4 Key Steps to Crafting an Effective Social Advertising Campaign

If I had to boil it down to a succinct description, then advertising is all about reaching the right audience with an intended message at the right time. The meat and bones of strategy, creative ideation, and execution all point to supporting this objective.

A logical first step to achieving this objective would be to find where a specific audience spends their time. Social media, at this point, isn’t so much a technological revolution as a way of life. Chances are advertisers will find their audience perusing one social media platform or another, which means social media should definitely be in any campaign’s media mix.

But when it comes to social advertising, where do you start? With myriad platforms to choose from and different demographics dominating each one, placing ads on social media can seem daunting. Thankfully, we here at CLM know a thing or two about developing an effective social campaign.

Below are some best practices to ensure your social campaign starts off on the right foot:

Utilize Different Platforms Based on The Target Audience

It all starts with your target audience. If the campaign objective includes reaching baby boomers with certain interests, Facebook might be the best social media platform to meet your needs. If the target skews toward millennials, Instagram may be the better option.

Because different demographics comprise the majority of users on certain platforms, it’s critical to analyze the objectives of the campaign as a whole before placing media on one specific platform. You may need multiple platforms to reach a larger target audience, and different creative messaging across your various social channels.

Align Creative Execution with Specific Platform

Creative messaging is the heart of every advertising campaign, so it’s imperative the different teams within an agency work together to craft the proper creative format for the chosen platform.

On Facebook, for example, the ad copy is just as important as the image, since the space allowed for copy is larger and more prominently placed. Conversely, Instagram ads should rely more on imagery to deliver the message, as the area provided for the copy is shorter and buried below the image.

Craft Highly Targeted Creative Messaging

An inherent consequence of traditional media is that it relies on targeting a broader audience. This necessitates creative messaging with mass appeal to cover more ground. While there is definitely still a place for traditional media, targeting on social media platforms allows marketers to reach a narrower audience. Advertisers can use this to their advantage when developing targeted campaign creative.

Since social platforms allow multiple ad groups within a campaign, there can theoretically be as many versions of the creative as needed to match different segments of a target audience. Even a slight deviation within the creative can change the ad’s appeal to, say, males over females, Marketers should take full advantage of this function and be precise in their messaging to specific audiences.

Backend Tracking on Websites Should Be Implemented

Your campaign has launched, but the work is just getting started. Monitoring metrics on both the front- and back-ends is critical to the success of any social campaign.

While advertising platforms provide useful front-end information like total clicks, click-through rate, and cost-per-desired-action, back-end metrics show how users interact with landing pages and websites once the ad is clicked. Both types of metrics are important when determining how well a social advertising campaign is performing.

Google Analytics should be in every digital marketer’s toolbox, but social platforms often have their own specific tags to use. For example, placing a Facebook pixel on the backend of a website allows marketers to see if a desired action was taken on the landing page. This information is sent to the ad platform where ads are optimized based on leads or purchases. Website tags can also be used to build remarketing lists for subsequent campaigns.

 

Social media advertising has come a long way since its inception, and improvements to the ad platforms make it easier for all marketers to join the fun. Contact us to learn more about how we can plan and execute your next social advertising campaign!

CLM | Oct 3, 2018