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Social media advertising: 5 steps to follow to successful campaigns

Did you know that more than 60% of the global population uses social networks today? That represents at least five billion users! The uptake of social media is increasing every year, and in 2023 there were 173 million new active users.

In the advertising world, it is paramount to have a solid advertising strategy, as this can make all the difference. By relying on accurate metrics and data, advertisers can create powerful campaigns that reach the right people at the right time. Maximizing the success of social network ad placements requires understanding and effective use of key metrics.

How? With Social Ads of course! By understanding your audience and creating appealing visuals, you can achieve the results you want. Discover the best practices that will lead you to successful campaigns.

Set up your media strategy

When it comes to social network advertising, the first step is to define advertising objectives. It is important to align your objectives with your broader business objectives and strategic information specific to your company and competitors. Always weigh advertising performance against desired profitability and your business model.

We are exclusively discussing about SMART objectives: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound. For example, we may aim to “increase sales of product A on the website by 25% before December 31st” or “enhance new customer acquisition for service B by 15% through our social networking platforms by the end of this month”.

In this case, our objective is specific and refers to a particular product. We know that the data and the media to base it on, which makes it measurable. It is challenging enough to motivate us, but not so high as to make it unattainable, making it achievable. We are confident that the company has the necessary resources, hence, it is realistic. Moreover, it is time-bound, as it is framed by precise dates, making it possible to monitor performance.

The next step is to analyze your competitors: what they offer, the channels they use and their strategic resources. Ideally, you should also analyze how your competitors interact with their users. That may involve the tone and words used when communicating with them online. Keep a close eye on their best practices to better understand their successes or failures when it comes to advertising on social networks.

Put yourself in your customers’ shoes and identify the added value that you offer, or services provide. This will help you understand what your customers value and what sets you apart from the competition. Your ability to attract new prospects depends on your understanding of their interests and needs. You must be the solution to their problems, pain points, or concerns. Therefore, always prioritize the notion of perceived value in the offers you make to your customers.

Define your audience and set up a spending plan for your budget

The key to an effective Social Ads strategy is to properly segment your audience. This will help you deliver a relevant message to the right people and increase your audience’s interest in your offers and services.

To begin, it is important to identify your various audiences into three groups: cold, warm, and hot. Cold refers to those who are not yet familiar with your brand, warm refers to those who have interacted with your content or visited your website, and hot refers to those who have already made a purchase, filled out a form, or made contact in some other way. Properly segmenting your audiences will help ensure that you can send the appropriate messages to the right people on the right social media platforms at the right time.

Next, identify your primary audiences from your secondary audiences. Your secondary audiences share common characteristics with your core audiences, such as similar interests or online behaviors. However, they will not benefit from the same budget placement efforts because they do not represent your core target.

Take a concrete example: suppose your store sells soccer equipment, and you decide to promote your products online. Your primary audience would be people who play soccer on a regular basis, and your secondary audience would be people who play another sport and currently have only a passing interest in soccer.

Allow platform algorithms to learn more about potential new audiences. Constantly test your ads on social networks with broader audiences (broad targeting), rather than targeting more specific audiences (narrow targeting). You might be surprised to discover which other targets are interested in your products or services.

Once you have done that set a fixed budget that you are prepared to spend over a given period. You need to limit spending in the test phases at the start of your advertising campaigns, and gradually increase it as the performance of certain campaigns stands out. This will avoid spending all your budget on campaigns that do not perform and help you to achieve profitability more quickly on your advertising strategy. Remember to avoid increasing your investments too quickly, as the success of you advertising campaign depends on many factors. It is best to gradually increase your budget while ensuring that performance is maintained.

Find the most relevant creatives

As the cost of acquiring customers rises, finding ways to stand out from the competition becomes increasingly essential. One of the most effective ways to do this is to focus on the quality of your creative materials. Whether eye-catching visuals, engaging text or a thoughtful brand message, investing in high-quality creative can help you capture the attention of potential customers and generate more interaction from them. Consider the importance of your creatives. They could well be the key to success in today’s ultra-competitive market.

  • Polish your visuals

Ensure that your visuals are compelling enough to appeal to your target audience. From typography to content, these are important elements that will ensure your users show interest in what you have to offer. Promote your brand or company. Furthermore, a wide range of options is available to enhance the creative quality of your ads on social networks. For example, some platforms provide tools to automatically optimize content on creatives. These tools include features such as cropping images or videos, enlarging an image to fill in the background, changing the speed of a video without sound, and even creating a video from static images.

  • Make your advertising message stand out

Take the time that you need to write effective texts to encourage your audience to take action. Also, experiment with different versions of taglines and see which tone or words appeal most to your users. Keep in mind the following elements:

  • A great tagline (will act as a scroll stopper)
  • Spark interest (by arousing emotions)
  • Call to action (by encouraging your readers to take concrete action)

The key to communicating your message effectively is to grab the attention of your target audience in the first few seconds. You can do this with a headline or opening statement that directly catches your target’s eye or ear. This could, for example, be a powerful catchphrase that your audience can identify with. Once you have captured their attention, it is imperative to present them with thoroughly researched and highly convincing evidence that leaves them with no choice but to act on your offers, products, or services. Additionally, the more optimized your creative is, the higher the likelihood of improving your return on advertising investment.

  • Make the most of your offer

Designing a successful ad requires careful consideration of the offer you’re presenting. Take the time to analyze it and ask yourself the following questions:

  • Is my offer sufficiently convincing to grab my target’s attention?
  • How does it correspond to its specific needs and desires?
  • Is it presented in such a way as to encourage them to act?

By ensuring that your offer is both attractive and relevant, you’ll increase your chances of success and achieve your advertising objectives more easily.

Analyze your results

Carefully analyze your campaign performance. Simply launching your campaigns online and observing the results at the end of the period is not enough. In fact, the success of your campaigns depends on how they are constructed and the adjustments you make at various points after they go live. To make informed decisions and have an accurate opinion of your campaign’s performance, you need to understand and interpret the appropriate performance indicators.

Customized reports based on your advertising or business objectives can be generated to help you achieve this goal. Most campaign management platforms offer this facility.

Run your campaigns for a few hours before analyzing their performance. Avoid making sudden changes to your advertising campaign. Wait until you are out of the learning phase before making any adjustments. If you notice any significant discrepancies in your campaign’s performance, identify the causes as soon as possible. Once you have identified the cause, you can make the necessary adjustments to optimize your social network advertising and achieve better results more quickly.

Constantly testing

Building a successful advertising strategy on social platforms requires diligent observation of results and ongoing testing with new creative formats. By running A/B tests and analyzing your key metrics, you can gather valuable insights into the visual formats of your most popular ads and the engagement rates of your online content based on your creative elements. The more you test, the faster you will identify which ad format works best, allowing you to adjust your spending on each campaign accordingly.

When creating variations of your ads, consider modifying only one of the elements at a time to enable precise targeting. This will allow you to identify specific aspects that need improvement, or those that are working effectively and on which you should focus.

Ensure that you run your tests on smaller-budget campaigns as much as possible to avoid wasting too much of your overall budget.

Regardless of how well your campaigns have performed so far, it is essential to continuously test new versions of your campaigns. A campaign that works well today may be as successful tomorrow! To find the most effective formula, try out different types of creative, audiences, and offers. By conducting careful testing, you can quickly replace underperforming ads and optimize your campaigns to maintain a high return on investment (ROI).

Social network advertising is a significant aspect of digital ad placement. However, successful campaigns require careful consideration of strategic planning. To fully capitalize on the vast audience present on social media, you need to create relevant ads that effectively capture the attention of your target audience. This will enable you to maximize the potential of your social media campaigns and achieve your marketing objectives.

Questions to ask yourself?

  • Are your online advertising campaigns well-planned from start to finish?
  • Do you adjust your approach according to the results obtained at each stage of your online advertising?
  • Are you properly optimizing your social media campaigns?

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    Bibliography

    Gué.V. (2022, 8 February). Social Media Advertising : 8 techniques pour des publicités efficaces. Accessed 15 December 2023. HubSpot. Online

    (n.d). (2023, 19 October). LES DERNIERS CHIFFRES DU NUMÉRIQUE. Accessed 15 December 2023. We Are Social France. Online

    (n.d). (2020, 24 August). Comment réussir votre stratégie Social Ads ? Accessed 15 December 2023. Sharing. Online.

    Sieliutina.I. (2023, 11 January). Broad vs. Narrow Targeting: Attracting the Right Audience with DSP. Accessed 15 December 2023. SmartyAds. Online

    Kopp. M. (2023, 20 February). Ad Creatives : tester intelligemment, obtenir des résultats optimaux. Accessed 15 December 2023. raidboxes. Online.  

    Written by
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    Romain Modard

    Social media manager

    info@billy.social

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    2024-01-16T14:25:05-05:00