How To Create Effective Social Media Ads
Social media can be a competitive space but, these days, it’s an essential component of any good marketing mix. It provides a unique opportunity to meet your customers where they’re at and join them in conversation. By creating and placing strategic ads, you can cut through the clutter and connect with your target audiences in new ways.
What’s the best strategic approach? Here’s our integrated five-step formula for creating effective ads.
Do your research
Get to know your audience and how they relate to your brand. Where do they live? What are they interested in? Determine their demographics and build ad audiences that align with them. Then, decide what goals you’re after. Are you trying to spread awareness of your brand or grow your followers? Do you want to boost engagement or drive traffic to your website? Not all ads are created equal, so design them around a specific goal.
Create the content
Once you have a good grasp on your strategy, identify the key messages you want to communicate and craft content accordingly. Make sure your message is clear by keeping captions succinct and incorporating one strong call to action in each. Remember, your ads will be up against feeds filled with other competitive content, so make yours jump off the screen with creative copy and high-quality images.
Optimize for each channel
Users consume and interact with content much differently on Twitter than they do on Facebook or Instagram, so your ad strategy should reflect the channel it appears on. Take a look at the platforms you’re using and adjust your approach to align with each one’s unique advantages, restrictions and audiences. Make sure your images are properly sized for each channel and the copy is written with the right tone and messaging.
Place the ads
Decide where your ad will be most effective. In the feed? As a story or within messenger? Consider your budget and the shelf life of your content to determine how long the ad should run, then set the campaign duration from there. It helps to run several variations simultaneously, so you can compare how audiences, creative assets and copy compare.
Monitor and modify
While the first four steps will prepare your ad well, it’s important to regularly monitor performance to learn what really works for your audience. Social media is always changing with new tools, trends and algorithms, but keeping a consistent eye on performance and making necessary modifications along the way will keep your paid efforts effective.