Simply put, social network marketing is any marketing that takes place on social networks. Needless to say, this is an essential tool in every entrepreneur’s arsenal these days. Typically, paid ads are shown to new people who don’t know your brand. So, in a way, it’s a form of cold contact.
Earlier, I was talking about a social media posting strategy. That covered the organic aspect of a social network. In this blog, I’m going to talk about how to approach the paid aspect of a social network for marketing.
It is important to properly plan the social media ads as they will have to spend money. Here are some of the things I recommend you do.
- Make your goals clear: What exactly do you want from a social media ad? This is the first question that needs to be answered. Maybe you want to make your company better known. Or you want to add to your email list. Or maybe you want your social media accounts to generate more sales this year. Your goals determine your ad strategy and the amount of time and energy you need to invest in your campaigns.
- Do you know the benchmarks: It’s bad news for marketers to make assumptions about expected costs and results. Much of the information you need to create a social media marketing plan is already there. Before starting your campaign, do some research to determine the typical cost of campaigns on different platforms for your industry. You will also find conversion percentages that can be used to calculate how many people must see the ad before launching it.
- Know your audience: Before looking at campaigns, find out who your target audience is and make sure they represent your target market. Your campaign should be aimed at those who are most likely to be interested in your offer. The most common method is to define a target group based on age, location and interests. You can add more granularity by adding filters for income level, educational status, job title, and so on.
- Do you know the right platform for you: There is a perfect media platform for every company, and it doesn’t always have to be the most popular. Do not overwhelm yourself or your budget. Instead, focus on the social media platforms that your target audience is already active on.
- Facebook: Typically used by B2C brands. Facebook offers the most comprehensive interest-based targeting available. You can easily create different audiences to get good results. However, it is not considered a good platform for B2B companies targeting people based on their job profile.
- Instagram: An extension of Facebook that offers the same interest-based marketing options. However, Instagram audiences are younger and prefer flashy ads.
- LinkedIn: The only platform for job profile targeting. It’s a great platform for B2B companies that allows them to match people based on their company name, job profile, seniority, etc.
- YouTube: YouTube ads require high quality production to create crisp video ads. If you can get your message across in the first few seconds, YouTube can be a great option for you to build brand awareness.
- Create an easy-to-use value proposition: If you want to stand out from the competition, work on your value proposition. A value proposition is what your audience will get when they click on your ad. Often times, companies are so focused on selling, that’s what their ad is about. Remember, however, that it takes a user a lot of interactions with a company to buy from them. So the ad goal should be something that brings the user one step closer to selling. Brand awareness and giving away free content work very well for marketing on social networks. And to make your value proposition more attractive, use simple images and language to get your message across.
- Keep an eye on the analytics: Using the analytics area in your social media campaign can be of great help. Analytics provide useful information to identify gaps in your strategy and identify strengths and weaknesses. Even the best ads stop when they run out of audience size. Tracking the analyzes will help you identify any performance issues early on.
- Know your KPIs: KPIs are key performance indicators that give you information about the performance of your ad. When you look at your analytics, you’ll know which metrics to consider. Don’t look! Your metric depends on what your goal was.
- Brand awareness metrics: Reach is the most common metric for this goal. This is the number of unique users who saw your ad.
- Engagement Metrics: Likes, video views, and website clicks are the common metrics used to measure engagement.
- Conversion Metrics: Downloads, lead form filling out, messages, and sales are the conversion metrics to track.
When running paid campaigns, a daily or weekly evaluation is required to keep track of the progress of your campaign. These real-time campaign metrics allow you to make small tweaks to your social media marketing strategy instead of making massive, time-consuming changes all at once. You can use various tools to analyze and measure the progress of your ongoing campaign in order to track the progress. But in my opinion, the built-in analysis tools are usually sufficient for any platform.
There is no doubt that a lot of social media marketing is a learning curve. But a sharp, focused look at your digital activities can help you put things into a strategic plan. Start on a small budget, but give the campaign plenty of time before evaluating the results. Once you are sure that your ad is working, you can scale it to take advantage of its benefits.
Author: Pallavi Tyagi
Pallavi advises startups, small businesses and NGOs in the field of digital marketing. Their goal is to get small businesses to think strategically about their marketing and use multiple channels together.
She is also a marketing coach and startup mentor. She has several workshops for prospective … Show complete profile >
