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Social media marketing is another powerful digital marketing tool as compared to SEO – but instead of running ads on search results or other websites, you’ll be running ads on social media platforms. It’s a powerful way to connect with your audience, build your brand, and drive more traffic and sales.
Most of the time, you’ll be advertising on the major established platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Snapchat. New platforms – like TikTok – pop up all the time, so pay attention to any that gain significant traction and consider advertising there as well.
Social media started as a free place to share content. Businesses could publish content and reach potential customers for free… but now most platforms have such diminished organic reach that they’re basically pay to play.
The big benefit of social media advertising is that you’re not limited to the users who have liked or followed your brand. You’re able to expand your reach and target users based on demographics, affinity, and interest. Unlike email marketing, users don’t have to opt in – you’re able to target ads to anyone that meets your demographic targeting settings.
The most important thing to understand is the strategy of social media advertising. Think about your goals – are you simply trying to increase brand awareness, or are you trying to drive sales?
You need to understand your audience as well. For example, if you’re an arts and crafts store, your target audience will be on Pinterest, so that’s where you’d need to concentrate. Running ads on LinkedIn wouldn’t be effective.
Once you know why you’re advertising and where you’re running the ads, you’ll need to design your ads. Think about what will best resonate with your target audience – links to content? Images? Videos? Will you focus on sales messaging, or educational content, or will you be entertaining?
Each platform has different ad specs. For example, if you’re running an image ad on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, each platform has a different image size – so you’ll need to create a different image for each platform. The same goes for videos – even on the same platform, ad sizes will be different in different areas. For example, an Instagram story ad is a vertical, narrow video, while an Instagram feed video is square.
Make sure to bucket your campaigns – separate concepts into ad groups, then within each ad group, create buckets for similar ads.
You should always test multiple ads to find the ones that perform best. Each platform works the same way – if you’ve got an ad that gets more engagement, it will be shown to more people. In other words, if you’re running two similar ads, and one gets zero clicks while the other gets multiple clicks, the ad that gets more engagement will be displayed more often and to more people.
It’s important to monitor your ads – since they’re on social media, users can leave reactions and comments. Negative comments will help you determine if your ad is poorly targeted or if it could be improved. Positive comments show brand affinity – and that your ad is reaching the right audience. Sometimes you might even get questions, and it’s important to answer them quickly and show those users that you’re on top of things.
Each social ad platform will provide analytics to provide performance metrics. You’ll be able to monitor engagement, conversions, cost, and other important data points. Check your data often – you need to see which campaigns are on target and if any of your ads are misfiring. If you’re running multiple ads, you’ll be able to see which is performing better.
As always, test, and keep testing. Your goal is to maximize exposure and conversions within your budget.
So that’s it for the social media marketing lesson of the digital marketing for business owners module. We hope you learned something awesome.
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