Social media advertising 101

What is important + examples

Means of communication, entertainment and information seeking - social networks are all this and much more. In the last decade, they have cemented their position as platforms for increasing sales with nearly $207 billion spent on advertising budgets in 2023.

📈Predictions are that these numbers will only go up and there is nothing strange about that. Social media advertising offers unrivalled opportunities for detailed targeting at little cost compared to other more traditional advertising channels.

This makes social media advertising extremely attractive to businesses of all sizes and nature. But it brings the most benefits to owners of small-to-medium sized companies that engage in online commerce.

👉Whether your business is an e-commerce store or you have another business, most of your users are on social networks. So it's good for you to be there too.

There are two paths you can take in your social media advertising strategy, and our advice is to incorporate both into your marketing journey.

One way is to create and maintain profiles with social media posts. The other is launching and managing paid ads on the same platforms. They are not mutually exclusive, quite the opposite. They can, and in most cases do, work together as a well-oiled machine that clearly maps out your business' path to completed sales.

Publications in social networks

It all starts with creating a profile on the social networks you choose. If your business operates in Bulgaria, it will be useful to know that the most popular social network in the country is Facebook.

📣To bring your profile to life, you need to attract an audience and plan what content you will post.

This type of activity is often called "organic" in marketing parlance, meaning unpaid. This is also the big plus of social networks like Facebook and Instagram. There, potentially any page administrator can communicate with their audience without spending a buck. Except there's a catch, of course, and that's the word "everyone".

Since there are now nearly 60 million business pages on Facebook, Meta's algorithm is constantly devising new and novel tactics and methods. According to them, the algorithm gets to choose what a user sees in their newsfeed.

For some years now, administrators of business pages have periodically lamented that the organic reach of their posts is dropping. And so is the traffic to their sites from this channel.

The reasons for this are very simple. Competition for newsfeed space is fierce, and paid ads are Zuckerberg's gold mine , from which his company has earned about $113 million in 2022. Not bad, eh?

These days, we can say that every business has the potential to reach their audience through organic, unpaid content, but in reality, not everyone succeeds.

To succeed, you need to breathe in and out deeply and put all your creativity and wit into the most interesting, beautiful, funny and relevant post of all time. And even then, no one gives you guarantees. That's why many businesses are opening their wallets to...

Paid advertising on social networks

Paid advertising on Facebook or any other platform requires a bit more expertise. In addition to creativity for the content itself, you'll need to learn the specifics of ad campaigns on your chosen social network.

Generally speaking, paid advertisements are posts in the form of text, a photo, a video, a cartoon, a link or something else. They are budget-fortified and because of this, distribution on their feed is not subject to the same rules as organic posts.

Let's take Facebook and Instagram as the most used in our latitudes (and not only). There are various options in Meta Ads Manager where ads are created, set up and monitored . With these, you can adjust the campaign to suit your needs.

Here are some basic steps you should not miss:

• Choose an advertising goal - want to increase traffic to your site, collect email addresses, or increase engagement on a particular publication? Selecting a goal is the start of creating any campaign.
• Choose a campaign duration.
• Choose how your budget is spent - a set amount per day or set it directly for the whole period? How much are you willing to pay for each result you will get?
• Choose an option to target by demographics and interests, or create a custom audience from your page followers, a list of email addresses, or your website visitors. From custom audiences you can create groups with "lookalike" users - lookalike audiences are a good way to extend the reach of your campaign.
• Work on the creative part - visual and text elements are also important.

Similarities and differences between account management and paid social media advertising

At first glance, publishing organic content and paid social media advertising are quite different, but the truth is that they also have a lot in common.

In both cases, you need to be creative to stand out in the digital sea of publications. It's also important to know your audience well so you know what they want to hear and at what point.

What's different is that with paid advertising, you won't have to cross your fingers and toes to get results like with organic publishing 🤞 When you have an advertising budget, it's easier to show up in front of an audience that would be interested in your business. Mr. Algorithm takes care of that, but it might actually be Missy because she happens to be in a bad mood and things don't work out.

Paying for advertising does not guarantee you good results. But knowing the platforms and their features is an important step in that direction. For help, you can turn to a digital agency like ADvantage.

Tips for successful social media advertising

💡There are some universal tips you should follow to achieve success. Whether you want to try just quality content or you're determined to open up the wallet...

Choose the right social networks to advertise on

Your choice depends on your customer demographics ( creating a buyer persona will be helpful for this), as well as the specifics of your business and what products/services you offer. Last but not least, it's important to plan what content you're going to publish.

Generally speaking, Facebook is considered the more "mature" social network, while Instagram's audience is younger. How to choose between the two, if at all, we have explained in more detail in this article, where we tell you about five signs on which the two platforms differ.

On Instagram, visual content is revered, as on other social networks such as Tik-tok and Youtube.

If you publish content geared towards other businesses - Linkedin or Facebook are your places.

Of course, nothing gets in the way and it would even be great if you have a presence everywhere. But don't forget to tailor the content you post to the specifics of your social network.

Think about your goals

📌Yes, you should think carefully before you act . Brainstorm with your team and decide what you want to achieve. Do you want to increase your sales? Clearly you do, but you might want to expand your email subscriber base first (Lead Generation), increase traffic to your website (Traffic Objective). To spread the news that you exist at all (Brand Awareness/Reach).

These are all measurable goals that can be individual steps in your marketing funnel that lead consumers to order completion. In the brackets in the paragraph above, you see how these goals translate into the language of Meta Ads Manager, the platform for creating and managing ads on Facebook and Instagram.

Here is an example. If you want to combine the paid and unpaid sides of social media advertising into one marketing funnel, you can try the following steps as a sample plan:

• Use your page posts to drive traffic to your site. This can be done through useful and interesting content in the form of blog posts, articles or free eBooks that are downloadable in exchange for an email. For quicker and higher volume results, we recommend boosting selected posts with some bucks. Or create a separate paid advertising campaign to increase traffic.
• You can then target this traffic or, in human language, create an audience (custom audience) that includes users who have visited your site for a certain period of time. Their personal data is protected, so you won't know exactly who they are and where they are. Only your daddy Meta algorithm and Santa know these things.
• Make sure consumers get to know your business so they can trust you, or just make them an offer they can't resist. No need to fall on your knees. A first order discount promo code will do the trick, as will a Target Selected Conversions campaign 🙂
• The above example is a simplified version to use the marketing funnel in your social media advertising. You can build up with more steps, content and advertising objectives.

Take care of the content

The truth is, if you want to sell, you need to have an engaged audience, and to have an engaged audience, you need the content you offer to be:

• useful;
• Interesting;
• Original;
• fun;
• Relevant.

Some examples are:

• blog posts;
• useful articles from other sources;
• Videos;
• Memes;
• inspirational quotes and photos;
• collaborative content with influencers;
• product news and promotions (but don't overdo it).

Almost all of these forms of online content can be used for both paid and free versions of social media advertising. Just make sure you don't use photos you don't have the rights to. And when you're choosing your text and visuals, remember that emotions sell well.

Analyse the results of your campaigns

Having set yourself goals in the previous steps, it is now time to see if you have met them. Analyze the results to see which strategy worked and which didn't.

Maybe some audience didn't like the creative of a particular ad and as a result sales were low. Or your page followers aren't engaged enough with the content you're posting. This is all fixable. Test different strategies (there's an A/B testing option in Meta Ads Manager) and you'll discover what works for your business.

If you're finding it hard to plan your advertising strategy... There are some people who work in digital agencies and although everyone thinks they're "on Facebook all day", they can actually help you a lot. They will shoot your business to the top with their creativity and knowledge. Contact ADvantage Digital Agency if you need help with social media advertising for your business.