What is Your Paid Advertising Strategy on Social Media? Ads Manager vs. Boosting.

by Jayna Wilcox

Breaking: Finding the perfect paid advertising strategy for social media is an art. Learn all about forming an effective social strategy from 2060 Digital’s Senior Digital Sales Strategist Jayna Wilcox.

Read Time: 3 minutes, 40 seconds

“Yeah, I boost posts!” This is one of the most common statements I hear when meeting with potential clients. That is great, it’s a start. I always proceed by asking about ads manager. “Are you familiar with ads manager?” The answer is about 70% No, 30% Yes. Once the conversation continues, I get their attention more, because let’s face it, Facebook has SO many advertising tools that are often missed by businesses who are attempting to market themselves on Facebook or Instagram.

Let’s dive right in. The importance of paid ads on social media is at an all-time high because we live in a pay to play world. Therefore, marketers must be highly strategic about how they are using their ad spends on social media. Boosting posts used to be just fine, but throwing $10 dollars on a post to people who like your page in today’s algorithm just does not cut it. It can work, but it is better to explore ads manager targeting and to be smart when it comes to the ad in its entirety (objective, targeting, placement, creative, etc.).

Objective

The first piece that needs to be established is the objective of the ad. Of course, you will want to make sure the ad is in line with your goals. You can choose from an array of objectives — from post engagement, traffic, video views, to event responses, website conversions, and app installs. Take a quick look into the ads manager platform at the objective options you are able to use. From there, you can build out your campaign.

Targeting

When I am looking under the hood of someone’s current social media presence, one of the first places I go is to their website. Do they have the Facebook Pixel installed? If not, I explain its importance and if they do, I ask how they are using it. The Facebook Pixel is a piece of code that lives on the back end of a website that allows for measuring, optimizing, and building audiences for your ad campaigns. Get the pixel installed, it is crucial. Aside from using the Pixel for retargeting, one can do an abundance of other options. Demo and geo-targeting, behaviors and interest-based targeting are some of the basics known as Core Audiences. Custom Audiences allow for getting in touch with people you already know through an email list or site visitors. Lastly, you have Lookalike Audiences, which will mirror audiences who you want to target. For example, you might want to build an audience that looks just like the people who currently visit your site. Facebook has some amazing targeting tools.

Creative

Then, you get into placements and building out the format of the ad. Creative matters. Your copy matters. Depending on the objective you have chosen, you will want to optimize for that. A/B test! I cannot stress that enough. Are you testing up to six images? You can even do A/B testing on targeting and copy, in addition to creative.

Be sure when testing the creative, you’re doing the Facebook rule of 20% text or less. Try to avoid stock photography that doesn’t look authentic. More than ever, with the changes that happened in 2018 for Facebook, both the new algorithm and Facebook users gravitate towards real content. By doing this your ad will reach a larger audience that won’t feel like they are being marketed to. We still want to take into consideration the power of organic when it comes to authenticity.

Don’t forget video! In fact, video produces outstanding results on social media. Recently, we’ve seen a huge trend in animated content. It’s not only interactive, but highly engaging. If you are running a video with words, try adding captions and/or text overlay to the video. You want to make sure your video is understood without sound. We live in a fast-paced world, where often times videos are consumed in public. According to Facebook, caption video ads increased video view time by an average of 12%.

You, of course, have to tack on a budget and timeline for your ad. Going back to my comment on the $10. If that is all you have, that is fine, but hopefully, you’ve now built out an ad that is far more strategic and will pay off in the end to hit your goals.

 

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