Social media has become one of the key marketing tools for businesses large and small across the world. 71% of people who have had a positive experience with a brand’s social media accounts will likely recommend that brand to others in their sphere of influence. With statistics like that, implementing an effective social media strategy is crucial to a successful marketing campaign.
If your business doesn’t have a social media advertising plan, then you could be missing out on thousands of dollars worth of missed sales. Unfortunately, many businesses aren’t equipped with the right information and tools to launch such a campaign.
That is why we have put together this guide for you. We are going to go into why social media advertising is important for any business, but we will also give you some tips for starting your first social media marketing campaign.
Read on to learn more about social media advertising!
Is Social Media Necessary For My Marketing?
In a word, yes.
You would be hard pressed to find a marketing campaign in 2018 that doesn’t utilize social media in any capacity.
There are a number of reasons why so much of digital marketing has focused on social media recently. Not the least of which being that it is basically free.
Now there are costs to boosting certain promotional materials so that they can be viewed by a wider audience, but these costs are very minimal. Most if not all of the current social media platforms are some of the most cost-effective marketing resources out there. Accounts are generally free, and promotions are minimal, you can’t beat that.
Another major reason why digital marketing has focused on social media recently is because of the connections. Social media allows businesses to connect with their customers and potential customers like never before.
Do you have a big promotional event or sale coming up? Just share a post about it or create an event so that your customers can RSVP right there on your Facebook page. In some cases, if you have enough followers, that may be all the promotion that you need.
Social media is also a great way to receive feedback from your customers. Yes, some of the comments may be extreme. But on the whole, you will find them to be a helpful metric to observe how your customers are feeling about your products as well as your brand as a whole.
Customers have even reported that they spend around 20-40% more moneyon brands that have interacted with them in some way on social media. Social media advertising is about so much more than customer service and perception, it is about sales.
Which Platforms Should We Be Using?
Four major social networks to think about are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat. Though Snapchat is very popular, it’s not as essential for businesses to use in their marketing as the other three. If you want to be successful at using social media for your marketing, we recommend using Instagram and Twitter and/or Facebook. And sometimes, depending on your business, it may make sense to incorporate LinkedIn as part of your strategy, or even other social networks like YouTube, Pinterest and more.
Instagram is one of the best platforms to roll out your company’s visual marketing, such as promotional videos or graphics. The whole platform is centered around photos and videos, making it the prime destination for visual media. You can post your graphics there quickly and add a simple caption with a clever hashtag and you should see great engagement.
Twitter is better for short, text-based promotions, although visuals can be posted and will perform great as well. Posting polls or retweeting contests is a great way to engage with your followers. Hashtags are essential to success when using this platform, as well.
Facebook has been successful for a long time and has a large user base that your business will be able to readily interact with. If your business hosts a lot of events or wants to get into live video promotions, Facebook is a great platform. Short promotional videos are the best way to take advantage of the marketing capabilities of Facebook.
Whichever platforms you use, it is important that you stay consistent and that you take advantage of each network’s full capabilities. Being a business grants you certain privileges that other users and pages don’t have access to, so take advantage of those resources.
Different Types of Ads
Each social media platform promotes advertisements in their own unique way. There is even a lot of variety within each network. To create a successful social media advertising campaign, you should become familiar with all of these options.
When creating Facebook ads, you are presented with a list of objectives. Selecting an objective will help Facebook to know how to promote your ad in the best way to accomplish your objective. These objectives are:
- App installs – This objective is to encourage people to install your company’s app
- Brand awareness – Select this objective if you are trying to introduce your brand to audiences that are unaware of it
- Conversions – Choosing this objective will help you to create ads focused on getting people to take certain actions such as purchasing a product or service
- Engagement – This objective is for wide-reaching ads that are trying to get as many likes, comments, and shares as possible
- Lead generation – For recruiting new prospects into your sales
- Reach – This is for ads hoping to reach as many people within your target audience as possible
- Product catalog sales – If you would like to connect your advertisement to your product catalog
- Store visits – Encourage people to come and visit your physical locations
- Traffic – This objective is to direct traffic to a specific webpage on your site
- Video views – Similar to the brand awareness objective, but specifically geared towards video content
Once you have selected an objective, you can then choose the type of ad you would like to create. You are able to promote several different types of ads including:
- Photo ads – ads with just a single image
- Video ads – you can upload videos up to two hours in length
- Slideshows – video slideshows containing up to ten photos
- Photo carousels – click-through photo carousels of up to ten photos
- Canvas ads – full screen immersive, multi-format advertisements containing text, up to 20 photos, and video content
- Collections – these mobile-only ads show customers a collection of products or features
- Lead ads – lead generation forms that quickly connect people to your brand
Twitter allows you to promote tweets and accounts in addition to photo and video ads. These ads can be quite wide-reaching and are a great way to increase the reach of your brand. Video content also works incredibly well on Twitter, performing much better than other types of content.
Instagram also allows you to promote your account and publish video and photo advertisements. The important thing to remember with Instagram advertising is to create a unique visual style and stay consistent with that style. This will establish you as a brand and distinguish you from your competitors. And, if you’re running ads through Facebook, you can allow those ads to get exposure on Instagram, as well.
Video Content
90% of consumers say that videos can influence their purchasing choices. This means that video content is absolutely essential for social media advertising effectiveness.
All of the platforms we have discussed support video content and you can utilize videos in your ads to varying degrees with each one. But there are a few important principles to keep in mind.
First, remember to keep your videos short. Videos are an effective marketing tool because they are memorable. If you make your video ads too long, they become harder to remember, if people are willing to watch them at all.
The point of video content in your advertisements is to generate interest in your brand. But before you can do that, you need to create interest in the ad. You can do this by creating a creative attention-grabbing thumbnail that will hook viewers in.
Thumbnails are also a great way to create a little “mini-ad.” This way people will get a little bit of information about your brand even if they choose to scroll past your video.
Hooking viewers in with a thumbnail is only the first step, though. Many people will only give you about ten seconds of their attention before they move on to something else if they aren’t interested. So make sure your introduction is incredibly strong and relevant to your audience.
You also want to make sure that all of your video content is clear, concise, and of high quality. Know what the point of your video is and communicate that point as clearly as you can as quickly as you can. No one should finish your video without a clear idea of what you were trying to say.
It is also important to remember that very few people watch videos on social media with the sound on, so be sure to include easy-to-read subtitles in all of your video content.
When ending your video ad, it’s always great to end with a call-to-action, just like you would for blog content. Give your viewers a clear next step, such as following your social media account, visiting your website, or making a purchase of a related product.
If you are constantly putting out quality content, you can never go wrong with video on social media.
Make A Plan
Taking all of this into consideration, it’s time to make a social media marketing plan.
The first step is to choose which platforms you’ll be focusing your attention on. Before making this decision, you should consider what your audience is. If most of your customers are on Facebook, focus hard on Facebook, and vice versa for the other networks.
Once you know where you are going to focus your time and resources, study the marketing tools that the network provides. Become familiar with all of the tips and tricks for that platform so that you can take them into consideration when developing your plan.
Then brainstorm your brand’s image and voice. What story are you telling with your social media? How do you want to be perceived?
Once you have found your voice, start thinking about how you can use the social media network’s unique features to tell your story. Start developing your profile to look sleek and professional, portraying your brand’s message clearly.
How often you post will depend greatly on the network you are using and the message you are conveying. You typically should not post any less than once a day, however. On Twitter, where content is much shorter, you should be posting at least three times a day, probably more.
You also generally want to schedule your posts to go up in the late afternoon or early evening, just as most people are getting off of work. People tend to check social media first thing when they get home, you have a higher chance of getting your posts seen and engaged with.
Once you’ve got a strategy mapped out and in place, you should constantly be checking the analytics provided to you by the social media networks. Use this data to tweak your plan to fit your followers’ needs and engagement patterns.
Do You Have More Questions About Social Media Advertising?
We hope that you feel more informed and prepared to start developing and implementing a social media advertising strategy for your business. You have lots of current and potential customers out there who would love to interact with you on social media.
If you ever have any questions about social media marketing or would like to take advantage of our services, you can contact us and let us know!