Table of Contents
Understanding Social Media Advertising
Benefits of Social Media Advertising
Types of Social Media Ads
Creating a Social Media Advertising Strategy
Effective Ad Creation
Platform Deep Dive
Measuring Success
Conclusion
FAQs
Key takeaways:
1. Social media ads are an effective way to achieve your marketing goals.
2. Social media ads, at the very least, help to amplify your reach.
3. Social media ads are an effective tool to help you reach your specific target audience.
4. Testing is essential to achieve social media advertising success.
In 2024, social media ads are a key part of digital marketing strategy across a range of industries. With more and more people turning to social media not only for entertainment and information, but for recommendations, ideas, inspiration and discovery, there are ever-growing opportunities to leverage the platforms for your brand. The problem? Achieving your goals organically is becoming harder to do, with most platforms favouring paid content over organic, even with the rise of reels/TikTok. The solution? Social media advertising!
We want to preface that social media advertising is not for the faint-hearted! There is a lot of time and energy involved in order to ensure you’re not wasting your money on ineffective strategies. If you’d like to save yourself the trouble and make sure you’re using your money wisely, check out our social media advertising services and let us know if we can support your brand. Otherwise, keep reading for a guide to social media advertising for beginners!
Understanding Social Media Advertising
The most basically way to understand social media advertising is that it refers to the act of paying a social media platform to show your content. Social media advertising is available on pretty much every platform you can think of - minus ‘Threads’ (for the time-being). That means you can pay to get your content seen on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (X), TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest and more!
“But… Can’t I just post on my profile and people will see my content for free?” Yes, that’s right - if you’re lucky. Organic posting refers to the unpaid posts you publish to your profile that might be seen by a portion of your followers, and, if you’re lucky, non-followers if the algorithm deems your content worthy! Unfortunately, with millions of posts being published every day, the likelihood of your posts reaching a large number of people is not high. The likelihood of reaching relevant people is even lower! The truth is, these days, you’d be lucky for even half of your followers to see your posts organically.
Social media advertising allows you to reach more people and specify targeting in order to reach people who are valuable for your business. Selling jewellery? You can target your ads toward women with a known interest in jewellery! Offering a service in a particular geographic area? You can target regions and postcodes.
What is social media advertising?
Social media advertising refers to the paid promotion of products, services, or brands on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Unlike organic social media marketing, which relies on non-paid strategies such as content creation, community engagement, and SEO (SEO supports organic search vs paid search) to naturally grow an audience, social media advertising involves purchasing ad space to target specific demographics, interests, and behaviors. This approach enables advertisers to precisely reach their intended audience through sponsored content, display ads, and influencer collaborations. It offers detailed analytics for optimising campaigns, distinguishing it as a targeted and measurable way to boost brand visibility, engagement, and conversions in contrast to the gradual build-up associated with organic tactics.
Paid social vs organic social
Paid social media advertising and organic social media strategies are two distinct approaches that businesses use to reach and engage with their audience on social media platforms. Here are the key factors that differentiate them:
1. Cost: The most apparent difference is that paid social media involves buying advertising space to reach a social media advertising target audience, while organic social media relies on free tools provided by the platforms to build and engage with a community naturally over time.
2. Reach: Paid social media can significantly extend the reach of your content beyond your existing followers to targeted audiences specified by demographics, interests, and behaviours. Organic reach, on the other hand, is limited to your current followers, their networks and how the platform's algorithm perceives your content. There is potential to go viral, but this is very hard to achieve.
3. Targeting: Paid social media allows for precise targeting options, including age, location, interests, behaviours, and more, enabling advertisers to tailor their message to the specific audience they want to reach. Organic strategies do not have the same level of targeting; instead, they rely on hashtags, keywords, and the content's natural appeal to attract a broader audience.
4. Speed and Scalability: Paid campaigns can be launched quickly and scaled easily, making it possible to reach a large audience in a short amount of time. Organic growth is a slower process, requiring consistent content creation and community engagement over an extended period to gradually increase reach and follower count.
5. Content Lifespan: Paid ads are visible for as long as the campaign is running and the budget allows. Organic content has a longer potential lifespan on social media, especially if it becomes popular and is shared widely, but its visibility can fluctuate based on the platform's algorithm and engagement levels.
6. Analytics and Measurability: Both strategies offer analytics, but paid advertising provides more detailed data and metrics to measure the effectiveness of campaigns, including social media advertising roi, impressions, clicks, and conversions. Organic analytics focus on engagement rates, such as likes, shares, comments, and organic reach, offering insights into content performance and audience behaviour.
7. Objective: While both strategies aim to increase brand awareness and engagement, paid social media is often more conversion-focused, with clear calls to action and direct marketing goals. Organic social media prioritises building relationships, establishing brand identity, and providing value to the audience through informative or entertaining content.
Benefits of Social Media Advertising
One of the greatest benefits of social media advertising is the ability to target specific audiences. Platforms will typically allow you to target based on demographics (age, gender, location), behaviour (e.g. how they have interacted with your business, if they are likely to purchase from a social platform), lifestyle (e.g. industries of work, fields of study) and interests (e.g. animals, jewellery, travelling).
Secondly, social media advertising allows you to review performance through data analysis and optimise accordingly. Some key metrics you might focus on are the link click-through rate (the rate at which people who are shown your ad click the link) which indicates how relevant your content is to your audience. If you’re selling products, you should also be focussing on metrics such as return on ad spend (ROAS) and cost per purchase to determine how profitable your ads and the efficiency of your advertising in relation to sales results.
Another way social media marketing can benefit you is by allowing you to amplify the reach of your organic content. You can either create customised ads that won’t publish to your feed, though will show to people you want to target, OR you can put spend behind the content you’ve posted organically. Which way to go will depend on your goals, however we always recommend building customised ads to ensure you are getting the right message and call to action to your specific audience. Organic content is typically used to foster community and nurture existing followers, whereas ads can be used to reach new people.
Types of Social Media Ads
The array of social media ad formats available on platforms caters to diverse marketing social media ad strategies and content types. Here's an overview of common ad formats across key platforms:
Facebook
- Single Image: A simple format featuring one image, text, and a call-to-action (CTA).
- Video: Engages users with video content, suitable for storytelling or product demos.
- Carousel: Allows multiple images or videos in a single ad, each with its own link, ideal for showcasing multiple products or different aspects of a single product.
- Slideshow: A video-like ad made from a series of still images, text, and sound, optimising for low-bandwidth conditions.
- Collection: Offers an immersive experience, letting users discover, browse, and purchase products from their mobile device in a visual and interactive layout.
- Instant Experience: A full-screen ad format that opens after a user clicks on an ad on a mobile device, designed to load quickly and be interactive.
Instagram
- Single Image and Video Ads: Similar to Facebook, with options for single images or videos with captions and CTAs.
- Carousel: Users can swipe through multiple images or videos in a single ad.
- Stories Ads: Full-screen vertical ads that appear between users' Stories, available in image or video formats.
- Reels Ads: Full-screen, vertical ads that appear between individual Reels, similar to Stories ads but for the Reels environment.
Twitter
- Promoted Tweets: Regular tweets paid to reach more people.
- Promoted Accounts: Ads to help increase an account's followers.
- Promoted Trends: Advertisers can promote a hashtag to the top of the Trending Topics list.
- Video Ads: Short video ads that can appear in tweet form.
- Carousel Ads: Multiple images or videos that users can swipe through.
LinkedIn
- Sponsored Content: Posts that appear in the LinkedIn feed, including single image ads, video ads, and carousel ads.
- Sponsored InMail: Personalised ads sent directly to users' LinkedIn messaging inboxes.
- Text Ads: Simple, cost-effective ads that appear on the LinkedIn sidebar.
- Dynamic Ads: Personalised ads that automatically customise content with the names and profile pictures of the targeted LinkedIn members.
YouTube
- Skippable Video Ads: Ads that viewers can choose to skip after 5 seconds.
- Non-Skippable Video Ads: 15 to 20-second ads that viewers must watch before accessing their content.
- Bumper Ads: Short, non-skippable video ads up to 6 seconds long.
- Display Ads: Appear to the right of the feature video and above the video suggestions list.
- Overlay Ads: Semi-transparent ads that appear on the lower portion of the video.
Snapchat
- Snap Ads: Full-screen vertical video ads that appear between Stories.
- Collection Ads: Allow users to browse a series of products directly within the Snapchat app.
- Story Ads: Appear in the Discover section as a branded tile, opening into a collection of 3-20 images or videos.
Each platform's unique environment and user behaviour influence the effectiveness of these ad formats, making it crucial for advertisers to tailor their content and strategy to match their objectives and target audience preferences.
Catalog Ads
Businesses can upload their entire product catalog to Facebook and then create ads that dynamically display items from this catalog to target audiences. These ads can appear in various formats, including single image, carousel (where users can swipe through multiple products), and collection (which combines multiple products into a single ad experience). Catalog ads on Facebook and Instagram are designed to drive online shopping, making it easy for users to discover, browse, and purchase products directly from the ad.
Creating a Social Media Advertising Strategy
Creating a social media advertising strategy can be distilled into three fundamental steps, each critical for ensuring that your advertising efforts are effective, targeted, and capable of achieving your business objectives. Here’s a simplified approach:
- Define Your Objectives and Target Audience:
- Objectives: Start by identifying what you want to achieve with your social media advertising and set SMART objectives. SMART objectives are goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound, ensuring they are clear, trackable, realistic, aligned with strategy, and have a deadline. Common goals include increasing brand awareness, generating leads, driving website traffic, or boosting sales. Each objective will influence the type of ad formats you choose and the platforms you use.
- Target Audience: Understanding who your audience is crucial. Define your ideal customers based on demographics (age, gender, location), interests, behaviors, and needs. This information will help you tailor your advertising messages and select the right social media platforms to reach them effectively.
- Select the Right Platforms and Ad Formats:
- Platform Choice: Choose platforms where your target audience is most active. Each social media platform has its strengths and audience demographics. For instance, LinkedIn is excellent for B2B marketing, while Instagram might be better for visual products targeting a younger audience.
- Ad Formats: Based on your objectives and the chosen platforms, select the ad formats that will best convey your message. Options include single image ads, video ads, carousel ads (multiple images or videos in a single ad), stories ads, and catalog ads (allowing you to showcase a collection of products). Consider also interactive formats like polls on Instagram or Facebook to engage your audience.
- Create, Monitor, and Optimise Your Campaigns:
- Ad Creation: Develop compelling ad content that resonates with your target audience. This includes eye-catching visuals, engaging copy, and a clear call-to-action (CTA). Ensure your ads are optimised for each platform’s specifications.
- Monitoring and Optimisation: Once your ads are live, continuously monitor their performance against your objectives. Use the analytics tools provided by each platform to track metrics such as engagement rates, click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates, and ROI. Test different ad elements (such as ad copy, images, and targeting criteria) to see what works best and make adjustments to improve performance.
By following these steps—defining clear objectives and understanding your audience, selecting the right social media advertising platforms and ad formats, and continuously monitoring and optimising your campaigns—you can create a social media advertising strategy that is effective, targeted, and capable of achieving your desired outcomes.
Effective Ad Creation
To create engaging social media ads, focus on concise, compelling content with high-quality visuals that resonate with your target audience. Mobile optimisation is crucial, as most users access social media on smartphones—ensure ads are visually appealing and readable on small screens. One of the benefits of social media advertising is the ability to get messages across in a visual way.
Leverage user-generated content to boost authenticity and relatability, encouraging trust and engagement from viewers. This approach increases ad effectiveness by making ads feel less like traditional advertisements and more like recommendations from friends, capitalising on the social aspect of these platforms to foster a stronger connection with your audience.
Platform Deep Dive
The landscape of social media is diverse, with each platform offering unique features, catering to specific audience demographics, and requiring tailored strategies for effective engagement. Here's a breakdown of the key players: Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, highlighting their distinct characteristics and best practices for marketers and content creators.
Facebook
- Unique Features: Facebook's robust targeting options for advertisers, extensive user base, and diverse content formats (posts, stories, live videos) make it a versatile platform.
- Audience Demographics: While Facebook's audience spans various age groups, it's particularly popular among users aged 25 to 34 years.
- Best Practices: Utilise detailed targeting options, engage with your community through comments and groups, and leverage Facebook Insights to optimise your strategy.
Instagram
- Unique Features: Instagram is visually oriented, focusing on high-quality images and videos. Features like Stories, Reels, and IGTV cater to short-form content lovers.
- Audience Demographics: Instagram attracts a younger audience, primarily between 18 to 34 years, with a strong inclination towards visual and creative content.
- Best Practices: Prioritise high-quality visuals, use hashtags strategically to improve discoverability, and engage with followers through Stories and interactive polls.
TikTok
- Unique Features: TikTok is the go-to platform for short, engaging video content, known for its viral trends, music integration, and highly personalised "For You" page.
- Audience Demographics: Dominated by Gen Z, with a significant portion of users under the age of 24, TikTok appeals to those seeking entertainment and creative expression.
- Best Practices: Embrace social media advertising trends and challenges, focus on creating authentic and entertaining content, and collaborate with influencers to extend your reach.
For each platform, understanding its unique ecosystem and tailoring your content to match the preferences of its user base is crucial. Mobile optimisation is a must across the board, ensuring content is accessible and engaging on smaller screens. Leveraging user-generated content can also enhance authenticity and foster community, pivotal in driving engagement and loyalty.
Measuring Success
To gauge the effectiveness of social media campaigns, it's essential to focus on key performance indicators (KPIs), utilise advanced tools for tracking and analysis, and employ strategic testing and optimisation techniques.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Metrics
- Engagement: Includes likes, comments, shares, and saves. High engagement rates indicate content resonates with your audience.
- Reach and Impressions: Measure the spread of your content and how often it's seen, highlighting your visibility on the platform.
- Click-through Rate (CTR): The ratio of users who click on a specific link to the number of total users who view a page, ad, or email. It's crucial for evaluating the effectiveness of calls to action.
- Conversion Rate: Tracks the percentage of users who take a desired action (purchasing, signing up), providing insight into the ROI of your social media efforts.
- Follower Growth: The rate at which your follower base increases, indicating brand awareness and appeal.
Tools for Tracking and Analysis
Leveraging the right tools is vital for accurately measuring these KPIs. Most social media platforms offer built-in analytics tools (such as Facebook Insights, Instagram Analytics, and TikTok Analytics) that provide a wealth of data on performance metrics. Third-party tools like Google Analytics, Hootsuite, and Sprout Social offer more in-depth analysis, including cross-platform comparisons and advanced reporting features.
A/B Testing and Optimisation Techniques
- A/B Testing: Running two versions of an ad or post (A and B) to see which performs better can illuminate what content types, headlines, images, or calls to action your audience prefers.
- Content Optimisation: Use insights from A/B testing and analytics to refine your content strategy. This includes adjusting post timings, formats, and messaging to better align with audience preferences.
- Ad Optimisation: Continuously monitor ad performance to tweak targeting, placements, and creative elements, ensuring your budget is being spent on the most effective ads.
Optimisation is an ongoing process, requiring marketers to stay agile and responsive to data insights. By systematically measuring, analysing, and refining your strategy based on concrete metrics, you can enhance the impact of your social media marketing efforts and achieve your business objectives more efficiently.
Case Studies and Success Stories
Being a creative agency, Born Social have the unique ability to offer full content creation services within their advertising management packages. This gives us the advantage of being able to plan, shoot, design, edit and test a range of creatives for our clients. The impact of visual content in social media ads can have an astounding effect on overall ad performance, but we find that the ability to create compelling content is one of the common challenges of social media advertising, as not everyone has the skills or resources available.
With beautiful, stand-out-from-the-crowd content the key to standing out from the crowd and being noticed among a sea of other advertisers, it’s no surprise our ads perform so well.
Take a look at some of our recent social media ads examples:
You can also view our portfolio of work to see work we’ve done for brands like Patient Wolf and Strato Melbourne.
Beyond content, our degree-qualified marketers know how to craft copy that not only resonates with our target markets, but pushes them to take action, making us also really good at Google Search Ads.
After years of running advertising campaigns from start to finish across a variety of clients, and picking up ad accounts from other agencies with poor results, here’s what we’ve learned:
1. Never settle for just 1 campaign, 1 audience, and 1 ad.
We see this a lot when taking over accounts previously managed by ‘cheap’ agencies. Cheap agencies can afford to be cheap because they are usually dedicating the bare minimum to your account. If this is what your account looks like, it means no testing is being done at the campaign, audience or ad level - major red flag!
2. Be clear and strategic about your goals, and align your ad objectives with these goals.
If you want purchases, leads, engagement or brand awareness, you not only need to tell yourself that, but you need to tell the platform that, too. It’s common to see beginner advertisers using brand awareness campaigns to get purchases, because they’re not considering how the platform works. When you select a campaign objective on the platform, you are telling the platform ‘This is what I want. When someone does this action, keep going out to find more people who will.’ Yes, the odd purchase might come through as a result of a brand awareness campaign, but the platform is essentially ignoring this and optimising the campaign for metrics like reach, impressions or frequency - it doesn’t understand that you actually want purchases unless you tell it this.
3. Build out a funnel to nurture your audience the way they need from the moment they are introduced to you, to the moment they convert.
Should the people who have already clicked through and browsed your website be shown the same ad as a person who has never seen you before? What about people who have added to cart or initiated checkout, but not purchased? The answer is NO, definitely not! Segment your audiences based on where they lie on the funnel - introduce your brand to the newcomers, build trust and nurture those who have shown a little bit of interest, and give your abandoned carts an offer they just won’t be able to ignore.
4. Don’t blindly action recommendations from platform representatives.
Received a call from someone from Meta or Google telling you your account is missing out on opportunities? Sometimes, they’re right. A lot of the time, they’re not - particularly on Google. It’s important to keep in mind that reps are often incentivised by what actions you make in the account as a result of their ‘help’. On Google, your call with them will probably go a little like this: “Ma’am, please go to your recommendations tab and add the broad match keywords and apply display expansion. Then, go to Auto-Apply and select Target CPA, Target ROAS and Maximise Conversions, Improve Your Responsive Search Ads …blah blah blah”. Stop. Don’t action this unless you fully understand what, why and how this will impact your account. If you’re keen to read a bit more about problematic Google reps, check out some of these threads on Reddit.
5. Never assume you know what your audience wants.
Making assumptions is a good place to start, don’t get us wrong, but don’t let your initial assumptions be the be-all-and-end-all for your marketing messaging and strategy. We usually start by segmenting available audiences, narrowing in on those that we want to target, and building customer profiles to give us an understanding of who we are speaking to, what their pain points might be, and how we can show them the solution. Once you’ve done this, begin testing! If you see an awful click-through rate, maybe your assumptions aren’t correct. Get back to the drawing board, and try something new.
6. TEST! TEST! TEST! Don’t forget to A/B test!
If you just settle for what you think is best, without evidence, you are likely missing out on a wonder of opportunities. Test campaign optimisations, audiences, ad copy and ad creatives. A/B testing involves making direct comparisons between two different variables. These variables might be your campaign optimisation - optimising for Initiate Checkout vs. Add To Cart - which one produces the best results? At the audience level, is it Males or Females producing the most favourable results? At the ad level, is is this hook, or that hook that is drawing the audience in? Don’t change everything at once, unless your performance is absolutely tanking. Try slight variations so you can pinpoint the exact reason why one variation is performing better than the other. If you test a completely different creative and different ad copy against eachother - how are you supposed to know which element is causing people to respond, or not respond?
Conclusion
In conclusion, social media ads stand out as a powerful avenue for achieving your marketing objectives, significantly amplifying your reach, and targeting your audience with precision. However, it's crucial to remember that success in this domain isn't a one-size-fits-all formula. The diversity of platforms and the uniqueness of each audience demand a tailored approach, making experimentation and testing fundamental. By continuously exploring and refining your strategies, you can discover the most effective ways to connect with your audience and achieve your marketing goals. Embrace the dynamic nature of social media advertising, and let the journey of testing and learning lead you to success.
FAQs
What Types of Ads are Most Effective on Social Media?
There are no one-size-fits-all answers to the best types of ads on social media. However, we do see great results across our clients with social media video advertising in general and catalog ads for those optimising for purchase.
How Do I Create a Social Media Advertising Strategy?
Firstly, consider your audience, your goals, budget and creative capabilities to help you select the best platform. Then, set clear and realistic KPIs. Once you begin advertising, test, test, test! Never settle for one campaign, one audience and one ad. Always test campaign optimisations and types, audiences and ad copy & creatives.
Which Social Media Platforms are Best for Advertising?
Ultimately, this comes down to what your goals are and where your audience are likely to be. For example, some platforms work really for brand awareness, like TikTok, however there’s arguably no point advertising on TikTok if you’re wanting to reach an older demographic, because that demographic is not likely to be using TikTok.
How Can I Measure the Success of My Social Media Ads?
Keep a close eye on the various metrics available to you while your campaigns run. Ensure you’ve also set up tracking on your website or app so you can measure consumer behaviour. To do this, you will typically need to install some code on your website/app typically called a ‘pixel’ and also set up a series of important events you want to track.
What is the best time to advertise on social media?
The best time to advertise on social media varies by platform and audience, but generally, weekdays during lunch hours and evenings are effective for reaching a broad audience. It’s important to test different times and evaluate results before narrowing in on a certain time.
Maximize Your Impact with Proven Social Media Advertising Strategies
Discover the secrets to powerful social media advertising with our expert guide! Our services help you harness the full capabilities of social media platforms to target and engage your audience effectively. Whether you're new to social media ads or looking to refine your strategies, we provide personalized insights and advanced techniques that cater to the unique needs of your business. Dive into the world of social media advertising and learn how to boost your reach, enhance engagement, and achieve your marketing goals with precision. Connect with us today to explore how our social media advertising services can transform your digital marketing efforts.