If you’re actively promoting your business online, you might be wondering why you need paid social media ads and how effective they really are? While social media can be an amazing tool to grow your audience and find new customers for free, there is more competition than ever due to its growing accessibility. It’s much harder to reach your fans organically and your organic reach can be difficult to predict. This is where social media ads can really help you cut through the noise and target specific audiences that are most likely to love your brand. But how do you make the most of your ads and make your budget go further? Keep on reading to find out!
Be mindful of your targets
Before you launch your next ad campaign, think about what you’d like to achieve. Social media ads aren’t always about generating more sales and conversions. Sometimes they’re about increasing brand awareness and attracting a wider audience. You can also use them to supplement some of the reach for your unpaid posts and ads can help you grow your socials quicker. Whatever it is you’re trying to achieve, having specific goals in mind will inform the rest of your campaign and ensure it is run according to them. From the type of content you produce all the way to the call to action, your campaign should clearly inform what you want the users to do when they see it.
Target a specific audience
While it may be tempting to select a broad audience to promote your posts to, choosing a smaller, much more targeted group of people will increase your engagement and make your money go further. If you have already identified your ideal customer for your business, use the same approach in your social media ads. You can narrow it down by age, lifestyle, hobbies, interests, location, education and so much more. This way, your ads will be shown to a smaller number of users who could be more interested in your business, therefore, increasing your conversions while keeping your ad spend lower.
Think about your platform
Where is your audience more likely to browse? If your product is aimed at teenagers, you’ll find them on TikTok. Instagram is mostly used by millennials and Gen Z while Facebook’s largest audience is between the ages of 25 to 50. Both Facebook and Instagram have a female majority user base, while Twitter has a male majority. You can find more detailed demographics on each platform in terms of location, income, education level and more. It’s also useful to be aware of the many different ways you can promote your content on each platform and how to optimise it accordingly. For example, you can promote your content on Instagram stories as well as feed and IGTV and Facebook lets you also promote via Messenger, which will give you access to an audience that may not even use Facebook.
Don’t be afraid to experiment
It may be unlikely that you will completely knock it out of the park with your first social media campaign. And that’s okay. Learning through trial and error will help you get to know your audience and the content they respond the most to. You don’t have to spend lots of money in the process either – try running a few mini ad campaigns and see what insights you can pick up on.
Focus on analytics
The most important part of growing your success with social media ads is to keep an eye on your analytics. Each campaign you run will tell you exactly the types of content, platform and their placement on it (i.e., stories, newsfeed etc) that have been the most successful. You may not get your target audience right straightaway, so analytics is where you can really dig deep and identify the people that connect with your posts the most. Use that to create a look-alike audience to mirror the people who engaged with you the most and for future campaigns!
Do you need help with your social media ads? We can provide expert advice and create successful campaigns with eye-catching footage and graphics! Contact our team today to find out more.
