From fame to fortune to followers—there are many lucrative outcomes to social media advertising. However, there are also many chances for failure, misused time and wasted money.
Social media advertising is not as simple as “build it and they will come”. Brands dream of creating a beautiful ad, with a great image and killer copy; clicking publish and watching revenue pour in. But reality has another story; for an ad campaign to have a chance at being successful, brands need to consider three all-too-often overlooked components:
- A Well-Defined Goal: What Are You Trying to Achieve?
Increase Awareness: increase the exposure of your brand, your product or your intellectual property. The obvious measurement may be the number of impressions and reach (eyeballs). But the secret weapon that brands often overlook when implementing a social media ad campaign is the measurement of clicks (engagement). Engagement metrics can tell a stronger story about your ads. For example, if a lot of people are seeing your ad but are ignoring the message— it may be time to rethink your ad.
Increase Sales or Leads: inspire passive listeners to become active users of your product or services. The most obvious metrics may be clicks and click-through-rates. But the secret weapon is measuring the number of people that take the action you wanted them to (convert) once they land on your webpage. Ads cannot be 100% responsible for the sale of a product or service, but they can be responsible for making people interested in learning more. The true conversion will happen on your website or landing page.
2. A Testing Strategy: One Ad Is Never the Solution, No Matter How Amazing It Is.
Testing different versions will reveal different trigger factors for your audience. It may be what you thought all along or it may surprise you—but never stop testing! At the beginning of your ad campaign start small. Test two versions of the same ad. Then take the winning ad, change something else and test that. Then step and repeat to ensure you are continuously improving your results. Sometimes the smallest changes can make a big impact.
3. An Operational Plan: Develop Ads That Drive People Somewhere To Do Something.
What do you want your audience to do once they click on your ad? There are way too many examples of companies that skip this strategic step because they focused on launching their campaign and did not think through the conversion process. Brands that skip this step end up spending a lot of money driving people to nothing. Your ad garnered millions of impressions and thousands of clicks but did it generate revenue? Were we able to convert a new lead to a customer? This is like setting up dates with a lot of beautiful people and then standing all of them up. Be sure to consider the path a user will take after clicking on your ad. Don’t make them hunt for what they’re looking for, provide them with additional content that will inspire them to purchase, or take the next step to reach your conversion goal.
Nothing guarantees the absolute success of a campaign, but you can increase the chance of a positive outcome by being organized, diligent and thoughtful about the social media ad process, and most importantly, we can be clear about what you want the outcomes of the campaign to be.
Read more about how to increase social advertisement efficiency
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