TLDR: Simply boosting your brand’s social media posts isn’t the best use of your advertising budget.
Customize social media ads for success with these three key tips:
- Plan campaigns for the specific platform most likely to return your investment.
- Design ads that will use a specific customer persona to drive conversions.
- Configure your ad campaign settings to target the psychology of your customer persona with the behaviors backed by your audience data.
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Running ads on Instagram or Facebook is super easy when you click the “Boost Post” button. But “easy” doesn’t always equal “worth it.” While low-cost bursts of increased reach on your regular social media posts can help expose your brand to wider audiences, it’s not a reliable way to drive conversions to your actual products or services. The “boost post” strategy can be helpful, but for most teams with a conversion goal, it is a quick way to lose money on ad spend without a return.
To run successful social media ads, you’ll need a deep understanding and up-to-date awareness of social media platforms, plus customized intentions behind the campaign’s objectives, marketing psychology, and technological settings.
No, it’s not as simple as clicking “Boost.” But don’t worry, we’ve got all the info you need to get started. Here are our insights and recommended steps for running paid social media ads that are worth your money.
Plan Social Media Ads that Matter to Your Brand
Your business shouldn’t be on every social media platform if it’s not relevant to your audience. Similarly, you shouldn’t be running ads on every social media platform either.
You already know that no single ad is one-size-fits-all across networks, so planning per-platform ads is crucial. Depending on your audience’s behavior, the local and industry seasons, current online trends, and your promotional goals, it may also be smart to focus your ad strategy on one account at a time.
For example, if your brand’s audience is primarily on Instagram and LinkedIn, it may be more useful to start your Q1 ad campaign on LinkedIn rather than Instagram during January. Not only because many people are still in their post-holiday spending recovery, but also because it’s become common for New Year’s resolutions to include taking a break from social media, especially high-octane platforms like Instagram and TikTok. Once February rolls around, then you can shift your campaign onto Instagram to catch the people returning from their break.
By paying close attention to the digital landscape your business participates in, you can better align your ad plans and ad spend for success.
For paid ad pro-tips and best practices specific to the top social media networks, check out our blogs:
And for updated insights for all the major platforms’ algorithms and audience priorities, check out our latest Social Media Round-Up blog.
Design Social Media Ads with Solution Marketing in Mind
If you’re going to spend money on a social media ad campaign, you won’t want to throw any old post up and expect it to suddenly perform significantly better because of the increased reach alone. While more attention on your content is a generally good thing, boosting regular posts won’t generate revenue like an intentionally curated ad campaign will. Make the most of your ad spend by following these steps when designing your campaign:
- Solidify the angle or “hook” in your campaign. This is more than simply the purpose of your product or service you’re promoting—it’s the why behind it. What is the defining trait that your product/service has that sets it apart from your competitors, and why should your customers prioritize that difference in their decision-making process? Be specific yet relatable, because this will be the solution you’re targeting in your customers’ lives. For example, if you’re promoting a healthcare appointment-setting app that your brand has developed, your angle might be that using your app is more accessible for overworked parents compared to phone calls or web forms that they then have to keep track of themselves, because your app can integrate with their calendar app and push reminder notifications to the whole family.
- Create photo and video ads (assets) that highlight your “hook”. Some of your asset creation will, of course, depend on what platform your campaign will run on (portrait vs. landscape visuals, static images vs. video, caption character count, etc.), but filling out the pieces within those parameters is where your team’s content creators, copywriters, and social media specialists will shine. Use their expertise to craft attention-grabbing assets that focus on the angle you determined in Step 1. In the same example of a healthcare appointment-setting app, your ad assets might include Before & After videos of a momfluencer using the app instead of calling in for appointments, and the positive effect this has on the time, mood, and workload of both her and her family.
- Turn your “hook” into action. Use language in your Call-To-Action that speaks to your hook and tells them exactly what you are asking them to do (e.g. sign up for something, register for something, purchase something). This will help high-intent traffic flow into the latter stages of your marketing funnel, Loyalty and Advocacy, so that the rewards of your paid ad campaign keep paying off even after its scheduled end.
Configure Well-Targeted Social Media Ad Campaigns
Here is when the technology and psychology from the last two sections unite to push your social media ad campaign out into the world. You’re on your social media platform of choice and your customer persona in mind; now you just need to get your ad in front of those types of customers on that platform. This is where you can do so much more than a regular Boost allows.
Use data to refine your target audience and reach customers who match both your customer persona traits and the online behaviors required for conversion. Depending on any national or industry regulations and which platform you’re running the ad on, there will be varied levels of specification that you can target. For that high-intent traffic goal, get as specific as possible while still hovering in the estimated Reach/Clicks range needed to turn a profit on your ad spend.
During and after your ad campaign’s run, make sure you’re measuring its success. This is especially important if you’re A/B testing your ad sets (which you should be!). By checking the campaign’s performance throughout its lifespan, you can tweak settings as needed and gain valuable insights into factors such as placement priority, run length, and daily ad spend.
Pro-Tip: If you’re on a tight advertising budget from the jump, short run lengths targeted at high-intent audiences will be your best bet for getting a good return on investment. Not only will you maximize your ad spend on this campaign, but you’ll be gathering useful data to make even smarter decisions for future campaigns.
By implementing paid social media ad campaigns, your brand can maximize visibility and encourage leads to become lifetime customers. And with the ease (and pushiness) of “Boost Post” across platforms these days, it seems like running profitable paid ads on social media should be easy. But without a robust strategy behind it, paid ad campaigns can start to drain your social media budget.
If your brand needs more help to maximize your social media advertising spend with data-driven campaigns that deliver measurable results and growth, please Contact Us. At Go Getter Marketing Group, we offer Paid Ads creation and management services as well as Marketing Workshops & Trainings curated to empower your marketing team’s knowledge and skills.
FAQ
We wish it was that easy! While Boosted posts can help garner impressions from outside your existing audience, there’s no guarantee those posts will actually be seen by users who will be actionably enticed by them. If you’re going to spend money on a social media ad, your budget is better spent by crafting an intentional, targeted campaign designed to turn Reach into Revenue.
First, we want to remind you that “paying off” may not be about fiscal earnings. It all depends on your objectives, both for the campaign’s short term and your long-term digital marketing strategies. Spending money on a social media ad campaign can yield many benefits, such as elevating your business’s reputation, growing your brand’s community, and, yes, generating leads. Plus, all the education about your audience and strategy you’ll gain. It’s like we always say here at Go Getter: “Always be learning!”
But there might also be a deeper reason why your brand’s social media ad strategies are missing the mark with your ideal audience. To dive into the intentions, mechanisms, and results of your current social media advertising program, let’s schedule a Discovery Call to discuss a custom plan for how we can help your business.
