We all love to hate it, but it really does work. What are we talking about? Social media advertising, of course!
Sure, targeted advertising can creep people out, and boosted posts can sometimes flop, but any small business would be remiss to put off creating a social media advertising strategy.
Here are three proven social media advertising tactics to get you started today.
1. Know Your Audience
Before you start any marketing initiative, you absolutely must know your audience. It’s tempting to jump into social media advertising feet first, but taking the time to research your audience and tailor your ads to them will save you time and those precious ad dollars in the long run.
For this article, we’re going to assume your company is a B2C small business looking to reach potential customers on social media. What you need to figure out, then, is how to best reach them with targeted advertising.
For example, if your audience is generally made up of women in the United States between the ages of 18 and 25, you’ll want to spend most of your ad dollars on Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat. If you’re targeting men between the ages of 30 and 45, Facebook and Twitter will be your best bets.
Once you understand your audience, you can create ads for your product or services using this information. You should always be ready to adjust your messaging, as we’ll discuss in the next section.
2. Test, Test, Test
Once you launch your paid social ads, you’ll want to keep a close eye on your analytics to see what’s resonating with your audience and what isn’t. Some of the things you’ll want to keep an eye on include:
- Engagement: How many people are liking/sharing/commenting on your posts
- Click-through rate: How many people are clicking through your posts to go to your website
- Conversions: How many purchases you can directly attribute to social media
- Impressions: How many times your posts have been seen
- Reach: How many people have seen your posts
You should also use A/B testing for your social ads. This involves showing two different ads to the same audience and testing which one works better. Most social media ad platforms make this simple, thankfully.
Once you do a few of these tests, you’ll have an even better idea of who your audience really is and what they respond to best. The best practice is to do these tests on one or two of your social media platforms so that you don’t waste money on ads on platforms that may not work well.
However, once you have your ad strategy down, it’s time to…
3. Diversify Your Platforms for Optimal Social Media Advertising Results
So, for example, let’s say you did your A/B testing on Facebook and learned that one of your ads performs best with your audience there. Engagement was pretty good, the click-through rate was solid, and conversion was markedly higher on one ad than the other. You can now try testing a similar version of that ad on Instagram or Pinterest, then repeat the measuring and testing process.
There are a number of other social media platforms you can try out, of course. Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, and TikTok all have an option for advertisers.
However, like we’ve been saying, it all comes down to your audience. You should definitely give other platforms a shot though!
It’s also important to know that your first venture into social media advertising might fail, and that’s absolutely okay! Failure is one of the best ways to learn when it comes to this process.
Time to Get Started
Social media advertising is a crucial step for any small business’s marketing plan.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by it though, contact us today. We’d love to help you make sense of social ads and help create and implement a strategy that works for your business.