Odds are, you know, a paid social media campaign is an effective way to grow your brand and drive conversions. You also understand that you should probably look into an updated paid social strategy for your organization in 2023. If your brand has an effective paid social media strategy, you’ll be able to reach hundreds of thousands of potential customers and brand loyalists.
This article will outline eight steps to create a more effective paid social media campaign.
1. Understand the goal of the campaign
When you start building paid ads with Facebook Ad Manager or LinkedIn Campaign, the first thing you’re asked is: what is your objective? Your choice will impact your ad options, so you must consider your choice wisely.
On Facebook, for example, there are three objective categories. They represent the stages a customer is expected to pass through, from being completely unaware of your brand, to being a loyal, repeat customer. It’s called the customer journey. Campaigns can focus on one stage of the journey or use all three.
2. Clearly define the target audience
Remember your buyer persona? Your paid social media campaign should be built around targeting one of them on social media. Therefore, it’s essential to thoroughly research and detail all aspects of your buyer persona, including location, age range, gender, and interest.
Every product or service has ideal customers. Advertisers often build and study the ‘personas’ of ideal customers in extreme detail to better understand who and how to target their products. You can also be much smarter with your budget by narrowing down your target audience.
3. Pick the right social media platforms
Once you know your objective and audience, you can choose the right social media network for your marketing campaign. You might want to do a multiple-platform campaign, but if this is your first paid social media campaign, I’d suggest choosing one social media channel that is currently your most significant source of leads.
The reason why many guides and studies focus on Facebook is that it has a wide range of both objectives and audience demographics. But your campaign could be better on LinkedIn, Instagram, Youtube, or multiple platforms if you know your audience is there.
When choosing the right platform for your campaign, you’ll want to research each option carefully, but the right choice should soon become evident with your objective and audience front of mind. Here’s a quick video on the major social networks:
Video source: https://www.youtube.com/@WebFX
4. Define your budget
Often, one of the biggest hurdles is getting the budget for paid ads. Once you have a budget, it’s essential to set aside 1/3rd of the funds in case you need to adjust bid levels to maintain competitiveness throughout the campaign’s life. Once you’ve chosen your objective and social media platform, you can research whether there’s a minimum ad budget you’re required to spend. This minimum amount could be per day, per click, or per impression.
Advertising on social media is an auction, and your bid for the best advertising positions on peoples’ social media feeds, on pages, and in Stories. If you win the auction, you pay that amount for each ensuing click, view, like, impression, message open, app install, etc.
5. Define the start and end dates of the campaign
This is a crucial aspect of your paid social media campaign. How long do you want your campaign to run? 1 week? or 2 weeks? Or a month? Set specific start and end dates around your campaign.
6. Choose and create the best ad formats
A social media marketing campaign incorporates multiple ads aimed at the same goal. That means you can choose various social media ad formats to help reach your objective. Each type of ad has a different strength, and you’ll want to choose the right one, or combination of formats, to drive solid results for your paid campaign.
If your product is visually appealing, consider creating content for image and video ads. If you sell products, you can’t go past carousels and collections alongside image or ‘static’ and video ads.
7. Launch the campaign
It’s finally time to launch your campaign! After your ad has been approved, you can officially launch the campaign, and once it’s launched, your ads will automatically post at your designated campaign start date and time.
8. Analyze and optimize the campaign
Now the real work begins. This is the end of the list, but the start of your campaign! It’s time to gather your results, conduct a social media audit, and optimize for better results.
There are a lot of factors that can influence the success of your ads. Seasonality, world events, time of day, competition entering and exiting the market, compelling creative, social network changes, audience targeting, and of course, budget – these things can all cause fluctuation in your perceived Cost-per-Click (CPC) or any other metric you’re watching for specific results.
Some complex campaigns on Facebook require hours of daily work inspecting variables and projecting calculations to find the right mix of ads to run to the right people. Facebook Ad Manager offers a view of performance, demographics, placement, and delivery insights.
Bottom Line
Social media advertising is a fast-paced, pay-to-play world. Planning a paid social media campaign will take some time but will ultimately ensure a strategic approach. Remember these eight steps as you embark on your next paid campaign.
Thanks for reading! Next week’s blog will share tips to create an effective paid marketing strategy. Follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to get updates! If you enjoyed reading this article, please share it with friends, family, and colleagues.
References:
Facebook. (n.d.). Log into Facebook. Retrieved February 6, 2023, from https://www.facebook.com/business/help/
Digivizer. (2022, April 27). Social media ad formats – complete guide with examples. Retrieved February 6, 2023, from https://digivizer.com/blog/social-media-ad-formats-complete-guide-with-examples/
Digivizer. (2021, June 10). Your guide to social media advertising costs. Retrieved February 6, 2023, from https://digivizer.com/blog/social-media-advertising-costs-guide/
