Social Media Advertising - How to Get Started

59% of people across the world log into social media every day and a third of those will check their social media over 5 times a day. Social media advertising is a hugely effective way of advertising your business. It is a cost effective and often very quick way of reaching new target audiences as well as existing ones. You can also build your brand awareness and visibility through ads and increase traffic heading to your website.

How to create a social media advert?

Think about your budget

Social media is very cost effective compared to more traditional methods, in fact traditional methods can be 3x more expensive. This is a great advantage as it allows even those who are just starting out to reach bigger audiences. It is easy to set limits on your ad’s and allows you to adjust spending easily if you want to test various spending limits.

You can select the time period that you want these ads to run as well, with Facebook and Instagram putting in the hard work to distribute the budget evenly over the time period.

Choose the social media platform

It is important to consider your target audience when deciding which platform you use. As part of your marketing plan you should have considered your buying personas, so it is essential that you refer to these, as there is no one size fits all for social media advertising.

• Facebook – With over 2.6 billion monthly users from a younger audience all the way to a more senior audience, this is a great place to advertise. Facebook allows you to create very targeted ads, looking at elements such as age, location, interests etc.

• Instagram – This has a much younger audience, 75% of people aged between 18-25 year olds are on instagram. Instagram adverts are relatively non-intrusive and just appear on the feeds of your target audience.

• Twitter – this a great platform to target young to middle aged adults on social media. Many people find they use twitter more for business to business and industry knowledge and reach but it is worth considering as you only pay when the ad performs and it offers the ability to target by keywords.

• Google Ads – this allows you to advertise to people who are already actively looking for a business like yours. You can make your audience as niche as you want to tailor your advert.

Make your ad relevant

·      Remember to use those buyer personas to target their interests and needs. Think about the copy and imagery you use, is it focused toward the audience you are targeting?

·      Use A/B testing, this allows you to test your adverts out. Which image is getting more of a reaction? Which call to action received more engagement? Is one advert generating more sales? A/B testing is a great way of testing imagery, copy and campaign set up to see what provides the best results.

Design your ad

Social media is hugely visual, so how do you make your content stand out? You want to ensure that it looks on brand so that consumers instantly recognise you or continue to associate your advert with your brand.

Currently video is seen as one of the best converting formats with 64% of consumers saying that seeing a marketing video influences their buying decision.

Other things to consider also include, images, Call to actions, colours and fonts. It’s also really important to remember the placement of your ads, sometimes a particular image, video or text won’t display as expected on certain placements. For example, an advert on Facebook Desktop will look very different to Facebook Stories, where you may need to crop your imagery.

Measure success

One huge benefit of social media advertising is the instant ability to measure success with various metrics.

Depending on your goal you will use different metrics. For example, if you are looking to drive sales then you want to concentrate on the click through rate and conversions. If you are want to raise awareness, take a look at volume, reach and exposure.

Why not take a look at some of the businesses that have succeeded with Facebook advertising here

If you need help getting started with your social media advertising or you are really looking to increase focus in these areas, please get in touch.