- +1 310 791-6300
Menu
Consumers today require an omnichannel experience and social media platforms are making it easier to sell or incite an action directly from your Social Media channels. Your Social Media Marketing plan should include an organic posting strategy along with a strategic Social Media Advertising plan. It should also include the many different selling tools that each platform now offers. Every Social Media platform has different options when it comes to your paid advertising objectives and ad types. Seek a professional ad manager (or do your research and A/B testing) to strategize and manage your results and improve the ROI over time. Before designing your campaigns, determine your goals (for example, an increase in sales, donations, leads, followers, fans, etc.) and your objectives (the actions you want them to take most: clicks, links, purchases, visits, sign-ups, registrations, subscriptions). To get the best results, monitor your social media analytics and campaigns to ensure that you are getting the most from your investment and not wasting your ad dollars. It’s important to identify any problems quickly and then adapt your strategy, art, content, headlines, videos, keywords, and landing pages for better results. If you need help, contact us here.
I always remind my clients to think of social media as a link to point prospects and customers back to your website, shopping cart or landing pages (for signups and donations) as much as possible. That traffic will improve your website SEO and direct traffic where you want it. You may never own a Social Media platform, but your website gains value with every person who visits it, and that added traffic enhances its value until the day you sell your website, your business, or both. Your website is where you are in charge. Unlike relying on a Social Media platform for contacts, your website will not change overnight without your approval or lock you out or dramatically reduces your traffic with an update. So, use social to build up your lists and website traffic, not the other way around.
Different Social Media platforms offer different demographics of the people who use them most. It is important that your Media Planner takes into consideration who the target market is for each platform your company decides to optimize for your marketing plan. If your target market uses one platform more than another one, that fact should weigh more heavily in your decision about the platform in which to invest your time and budget. One of the biggest values of social media advertising and reach is that there are interests, demographics, locations, and attributes that allow you to focus in on exactly the type of person who is most likely to become your customer. The more you know about your target market, the more cost effective your advertising results will be. Do your homework before running any ads so that you are sure to increase your ROI with every campaign.
Posting from a Social Media platform should be strategic. Each post should be designed to appeal to your target market and should contain content (keywords) they seek or content that ties your company with a solution they need. Posts should also be branded for your company. There should be a marketing strategy to get other users and influencers from that Social Media platform to follow, share, and review your product or service. To accomplish that goal, your Social Media strategy should be understood by your staff, particularly those making the actual posts. This process should include a company policy to ensure that the content and tone of your social media posts are appropriate and professional. Also make sure your posts are linked to your website to improve your website’s optimization. If you have a popular personal page and you are posting there as well as your business page, you should be pointing folks to your business page and asking them to like it, since that is the only public area representing your business (personal pages rely on invitations and acceptance by friends). Business Pages on these platforms are public by nature, therefore they can be seen by everyone (including Google Search), and you can buy advertising on them as well.
For businesses, 80% of your social media posts should be helpful content that gives your followers a reason to continue to follow your social media page. The other 20% of posts should lead to your product or services or aim to achieve your marketing goals. Organic posts and audience engagement adds Social Proof to your Page which gives your company a better rating and lower advertising costs. Pages without Social Proof will be charged more per click. Remember to maximize engagement and point followers to your best website or landing pages with relevant content for them. Read more about Content Marketing here.
Social Media paid advertising can bring more people to your website, your shopping cart, or your store and add more subscribers and donors to your organization. In fact, you can even sell directly from some social media platforms. Use their advertising tools to create more awareness and social proof by promoting the best-received organic posts. When you pay for visibility on Social Media, it provides you an opportunity to ensure your message reaches beyond your past customers and followers. You can create a custom audience, you can buy access to the audience you want to target most, and you can add a Lookalike Audience based on your best customer’s demographics and interests. It’s important to include links and action buttons to your promotions to achieve your best ROI. Every Social Media platform has different options when it comes to your paid advertising objectives and ad types. Be sure to seek a professional ad manager or do your research and A/B testing to manage your results and improve the ROI over time. To get the best results, paid digital paid need to be monitored along with analytics to ensure that you are getting the most from your investment. Before you even begin designing your campaigns, it is key to set your goals (sales, donations, subscribers, or followers) and your objectives (clicks, links, purchases, visits, sign-ups). Then you can monitor if your goals are being realized by your campaigns. If not, you want to discover this quickly and then adapt your art, content, keywords, or landing pages for better results.
Two of the most effective Social Media platforms today are Facebook and Instagram. Demographics are younger for Instagram than Facebook, with Facebook reaching a considerably wider general audience. WhatsApp is also owned by Meta and allows limited advertising by using Click-to-WhatsApp as a Chat vehicle to connect audiences directly to your sales team. Of course, you can also use Facebook Messenger, Instagram Direct Message, or add your preferred Chat plugin or Chatbot as an alternative action to take. WhatsApp has a higher use for international sales as it offers a wide international audience who rely on WhatsApp for connecting with their friends and families from other countries. WhatsApp ads are currently limited to use in Facebook, Instagram Newsfeed, Facebook Marketplace, Facebook Stories, Instagram Stories, and Instagram Explore.
Most social media platforms offer the opportunity to advertise beyond the reach of your organic posts (which are only seen by your friends, fans, and followers on that platform–when they are online). In addition to your organic reach, you can buy ads to reach more people within your area or in new markets, and you can target your market using your databases, the demographics, or their interests. Today you really must “pay to play” if you want your posts and promotions to be seen beyond your most loyal connections (people who would have to be online close to the time when you are posting, in order to see them at that time). The good news is that it is very cost effective if you take the time to target the right audiences. Social media paid ads are available on most popular platforms including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, WhatsApp, Snapchat, TikTok, and more.
Using Paid Ad Types and Objectives on Meta Platforms (Facebook and Instagram and more limited on WhatsApp) allows you to set up ads based on your goals or Call-To-Action (CTA). The best Digital Media campaigns employ and measure many different types of ads and objectives and are monitored to ensure they are still delivering a good ROI. To that end, you can choose two directions and then choose your ad type from the following.
Traffic Goals: Paid Per Click (PPC) moves traffic from Social Media platform ads to a website or landing page. You only pay when someone takes the action your ad is designed to elicit.
Impressions Ads: Emphasize reach with pricing based on maximizing the number of people exposed to your ads.
Once you choose your objective above, you can select from the following ad types.
Twitter started as a communication Short Message Systems network that limited users to a message size of only 140 characters. Today it has expanded the character count to 280. You can also add images and videos to your tweets. It is also used in the PR, entertainment, and news industry for breaking news and engaging with influencers. Twitter advertising offers two options for brands to create ads.
TikTok is extremely popular with younger users and influencers because it allows users to set up preferences and establishes a For You feed and TikTok Challenges. It also comes with some baggage; users do not have the same privacy protections for their data as they do in countries with laws regarding data use and privacy. TikTok’s audience is growing, and advertisers are investing in this platform. TikTok ads primarily focus on product ads which appear as native videos on users’ feeds. The ads are full-screen and appear for nine seconds, just like an organic TikTok post. A user can tap the Shop Now button, which brings them directly to the merchant’s ecommerce site to complete their checkout. Besides in-feed ads, TikTok offers Brand Takeovers, to display your ad as soon as a user opens the app, or a Branded Hashtag Challenge, which encourages user-generated content through trending hashtags and fun video challenges, like a popular dance or creative filter.
Like Instagram, Pinterest is a highly visual platform, built on the wedding industry and expanded from there into a major retail and service advertising platform. Pinterest allows users to establish Boards to which they pin images, designs, products, services, and ideas that resonate with them. They often build Boards based on categories and Pinterest has one of the most impressive Search Engines which helps other users see Pins that have the same category and description as their search. Pinterest’s search engine looks to descriptions, keywords, and categories to bring together many products that meet your requirements. Users even set up Boards for their wish list Boards when it comes to birthday gifts, home improvements, bridal registries, and more. Based on these capabilities, Pinterest users grew exponentially worldwide. Pinterest use also grew because people searched for products and services in short supply during the pandemic.
Advertising on Pinterest starts organically. If advertisers and Brands create Pins and Boards correctly highlighting their products and services, Pinterest users will share those Pins as they build their own Boards. While Pinterest started out with a primarily female audience, it has expanded to the home improvement and architectural fields (among many others), with some users designing Boards to share with their clients, thereby bringing all the elements of a design project together.
Advertising on Pinterest is similar to Facebook regarding promoting images, videos, and offering multiple ad types. The difference is that on Pinterest, promoted Pins fit into the feed easily and 85% of pinners have purchased from a pin directly. Pinterest ads require that you first pick an objective: Brand Awareness, Video View, Traffic, Conversions, or Catalog Sales, and then you can select the ad type: Standard Pins, Carousel Ads, Video Pin Ads, Shopping Pins, or App Install Pins. Remember that the goal of Pinterest is to get users to create boards and pins, and the goal of advertisers is to create pins and boards that users will share. The fact that every Pin can include a link and keyword-rich description brings shoppers directly to the brand’s shopping cart. On the other hand, retailers will want to Pin manufacturer looks but ensure the link goes to their own store shopping cart or catalog pages.
LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with a large, currently employed user base. It also is the Social Media platform with the highest average income. That is also because LinkedIn is used more for Business to Business (B2B) advertising and hiring posts, unlike the other social media platforms. Because every profile is based on a resume, Service and B2B product businesses tend to get better results on LinkedIn. Paid LinkedIn Users and Advertisers can target individuals based on job qualifications, titles, groups, associations, or accreditations. Thus, LinkedIn advertising is largely geared toward a business or organization audience. It is also extremely valuable for companies looking for experienced or new employees.
LinkedIn offers 4 types of ads.
Streaming on social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are one way to get the attention of your target market. Which is why it is so important that you identify a target market before determining which social media channel you should use and how best to connect. When possible, add or consider Influencer content as part of your marketing mix as you expand in this medium. Remember that you are trying to expand your market with people who match the profile of your best customers. If you are a shopping site, remember to check out Amazon Live, which allows purchasers to buy during a broadcast.
© 2019- Tailor-made Advertising. All rights reserved
Made with ❤ by UmeWorks
