Social Media Advertising 101: How to Get the Most Out of Your Ad Budget

When it comes to paid social media advertising, it’s critical to your brand’s success that you get the most out of your budget. In this post we’ll highlight four things you need to consider before developing your social media advertising strategy to ensure you get the most bang for your buck. Once you consider these four areas you should be in a good place to see success with your social media advertising campaign.

Determine who your audience are and research them 

Before you try to sell to your audience, you first must understand who they are and research them. Refining who your audience is, is important in any type of advertising, but especially important in social media advertising. You also should try to find out as much about your audience as possible. The best social media advertising strategies are devised with the audience in mind; the more information you have about them, the easier that is. Determining who your audience is will help inform your decisions for points two and three as well as giving you a feel for how your brand is positioned currently, and how you want it to be positioned in the future. 

Establishing factors like your target audience’s age and gender will allow you to make more informed decisions. You should also find out what consumers think about yours and your competitor’s products currently, what their interests are, how they spend their time etc. These are all things to find out about your audience before enlisting any social media advertising services.

Decide on a platform

Now you know who your audience are, you need to decide which social media platforms to use in your social media advertising. Different demographics use and interact with social media platforms in different ways. You should use the platform that’s audience demographics best align with your target audience. TikTok, for example, skews younger when it comes to age whereas Facebook skews slightly older. There’s plenty of data and information out there when it comes to which types of people use which social medias but below is one table breaking social media use by various demographics.

You don’t need to focus on just one platform with your social media advertising campaign; you can consider taking a blended approach. However, you must make sure that the demographics of the users of the chosen social media platforms match the demographics of your target audience.

Decide your message

Facebook users, on average, spend just 1.7 seconds with a piece of mobile content. With this in mind, your social media advertising needs to hook the user’s attention immediately in order to have a chance of making them consider your ad. The key to making your ad immediately engaging is to come up with a single, focused message. Your product might have multiple KSPs but trying to communicate all of them in a single ad is not advisable. 

With your newly researched data on your audience, you should be able to devise a single-minded proposition for your social media advertising. The scrolling user, within their 1.7 seconds, should be able to tell you what the product can do for them because the message is clear and not confused.

Decide on the type of ad

Photo ads: In a Facebook study, photo ads were found to outperform other ad formats in bringing in unique traffic. This can probably be attributed to the fact that photo ads immediately present the product to the customer (keep those 1.7 seconds in mind). They can also include a clear call-to-action like ‘Download Now’. Photo ads also have the advantage of being the simplest social media advertising formats to produce.

Video ads: Studies show that the longer a video is, the less likely audiences are to watch all of it. Your video ads need to hook the audience quickly. Looping ads that automatically play are advisable as users can view these quickly and interact with it as they scroll.

Stories ads: The advantage of building stories ads into your social media advertising is that they play in full screen meaning your product is in the full focus of your customer’s view. An Instagram Business survey revealed that half of surveyed users said that they’ve visited a website to purchase a product as a result of viewing it on a Stories ad.

Conclusion

By considering these four things, you should be able to devise an effective strategy to stretch your social media advertising budget and convert your spend into genuine awareness and purchase consideration.  

Our Influencer marketing agency and Social agency are located worldwide, with our agency network based in the USA, UK, UAE and China.

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