Paid social media strategy, paid advertising, Facebook ads, and Meta advertising are all terms to describe when a brand pays money to a social media platform in order to share their content with targeted audiences, normally with a specific business objective in mind. 

It’s no secret that a good paid social strategy can produce strong results and be a game-changer for your business. If you’re thinking of setting up social media ads for your business, here are the top things you need to know before you get started:

  • Understand that Paid and Organic social are different beasts but they can be used holistically and support each other in the long run. 
  • Know your budget. Before you start with ads, understand your business costs, what you can afford to spend and what you’re hoping to get in return. 
  • Consider different social media channels but pick the one/s you want to prioritise rather than spreading your media spend budget thinly across them all. Meta (Facebook and Instagram), LinkedIn, Pinterest and TikTok are the main channels you might consider to play in. But first, think about which is right for you. Who are you trying to reach and where will you find them? 
  • Make sure your user/customer journey is perfect before you invest in ads. If your website loads slowly, is unclear and confusing, or the checkout process includes a lot of hurdles, then paying for advertising is not going to fix this and you’re not going to get bang for your buck. Ensure the journey you want your customer to take is clear, easy and working before you even think about ads. 
  • Step away from the Boost Button! Please, don’t do it! Running a successful social media campaign is a multi-layered process. The Boost Button doesn’t let you tap into the broad ad objectives, audiences and ad placements that Ads Manager does. It’s just not worth it. 
  • Set goals and establish what success looks like before you start running ads. Is the objective to increase awareness of your brand, get more website traffic on your site, reach new people, drive fresh leads or make sales? How many views, clicks, leads or purchases will be considered a success? Getting clear on your goals helps you go into your strategy with purpose and intention, and allows you to know which metrics you want to measure to determine success.
  • Do not set and forget. If anyone offers to set up your social media ads as a once-off so that you can ‘keep them running’, run far away in the opposite direction! Social media advertising is never a set-and-forget scenario; it’s about testing, optimising, re-strategising, learning and improving over time. 
  • Set up your Pixel and events sooner rather than later. If you want to measure the effectiveness of your ads, re-target people that have been on your website or create lookalike audiences, you’ll need Pixels installed on your website. 
  • Use a naming convention for your campaigns, ad sets, audiences and ads. This will make optimising easier and save you loads of time when it comes to reporting. And if you ever decide to outsource to a specialist or an agency, they’ll love you from day one. 
  • Investing in good creative is essential. Make sure you’re across the right ad specs, sizes and understand what is required to build out your creative (tip – vertical is key!). Consider the length of your creative if you’re using video and that most people won’t watch past the first 3 seconds. Include your logo where possible and prioritise any marketing messages and CTA (Call-To-Actions) you want your audience to take. 
  • Great copy is just as important. At the end of the day, copy is what engages people and compels them to take action. It helps to show your brand’s tone of voice and this can be pivotal in gaining credibility and trust. 
  • Know your audience. You need to understand your audience to know what they need, so you can tailor your creative, messages and copy to these people. You’ll also need to understand your audience to know where to find them and how to target them. Consider your geo-targeting too. Is your product or service only relevant to people in a local area? Then you’ll want to be specifying this in your ads and have clear geographic parameters in your audience targeting. 
  • Learn from your results. What types of promotions work best for your business, which audience is more likely to resonate with a particular brand pillar, and do videos from your iPhone get watched longer than professionally edited videos? Does your audience respond better to short or long copy? Set up tests as part of your strategy and apply the learnings and insights to the rest of your marketing channels. 
  • Be patient. Social media ads rely on insights and data to perform. Whilst you can expect to start reaching your target audience almost immediately, a lot goes into a strategy and you need to give the ads time to ‘learn’. Have a big sale coming up? Invest in some traffic campaigns first, so you can build up a retargeting audience to target more efficiently when the sale rolls around. Is your product or service a big investment for your customer? Consider the time it might take to nurture a person and build trust with them before they are willing to invest in your brand. 
  • Track and report! Start reporting monthly and outline whether you met your goals and targets, so you can determine whether you’re satisfied with your campaigns and determine new opportunities. If your goal is to drive leads, for example, you’ll want to measure the volume of leads you achieve and the cost per lead (that is, how much each lead cost you). You also might like to look at Reach (how many people saw your ads), or measure your ROAS (How many dollars of purchases did you make, for every dollar spent).  
  • Brush up on the lingo. Getting across paid social analytics can seem scary at first but once you get across the lingo, acronyms and abbreviations it’s not as confusing as it seems. You can type an acronym into Google or hover your mouse over the metric on some social media analytics programs to learn what it is. 

Ready to run ads but still feeling out of your depth? The feeling is normal! Paid Social Media Strategies are a multi-faceted and comprehensive part of your wider marketing strategy. Managing a successful social media campaign can be expensive, time-consuming and fiddly. 

Get in touch with us, we can help. At Rumblr, we’re digital marketing specialists and we’re all about working with you like we are another member of your team. Visit our website at www.rumblr.com.au, or drop us a line: hello@rumblr.com.au

by Gerald Fisher