5 Ways to Create Better Paid Social Media Advertising Campaigns

Like everything else in life, your digital advertising strategy requires balance to thrive. Adding social media advertising services to your digital advertising mix ensures you capitalize on the 2.4 billion people around the world that are on at least one social media platform. Think of paid social media advertising as the yin to your Google Ads yang, both are crucial to the online success of your business.

Cultivating a paid social media advertising strategy that works takes time, testing, and the right user-experience to drive conversions, but the results can be well worth it. Close to 42% of the world’s population (about 3.2 billion people) use social media channels each day, making social media a great place to engage users where they already are. Further, 27% of online users say they find new brands and products from social media ads. Brands these days can’t afford to miss out on this digital opportunity.

While no two digital advertising strategies are the same, we’ve found some tried and true methods that are important to the success of any paid social media advertising campaign. Here’s what our paid search experts have to say:

Build Unique Audiences

Using Facebook’s audience builder tool is an easy way to find potential customers for your ads that may not have been included in your scope before. Facebook allows you to refine audiences based on a number of data points such as location, age, gender, time user is active, device, and interests such as education, politics, job position, and more. Utilizing this data allows you to drill down to bring awareness to users with interests similar to your brand’s product or service.

Use Audience Insights to Your Advantage

There are endless ways to use Facebook’s targeting features to your advantage and build audiences that convert. Another helpful feature to take advantage of is Facebook’s Audience Insights tool. Facebook allows you to track who visits your website, how long they stay, and even what pages they click on. Form here, you can drill down into the interests and demographics of these users to help build a starting point for your next campaign. Having this information is also useful for dissecting how your ads are achieving your goals. 

Isolate and Test Ads

When it comes to paid advertising, the term “A/B Testing” gets thrown around a lot. This is when two different variations of an ad are shown to an audience to provide insight on what resonates best with users. During testing, having patience is key. Isolating each variable of a digital ad, whether it be the headline, text, or creative lets you examine exactly which elements are successful so that you can adjust ads accordingly. The best way to do this is to run your campaign for a week or two to gather data and then choose the top-performing ad. Once you’ve found the ad that works best, switch out one element at a time and record your results. Doing this will help you optimize your current campaign and can give you a good starting point for the next.

Incorporate Eye-catching Creative

Partnering with a graphic designer to come up with complementary imagery for your ad copy is a step that can’t be overlooked. When dealing with Facebook and Instagram ads, having the right imagery can inspire users to learn more about your products or services. Incorporating bold colors, and elements that showcase how your product works are highly effective. Using motion graphics or short videos can be a great tactic for including more information and better showcasing your product as well. Taking it a step forward, your creative should also match the theme of your landing page. This provides users with a seamless experience and more impactful experience when traveling from your ad to your website.

Optimize for Mobile

Mobile device use continues to climb each year, with nearly two-thirds of all paid search ads coming from mobile devices. Ads shown on desktop displays often have more space to display text, whereas on mobile there is less real estate for your copy—meaning the imagery we mentioned before becomes even more important. When creating ads for mobile, it’s best to use vivid imagery that conveys your point, and short copy that includes calls to action.

Not only should your ads be optimized for mobile, but it’s associated landing page should be too. 51% of customers are more likely to purchase something from a mobile-optimized site and landing pages that don’t display correctly on mobile devices are known to drive customers away to competitor sites. Depending on your product and site, it may even be beneficial to create two separate versions of your landing page, one for desktop and one for mobile to ensure a good customer experience on any device.

Using Paid Social Media Advertising Services to Your Advantage

Leveraging social media advertising in your digital marketing strategy is a great way to find your audience on the channels they are already using. Every marketing strategy has its own specific quirks, but using audience insights, conducting testing, using solid creative, and optimizing ads for mobile; you can drive traffic that converts.

If you need help navigating the world of social media ads, we’ve got you covered. The digital advertising specialists at Cape & Bay work tirelessly to test and optimize ads so that brands like yours can get the most conversions at the lowest cost per click.

Ready to get social? Let’s chat.

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