Social media advertising can be challenging to a small business owner or anyone with little to no experience.
But have no fear; we’ve created a quick list to help you on your way to social media success! Building a successful social media advertising strategy requires five key elements, and that’s it! So let’s get started!
1. Campaign Outline
Your outline lays out the essential elements of your advertising campaign and should contain the following:
- Campaign name
- Ideas and inspiration
- Campaign purpose and goals
- How it will help you achieve your company objectives
- Hashtags
- any other related information
There are several objectives you can achieve with your campaign, and we’ve listed a few for you below to include with your outline:
- Awareness of the brand
- Increasing social media following
- Make Product X more profitable
- Drive traffic to websites
- Promote store visits
Quantifying your goals/objectives will help you measure the right metrics and calculate the return on investment for your campaign as a whole.
2. Identifying the target audience
Identify the right target audience based on your social media accounts’ analytics section and the pages you manage. Be as specific as possible with your selections. You can find out the type of content your audience is most receptive to by examining their analytics section. Refer to your buyer persona templates for the most relevant characteristics and traits to be identified for your buyer persona.
Lastly, test campaigns on different platforms to determine which type of audience you can reach out to. This is based on the filters applied to the target audience. You can avoid getting too niche or too broad in your targeting by tweaking the characteristics. Most platforms will show how many people you can reach through an ad campaign.
3. Creatives for campaigns
Creating campaign creatives requires considering the target audience and platform guidelines, as well as ad copy (messaging) and visuals (images, GIFs, videos). Facebook likes visuals that have little text. Depending on which platform your audience visits, you will need to customize the creatives. You can use A/B tests to tweak copy and visuals to optimize performance on each platform.
4. Platforms for social media ads
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube are some of the most popular social media advertising platforms. Depending on the audience segment, different social networks may be more appropriate. A B2B business may not benefit from Pinterest. In contrast, a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) brand may not benefit from LinkedIn for awareness campaigns.
You can determine the budget and advertising formats and tailor the campaign messaging based on your chosen social media platform.
5. Metrics of success and campaign budgets
You should keep the costs and fees of your social media advertising agency separate from the actual budget if you are using a social media advertising agency. In addition to payments made to third-party authors, graphic designers, and video editors, you may also include the costs of purchasing stock images, videos, or software.
In terms of the campaign budget, it is the amount you will be spending to pay for the platform for the advertising campaign. Here is a simple example of determining the budget to run ads, especially if you’re starting.
Suppose you’re required to generate 20 leads through a lead generation campaign. You have researched and found that Facebook has a cost per lead (CPL) of $10. Therefore, your initial campaign budget should be $200. Given the volatility of the bidding process, it would be a brilliant idea to increase the budget for the ad slightly. The bid should be tweaked throughout the campaign to optimize the ad spend as you execute the movement.
You can see the results in detail as soon as the ad campaign is complete. Compare the goals achieved against the ones set in reach, engagement, link clicks, likes, followers, shares, profile clicks, etc., and map them against each other. Once you have analyzed how well your campaign performed and how much return you received from it, you can decide whether or not to continue.
When it comes to social media advertising, especially when you are running a business, it can be a challenging task. Let FXV Digital Design make your life easier with our help.