With over 5 billion users worldwide, social media platforms prove to be the most powerful tools for business owners. Even for a small enterprise, there are hundreds – if not thousands – of potential customers actively looking for their offers on social media. If you want to harness this market share quickly and effectively, it might be time for you to consider social media advertising.
In this post, we’ll walk you through the basics of social media advertising and the steps in launching your first campaign. We’ll also explain why it’s smart to partner with a social media management company to make sure you get the best ROI from this strategy.
How does social media advertising work?
Social media advertising uses paid media to give your accounts an instant visibility boost. This includes ‘Sponsored’ Reels, stories, in-stream videos, shop ads, and more. You can also launch your ads as ‘Paid Promotions’ or as paid partnerships with influencers.
All these are intended to show up to a specific group of users who fall within your pre-set metrics. Take note that users don’t necessarily have to follow you to see your ads – it will target them based on their preferences, user behavior, and other parameters.
Although social media ads are branded, they are often designed to look native to the platform. This means it can be challenging to discern it from organic posts, making it even more effective in targeting users who are likely interested in what you offer.
Why should you use social media advertising services
Let’s say you already have a substantial following, you’re probably wondering, why would you need an Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook ad campaign?
The answer is simple: follower count is not everything in social media marketing. It’s also about the quality of your followers and how well they can convert.
With social media advertising, you can show your content to social media users who are likely interested in what you offer. The best part? Your reach isn’t limited to your follower base.
Here’s why business owners like yours are shifting their ad budget to paid social media marketing services:
- Low cost, high ROI. Pay-per-click or PPC advertising in social media can give you as much as 200% ROI on your ad spend. Also, you’ll only spend once someone clicks your advertisements, giving you full control of your budget.
- More quality leads. Since social media ads have targeting options, your ads will only show up to users who are more likely to make a purchase. These quality leads will boost your conversion and make your sales team busier and more profitable.
- Better engagement. Social media ads can also bring in more likes, shares, comments, and engagement that will boost your brand. This will help you attract more customers even if you’re no longer running your ad campaigns.
- Increased brand awareness. Take note that conversions aren’t always the direct goal of social media advertising. This strategy is also a good way to spread the word about your business, which will eventually help you attract more clients in the future.
- Granular targeting. A Facebook, TikTok, or Instagram ad campaign allows you to target potential customers based on their behavior on the platform as well as their personal demographics.
The biggest platforms for social media advertising
Sure, social media advertising is effective, but the question is, which platform should launch campaigns on? Here’s where your brand could shine in terms of paid ads:
- Facebook. Need we say more? As the biggest social media platform in the world, Facebook is teeming with potential customers, which you can target based on their location, preferences, personal demographic, and more. And if you’re interested, our Facebook ad management services can get you started right away.
- Instagram. Instagram allows you to run advertising using photos, videos, stories, Reels, carousels, and more. Since this platform is also owned by Facebook, you can use various Meta tools and targeting, too.
- TikTok. TikTok took the internet by storm and it also sent marketers into an advertising frenzy. It has more than 88 million users and its e-commerce section is booming, which gives B2C companies the perfect platform to advertise and market their offers.
- LinkedIn. For B2B companies, LinkedIn would be a great platform for advertising, specifically for companies in finance, consulting, tech, and professional industries.
Steps in launching your first social media advertising campaign
Creating and launching your very first social media ad may seem overwhelming, but you can use these steps as starting points:
Step 1. Identify your target audience
First, you have to define who you want to target on your social media ad campaigns. For this, you need to perform market research to understand your audience’s pain points and how your offers can solve these problems.
By identifying your buyer’s persona, you can create better messaging for your ads and establish your campaign goals. Ask yourself what you want to achieve with these ads. Do you want to boost conversions, awareness, or followers?
You can start with general goals and narrow them down as you get actual results later on. This way, you can refine your ad campaigns to target more customers and increase your bottom line.
But if you want to skip the guesswork, you can always partner with a social media management agency like Top Position to handle your ad campaigns. Our specialists will do the market research and planning to ensure your ads attract as many customers as possible.
Step 2. Plan your ad budget
So, you already set your goals and defined your buyer persona. The next thing you have to think about is your ad budget.
To identify how much you’ll spend on your ads, you can look at industry benchmarks and guides to calculate your PPC budget.
The good thing is that pay-per-click (PPC) offers flexibility in terms of ad spend. You can set a daily budget, which means your ad will only run until that allowance is exhausted.
This way, you won’t accidentally overspend. It will also allow you to scale your social media budget slowly as you get results and data to improve your campaigns.
Step 3. Create compelling ad content
The next step is to create the copy and creatives that will capture the attention of your target audience. Here are some of the essential elements of an ad that converts:
- Compelling visuals. You should use high-quality images or videos so they will stand out on your targeted users’ feeds.
- Concise messaging. Social media users have short attention spans, so you’d want to keep your copy brief. It’s best to highlight your value proposition straight away.
- Strong call-to-action. Make sure your ad will tell social media users what they should do next. This should be direct CTAs like ‘Shop Now’, ‘Learn More’, ‘Call Now’, and so on.
Step 4. Setting up targeting options
Each social media ad platform has its own set of targeting options you can maximize to attract quality leads. Here are some of them:
- Demographic targeting. This works by targeting social media users by their location, age, gender, and more. It’s very effective for businesses with service areas that want to attract customers nearby.
- Interest-based targeting. You can use this to target potential customers based on their hobbies, interests, and behaviors on social media. This includes their previous purchases or engagements with various types of content.
- Custom audience targeting. Platforms like Facebook will let you upload a list of leads or customers who are already familiar with your brand. You can also target them based on engagement or interactions with your social media profile.
- Lookalike audience targeting. Once you’ve set up a custom audience, you can use the ‘lookalike’ feature. This lets you target customers who share the same characteristics as your existing ones.
Step 5. Launch and monitor your campaign performance
You can now launch your first social media ad! Still, you should remember that paid ads are not a set-it-then-forget-it strategy. You have to monitor its daily performance and perform A/B testing for social media to see which ad version attracts the most customers.
It’s important to define your key performance indicators (KPIs), so you can measure your campaign’s success objectively. The most common KPIs are a number of impressions, click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, cost-per-click (CPC), and return on ad spend (ROAS).
Aside from that, you can continue to refine your strategy with new social media campaign ideas you’ll get along the way.
Partner with Top Position for advertising that drives revenue!
If you’re ready to get more customers from social media, all you have to do is contact us at Top Position. We have a team of specialists who craft, launch, and monitor your social media ad campaigns to drive the highest possible ROI to your business.
Be it Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, or other platforms, our social media management services will give you ads that work.
All you have to do is book a free consultation with us today and let’s discuss how we can convert your business’s social media presence into revenue. Reach out to us today, and let’s talk!
