Social media isn’t just for the regular Joe anymore, it’s for businesses as well. It’s the perfect place for them to promote themselves, connect with consumers and humanize their brand, start conversations with their audience and increase engagement, and so much more. In other words, it’s vital for any social media marketing strategy.
This is especially true when you want to advertise your brand, products or services, as you can find tons of social media campaigns ideas online that will help you out. And now we arrive at the crux of the matter, 5 social media advertising strategies that will help you create profitable campaigns.
1: Know Your Campaign Objectives and Stick to Them
Up first and before you Google how to create a social media campaign, clearly define your objectives and stick to them. Are you trying to increase engagement with your brand? What about conversions, are you trying to increase your ROI? Answer these and similar questions before you do anything else, otherwise you’ll end up going in blind and wasting precious time and money.
For example, the five most common paid social goals are to:
- Increase traffic to get more eyes on your pages
- Increase visibility and heighten awareness for your brand
- Increase engagement and see what your audience is thinking
- Increase lead generation and bring prospects into your funnel
- Increase sales and make more money
Depending on your goal, your social media campaign strategy will change, so think carefully and stick with your objectives.
2: Treat Each Channel as a Separate Entity
Your content can be reused across social channels, but on the whole make sure to treat each platform as a separate entity. This boils down to usage; people with differing preferences gravitate to certain channels and, depending on this, certain types of content will work better on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and so on.
Key here is to capitalize on each platform with what works best there. For example, LinkedIn caters more to the business world, so post educational articles there and save visual content for Instagram and Pinterest. More specific to aligning your goals with certain channels:
- Facebook is excellent with eCommerce and lead generation
- Instagram excels at showcasing visual content to whet consumers’ appetites
- Twitter is perfect for organic engagement and talking with your audience
- Pinterest, like Instagram, is visual and a good choice for eCommerce and showcasing products
- LinkedIn primarily revolved around the B2B market and is a place you’ll find quality leads
3: Capitalize on Video
One of the most prominent social media advertising trends is that video is the way to go. Not only are Facebook executives predicting that in coming years Facebook will be all video, but social videos actually generate an astounding 1200% more shares than text and images combined.
The difference between video and text — and to a certain extent, images — is engagement. As we covered earlier, one of your objectives may be to increase engagement and promote brand awareness. Sure, you can do this with blog posts and the occasional image, but what if your audience doesn’t feel like reading? Well, they won’t read your post. An image might work, but chances are that they’ll quickly forget what they saw.
Videos, on the other hand, disseminate information without any added effort on the user’s part; they simply plop down on their seat and absorb information. With this in mind, it’s no wonder why some of the best social media campaigns ever have a video component to them.
4: Pay Attention to Your Analytics
Very important for social media advertising (any advertising, really) is using analytics tools to track metrics. Don’t fall prey to the belief that everything will work out in the end — it won’t. Instead, MAKE IT HAPPEN! Tracking and making sense of metrics may be tedious and time-consuming, but the alternative is flying blind and hoping that things fall in place all on their own (hint: they won’t).
Analytics give you insights into your campaigns and allow you to tweak and optimize them while they run. You can even use software and sites like Google Analytics, TrackMaven, Tailwind and Followerwonk to get into the nitty gritty and get the best bang for your buck.
5: Take Advantage of Different Ad Targeting Options
For your social ads to work the best, always use different targeting options. Using Facebook as an example, here’s what they have to say about their targeting options:
Location
Location targeting allows you to reach customers in key locations by country, state/province, city and zip code. This information comes from people’s stated location on their Timeline and is validated by their IP (Internet Protocol) address.
Demographics
As an advertiser, you can refine your ad’s target audience based on content people have shared about themselves in their Facebook profiles, such as age, gender, relationship status, education and type of work they do.
Interests
Interest targeting lets you define your ideal audience by their interests, hobbies and Pages they like on Facebook.
Behaviors
Behaviors are activities that people do on or off Facebook that inform on which device they’re using, purchase behaviors or intents, travel preferences and more.
Let’s Take a Second Look
Did you get all of that? If you did, good, now take a look at these social media campaign examples to get you started. If you didn’t, here’s what we covered today.
- Know Your Campaign Objectives and Stick to Them
- Treat Each Channel as Separate Entities
- Pay Attention to Your Analytics
- Take Advantage of Different Ad Targeting Options
- Capitalize on Video
Make sure to brush on your paid marketing lingo and good luck with your social media advertising endeavors!
