Does Your Social Media Ad Strategy Need a Reboot?

Think you’ve got social media advertising in the bag? You may have been running ads for a while now, but as long as your ads are running, there’ll always be things you can tweak or adjust in order to squeeze every last possible drop of ROI out of your ad dollars. An all-too-common tragedy in the advertising world is when a marketer thinks that everything is clicking along just fine, only to find out much later that their social media advertising campaign had actually been producing sub-par results the entire time.

So how can you accurately detect the signs of a mediocre ad strategy? What should you look for to determine whether or not your campaign is really reaching its full potential? Below are some key questions you can ask yourself to find out if your social media ad strategy needs a reboot. 

1. Are you spreading yourself too thin?

There’s no doubt that each separate social media advertising platform (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, etc.) carries massive potential, but that doesn’t mean that it’s time to adopt a “spray and pray” approach to your advertising efforts.

You have to ask yourself which platform is the most conducive for promoting your particular product or service. For example, if you’re trying to achieve greater brand exposure or content sharing/discovery, then Twitter is an excellent choice. On the other hand, if you’re promoting a physical product through an e-commerce style site, Pinterest would be a better match due to its visual nature, not to mention the fact that millions of people use Pinterest to share various collections of their “favorite things” or “would love to have” items. Once you identify the platform best suited to your particular product or service, channel most of your resources in that direction, and dial back from unproductive platforms. 

2. How’s your CTR?

If you’re experiencing a dismal click-through rate (CTR), that’s a pretty clear sign that you need to change something about your ad (the image, the ad text, the ad position, etc.) in order to get more people clicking through to your offer.

Keep in mind that CTRs will vary greatly based on the platform and ad type, but just for the sake of example, the average CTR of a Facebook Newsfeed ad is 2.09%. If you’ve been running ads in Facebook Newsfeed and getting a 0.07% CTR, it’s definitely time to revamp your approach. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to make any drastic moves; sometimes all it takes is to slightly alter the image, or make one small edit in the ad text, etc., to boost your CTR by a substantial measure. The one thing you can’t do, however, is leave everything the same while expecting the results to improve.

3. Are you achieving any ROI?

ROI (return on investment) is perhaps the ultimate indicator of a successful campaign, as it will show you whether or not you were able to accomplish your objectives with the advertising dollars you invested. Whether your objective is sales, lead generation, increasing your opt-in email subscriber list, or otherwise, you should have a good feel for what is a sensible return on investment, so that you’re getting the most bang for your buck.

Ultimately, your goal is to be able to garner enough sales, leads, opt-ins, etc., to justify all of your marketing and advertising costs, and then some. While many campaigns start in the red before becoming profitable a little later, a campaign that’s been running for weeks on end without generating any ROI is a huge red flag. Watch your ROI like a hawk, and start making adjustments to your campaign as needed to bring things up to snuff. This could include adjusting the time of day that your ads are running, altering various aspects of the ads themselves, narrowing down your target audience, etc.

4. What story is your analytics data telling you?

The numbers always tell the real story behind a campaign. For most businesses, Google Analytics has become the “go-to” platform for these types of stats. Pay close attention to what regions, countries and/or states your traffic is coming from, as this will tell you the best places for you to channel your resources.

You can also use the proprietary tools that are built in to specific platforms such as Facebook Ads; for example, their “Relevance Score” tool shows you how relevant your ads are to your target audience. You can test your ad with a small budget at first to obtain an initial relevance score, and then adjust your targeting to boost your score as needed. Use the various analytics tools that are at your disposal to develop a clear picture of the actual performance of your campaign.

With the incredible potential of social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and now Instagram, you can tap into a vast audience and achieve outstanding results from your social media advertising campaigns. If you’re experiencing lackluster results from your advertising efforts, use the questions above to help you pinpoint problem areas, make the appropriate adjustments, and take your social media ad campaigns to another level.