Brands worldwide use social media advertising as part of a quintessential social media marketing strategy to identify and target audience groups that fit into the brand’s ideal customer profiles (ICPs). Let’s discuss how to make the most out of social media advertising to scale digital marketing efforts and gain more opportunities through marketing campaigns.
What is Social Media Advertising?
Social media advertising focuses on the paid aspect of social media marketing. While every social media network is unique, advertising on the major social platforms has similarities. Let’s explore top advertising strategies and how to effectively strengthen the overall social media marketing campaign.
How Businesses Use Paid Social Media Advertising?
Hootsuite, one of the best social media marketing tools, sourced the following statistics. These stats reveal companies are aggressively taking action to run promotions, gain more audience, and raise brand awareness through social media.
Benefits of Social Media Advertising
Here is the data on subscriber count for social media user trends.
- Facebook: 2.93 billion users
- Instagram: 1.97 billion users
- TikTok: 1.39 million users
- LinkedIn: 830 million users
- X (formerly known as Twitter): 330 million users
The Influencing Power of Social Media Marketing and Social Media Advertising
Advertising on social media effectively gets the message in front of a massive audience. With the rapid growth of different social media platforms, they have become the perfect stage for brands to capture new market share and engage prospects and existing customers.
Top 7 Social Media Advertising Strategies to Drive Successful Social Media Advertising Campaigns
#1. Integrate Social Media Advertising with Engaging Content
Social media advertising is about creating marketing pieces that resonate and speak to the core target audience. However, online content consumption has become over-saturated, making it easy for people to tune out ads and commercials.
How do you improve social media ad engagement? Improve the user experience in the ad content and landing pages to ensure the best visitor journey. Try the following different types of content to pique viewer interest.
Examples of Engaging Content in Social Media Advertising
- Short product videos
- How-to videos
- Demo videos
- Helpful infographics
- Funny Memes
- Eye-catching photos
#2. Practice Cross Platform Posting on Social Media Platforms
Social media marketing is a time-consuming task. Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, X (Twitter) and TikTok… With so many platforms available today, stay organized and spend time planning and posting on every network. Save time by using social media management tools like Hootsuite to organize content, schedule posts, and uncover analytics insight in one consolidated platform.
Top Advantages of the Social Media Management Tool Hootsuite
- Apply a single post across multiple social media platforms.
- Schedule and customize social posts within one tool.
- Automatically schedule social media ads to run at a set time for a curated target audience group.
- Collect analytics data and gain unique visitor engagement insights to identify popular topics and trending posts.
- Perform content planning with a social media content calendar.
- Advanced functions such as Google Analytics integration and trend reporting.
#3 Frequently Rotate Social Media Advertising Campaign Messaging
Impressionable ad messaging improves conversion rate. How do you stand out from the hundreds or thousands of posts visitors go through in their social feeds every day? Make the ad impactful and alternate between variations of messaging and designs frequently.
Rotate Social Media Advertising Messaging and Design to Optimize Customer Engagement
Rotating the social media ads regularly keeps viewers interested and optimizes visitor engagement. Create several versions of the same ad with different marketing messaging, images, and promotional methods. A/B test different sets of social media ads to identify the highest converting version.
#4 Personalize Ad Messaging in Social Media Advertising Campaigns
Tailor personalized communication in social media ad messaging towards different core audience groups. Segment specific audience selections within social media platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn ads. Cater customized messages to different viewer groups based on personal preferences enhance the user experience.
Example of How to Personalize Social Media Advertising Campaigns
For example, if a website is an e-commerce business selling baked goods like cookies, tailor social media ad messaging to various groups of customers based on their preferences. Segment an ad for those who like chocolate cookies, and do another version for the sugar cookie fans.
#5 Adopt Direct e-Commerce in Social Media Marketing Platforms
Social media platforms like Instagram have rolled out the call-to-action “buy” button, which enables e-commerce stores to make sales directly to consumers without leaving the platform.
Businesses can roll out ads that allow users to purchase right on the spot in their social media accounts, which cuts through the long checkout funnels of traditional e-commerce stores. The best opportunity to close a sale is when the customer is engaged with your product in real time. Along with conversion-focused social media ad strategies, social media campaigns make conversion happen faster.
#6. Design to Serve Social Media Advertising Campaigns for Mobile Users
Brands are finding new ways and capturing opportunities to better market to social media’s massive mobile user segment.
Social Media Mobile User Data
Hootsuite revealed a few critical data points about mobile users on social media platforms:
- Facebook reported that 82% of its users only use mobile phones to browse the platform.
- Instagram revealed their users spend an average of 11 hours per month using their mobile app.
- YouTube views are 2x more on mobile than desktop devices.
Social Media Advertising for Mobile Ad Targeting
Mobile advertising is a significant digital marketing focus for businesses. Social media platforms offer advertisers options to serve ads exclusively to mobile users. Create ad copies specifically optimized for mobile viewing and properly track analytics data of the mobile ad campaigns.
How to Create Highly Converting Social Media Advertising Campaigns on Mobile
Follow the tips below to create eye-catching mobile ad messaging that results in a conversion.
Top 4 Tips to Create Highly Converting Social Media Advertising on Mobile
- Deliver short, personalized, and to-the-point ad messaging.
- Include visuals that work on mobile screens.
- Try interactive elements such as videos. They are great attention grabbers.
- Integrate website analytics with social media analytics to improve marketing to target audience groups.
#7 Continue to A/B Test Ad Elements in Social Media Advertising
A/B testing uncovers the ad messaging that creates the most conversions and keeps the cost down. Start A/B testing on a selective niche audience when there is a limited budget. Begin by making two copies of the same ad on social media, change one element in one of the ad copies, and always test one component at a time.
Example of A/B Testing in Social Media Advertising
For example, A/B test two versions of a discount offer in a social media ad like the following:
- $10 off
- 20% off
A/B Test One Element at a Time in Social Media Advertising
Keep everything else identical in the ad copies when A/B testing various ad elements one at a time and measure the response rate of each ad. Once you have identified which pricing strategy works best, move on to the next component until you have identified a high-converting campaign. Ad features such as visuals, messaging, or even colors are good test subjects that potentially improve the ad campaign results.
