you to outline your customer funnel, including engaging, driving traffic, and retargeting those users back to the site in the future. For brands who already have a large customer-base, creating an advertising strategy gives you the opportunity to look at the numerous ways you can target your loyal customers on social.
Be thoughtful with the creative and copy on your advertisements. Don’t simply aggregate images into a traffic or conversion ad. Instead, use the social platforms’ resources to build an engaging ad for your target audience. Our favorites? Facebook’s canvas, and Instagram’s brand awareness advertisements.
Don’t assume that an advertisement will be relevant to your audience. Within your first three months of advertising across social, test different forms of creative, copy, placements, and audiences to find the right fit for you. Dependent on your brand awareness and goals, testing can take a few weeks to a few months – which leads us to…
Especially if you are a new brand, results won’t happen overnight. The first few months of testing will be an investment for your company to understand what platforms and variables work for you. These results will then inform your advertising strategy moving forward, based on where you see the most success.
