Social Media Advertising enables business owners to target individuals who are not already following the account that they want to be advertised. It can also come about organically by generating followers on your account, joining conversations, or sharing your content to attract more followers/engagement. The key success to social media advertising is to create content to engage your viewers (making them want to comment and like your posts).
Benefits of using Social Media Advertising
- Brand awareness
- Greater reach
- Increased social and website traffic
- Improved search engine rankings
- Increased leads and higher conversion rates
- Cost-effective
- Highly measurable
- Audience targeting
- Increased Brand Loyalty
What is Engagement?
Engagement is one of the most important aspects of social media ads. Total Engagement is the number of engagements that a post has (usually includes likes, comments & shares). There are other types of engagement as well such as how many engagements a poll has, how many views a video has, how many times a post is clicked on, etc.
What is Reach?
Reach is the potential number of people that you have reached from your post.
What are Impressions?
Impressions are the the number of social media accounts that you have reached.
What is Engagement Rate?
Engagement rate is the number of engagements an account has divided by the number followers of the account. The alternative was to do the math is to calculate average engagements per post, and the number of posts would be the denominator.
Top 4 Types of Ads Most Likely to be Bought
- Promoted Post – A post that has already been published and are looking to promote it to either to a new audience, or your current audience. The method has become very popular in 2022 for social media marketers to use.
- Promoted Channel – Regularly used to increase followers on a specific account. (Promoted channels & promoted posts are different because promoted channels focus on gaining followers, whereas promoted posts look to get engagement from a specific post. Secondly, the promotion of a channel is more likely to not be attached to a campaign, whereas promoted posts can be and are specific to certain content).
- Sponsored Post – Look like regular posts but are meant to extend to a broader audience (this differs from a promoted post because it is trying to reach to a broader audience, rather than trying to reach to the existing fans the account has).
- Lead Ad – Enables advertisers to get information from potential customers right from an ad.
- Other Popular Ads – Texts ads (most likely used in Linkedin), Video Interstitials (video based ads, currently popular on Facebook & Youtube), and Sponsorships/Partnerships (used to promote trends, popular on TikTok or other social networks where brands want more of a challenge).
The Strategy
Step 1 – Select Goals
Step 2 – Select Target Market
Step 3 – Select Platforms
Step 4 – Select the Budget
Step 5 – Select the Ad Format
Step 6 – Consider the Ad Funnel
Step 7 – Develop the Content
Most Popular Social Media Advertising Platforms
- Facebook – most common for business owners and users to advertise and sell their products & enables companies to locate their target market within 5 miles.
- Instagram – known for the aesthetics and higher quality posts. The engagement rate is higher than Facebooks and holds a younger audience.
- Twitter – commonly used to find out news stories/information and connect with micro and macro influencers. The app offers Quick Promote (Twitter promotes your tweets to your target audience) and Twitter Ads (objective based ads).
- TikTok – popular for product ads and micro/macro influencing and brand takeovers. Ads are posted on different “For You” feeds and can be engaged with by watching the video, liking, and clicking on the “Shop Now” button.
- Pinterest – Based around clean and neat imagery. Promoted pins from companies show up on users boards and blend in so it isn’t obvious that they are ads. Recent studies show that 85% of weekly Pinners have bought something based on Pins they see from brands.
Common Types of Social Media Ads
- Photo Ads – Photo ads can usually be seen on news feeds, sidebars, and banners on other sites. They are a great way to spread brand awareness and bring traffic to your company. Another addition to photo ads that helps revenue is including “call to action” buttons such as “Shop Now” or “Learn More.”
- Video Ads: Give a company the opportunity to hook a potential customer through a short video. Recent studies show that most watchers engage with the videos more if they are under a minute.
- Stories Ads: It is very common for buyers to find shops or products they like through stories on social media platforms. Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat use stories the most.
- Messenger Ads: Ads are shown between conversations and can be clicked on to redirect the user to the website.
What to Remember Before Making an Ad
- Determine your budget. Some of the ad platforms, such as Facebook, offer an option to run your campaign and spend your budget evenly for you.
- Select the Type of Ad you will run and who your target market is
- It is important to run your ad on a platform that matches with your age range target market. For example, if you want to run an ad that will be mostly used for a younger audience you may want to use Instagram since 75% of 18-24 year olds use the platform.
- Make sure that your ad is relevant to your target audience.
- Create the Ad to be appealing to the eye and well organized.
Why Algorithms are Important
Since there is so much random content in the “social space,” algorithms are made to organize your feed so you see what you want and what is relevant to your account. As a marketer, is important understand different algorithms so you can succeed to reaching your target audience. The more engagements that a post or account has, the more it will be seen on the algorithm. To master this make sure to tag other accounts in posts, use hashtags, plan the exact date and time you post, understand trends, and post consistently on multiple social accounts.
Teaching Social Media 