Social media started out as an organic platform, for us to reach out and stay in touch with the people we cared most about in our lives.
As social media grew across the globe, so too did its potential to reach targeted and detailed audience groups, with wealth’s of data at their fingertips making it a trillion-dollar industry today.
With almost every industry appearing on social media ads, if you are not there, it is probably time to consider the benefits!
Competition is high, we are all competing for the end user’s attention. Let’s explore some best practices to help you get the best results from your ads on social media platforms.
HOW MUCH SHOULD I SPEND?
Budgeting your campaigns is a good place to start. First, consider how long you want the advert to run for. Secondly, consider how large your potential audience is, and how much of it you would like to reach over the time period. Platforms like Facebook will advise you on the potential reach of your ad, given the daily budget you enter when building.
Typically, the more you spend, the more people your ad will reach. However, if your audience is quite small in size, and you are running the ad for a considerable length of time, it might be worth considering how many times each person is likely going to see the ad over that time- be aware they may tire of seeing your brand.
Striking a balance between your budget spend, reach and potential audience is important.
WHAT TYPE OF AD?(TEXT/IMAGE/VIDEO)
It is rare to see an ad campaign with only text these days, and for good reason. Adding an image or video to your post increases engagement and performance. A question commonly asked now is whether a video outperforms images in campaigns. The short answer is: it depends!
Sometimes videos will outperform images and vice versa. The key is to test, for example, you could use Facebook’s A/B testing feature, to build campaigns with ads using both images and videos. What is important to consider is the quality of your imagery/video.
For videos, ensure it is square in shape to capture most of the user’s screen space on their News Feed (square videos can take up to 78% more space versus landscape videos), which also improves your cost per click and engagement. For videos, you should also strongly consider what your CTA is and be clear on your objective, e.g. if you’re promoting a blog, make sure the video teases the blog and also has a clear CTA the user can follow to read more.
For images, the key is to optimise to help the success of your campaign. The first thing to avoid is too much text. Facebook still stand by their 20% text limit on images for best practice and best user experience.
The reasoning behind this is if you image has a lot of text overlay, it can appear spammy on the News Feeds.
Secondly, be as concise and clear as possible with your image, to capture attention and also relevant audiences, which in turn will help improve your bounce rate.
All the above considered, the most important recipe for success with ad variations is to test as many different types as possible to help strike gold.
WHAT AD PLATFORMS SHOULD I USE?
When deciding what platform to run your campaigns on, you will likely be considering multiple, based on their audiences.
The question to ask yourself is, who is my target audience, and what platform(s) are they likely to be on. Each platform offers different opportunities for you to reach your audience.
Facebook is strong for storytelling and education focused posts helping your brand awareness, objectives especially in video form.
On Instagram, you can run your ads in sync with your Facebook ones, however, as it is primarily a mobile based platform, ensure the process is easy for the user to follow.
For example, if you are selling tickets to an event on your Instagram Stories, ensure the process of clicking the link from the story leads seamlessly to the page to make the purchase so you do not lose the customer in the process.
If you are using Twitter, the use of short videos or GIFs and images work great as they capture the user’s attention and get the message across fast which is vital on this fast-moving platform. Get your point across clearly, and fast.
On LinkedIn, it is important to be specific, as the audience is looking to benefit from their actions on this platform. Posting educational content that can benefit the end-user works great and giving them an incentive to go to your event, so they do not miss out.
WHAT SHOULD I EXPECT?
Using social media ad campaigns can be extremely effective when the right measures are in place.
If you follow the above guidelines in building your next campaigns, you can expect great results with returns on your investment.
It is important to emphasise the strength of social media campaigns when compared to search engine campaigns.
With social media ads you can target your specific audience type directly, however with search engine campaigns such as Google Ads, you are appearing when the user searches for something related to your business.
This gives you a great opportunity to get your brand and products in front of the eyes of people who are not necessarily looking for it right now, but may be interested in your product or what your brand has to offer.
If you have a strong offer, you could see very strong conversion rates and returns on your investment on your social media campaigns.
