Getting started with a paid social media strategy can be daunting and time-consuming.
As a leading social media advertising agency (say that three times fast), we often get clients asking if we can fix their existing campaigns to improve ROI.
The problem?
They have not taken a step back to focus on a global strategy.
They jumped into social advertising with an audience that they thought he was right, a platform them thought he was right, and more creative than them thought fits both this maybe-audience and maybe-platform.
Collecting data before creating ads is just as important as configuring and refining the ads themselves.
There are two main sets of data I recommend gathering to create an overall strategy:
Understand the landscape of social media advertising. Understand your audience and how they engage with each social platform.
Once you understand the social media landscape and identify your ideal audience, you can create a social ad strategy with realistic goals that complement your SEO and other digital marketing efforts.
First: understand the landscape of social advertising
Your target audience won’t necessarily match your total number of social users perfectly. However, some social networks have so many active users that it can help to include them in your strategy.
For example, if you know your target audience is on TikTok, start there.
Then, when it’s time to expand and test, you might want to consider Facebook because of the sheer number of users (and you might learn something about a “new” target audience, after all).
Below is a detailed chart from Search Engine Journal that lists the top 10 social advertising platforms and their monthly active users worldwide:
Image from Search Engine Journal, August 2022
And here’s another helpful chart Action Opportunity Fund which breaks down some of the basics of the major social networks we’re seeing today.
Next: How to get started creating a social advertising campaign
As we discussed earlier, when you’re getting ready to start social advertising, you don’t necessarily want to just choose Facebook, for example, because it has the most users.
On that same note, you don’t want to just assume your audience isn’t on Facebook because you think your target audience is younger.
The good news for advertisers is that each platform offers detailed audience information that you can use to match your ideal audience without spending a lot of money doing blind testing. (More on that later.)
There are three main points, each with subsections, that matter when it comes to a payout strategy.
Audience Personas: Establishing audience demographics, interests and behaviors
Audience personas give you an understanding of your ideal audience, including demographics, interests and behaviors.
This step is always the first step for us, and there are a few different ways we collect this data:
Explore the analysis
Google Analytics, to be exact.
The Audience section of Google Analytics is a good place to start, as it has valuable information that can guide your social advertising strategy.
It will show you who is currently interacting with your website, but more importantly, who is contributing to conversions/transactions.
This data includes age, gender, location and more.
For example, if you see that the 18-24 age group is converting at a higher rate than the 45-54 age group, you may want to optimize your campaign for the younger age group.
Go where you think your audience is and engage
Believe it or not, some of our clients come to us with an idea for a social advertising campaign, but aren’t actively engaging with their audience on that social network!
For example, with the rise of TikTok, it can take a while to build a presence.
Therefore, we always recommend creating your social media account first and going there to see what people are talking about; you might be surprised by what you learn.
Research your competitors
Observe where your competitors are active on social media and how they market their products or services.
This is an easy way to make sure you don’t miss any opportunities and is usually a good starting point to start building a social advertising strategy.
You can learn more about researching your competitors here.
Audience segments: understand where they are in the customer journey (awareness, consideration, conversion, etc.)
Next, it’s essential to realize that while you may have an audience in terms of demographics, that audience can (and should) be further segmented based on where they are in their journey.
We typically segment an audience three times:
Those who have never heard it of your brand.
Those who have engaged with your brand in the pastbut only with blog posts or educational resources (which means they are still learning).
Those who are ready to buywhich is often shown by having items in a cart or having spoken to someone in your organization on the phone and expressed an interest in purchasing.
While these three segments are general, you can think about your business specifically to create more defined segments that you want to target, often called “audience personas.”
This is an important topic, so you can learn more about creating audience personas here.
Audience segmentation tends to coincide with prospecting, retargeting, and remarketing campaigns (more resources on different types of campaigns later).
Audience personalization: developing content and messaging specific to the audience at the right time in their journey
In short, there should be different content and messaging for someone who hasn’t heard of the company compared to someone who has previously engaged with it.
Once you’ve defined your segments, it’s time to start customizing your content, and the type of content you write depends on the platform.
The following steps include:
Match your audience to two or three platforms, then expect to produce different ads based on your personas. By this point in your journey, you should have analyzed the landscape of social media options and researched where your audience is!
Advertise on each of these platforms to see what works. You may only want to focus on one social platform, but we recommend at least two as they can complement each other well. Also, since each platform has unique ad formats, we suggest you create specific ads for each channel, maintaining the same look and feel.
Refine your ads. Again, this is a great topic. Adjusting your audience targeting, your content, the time of day you post that content, etc. is an optimization skill all its own. Keep in mind that you don’t want to make too many big changes without collecting enough data.
Expand your strategy. Don’t be afraid to try other networks as you grow and refine your ads. You’ll start to see what works and what doesn’t, and while this won’t be the same for every social network, you’ll start to get a reference for where to start your testing. This will help you save money and time in the long run as you expand.
Finally: Setting up advertising campaigns
Although this article focuses on social advertising strategy, setting up your ads successfully isn’t always as simple as it should be because there are so many different types of campaigns.
Professional advice: When setting up your campaigns, I recommend starting with three campaigns (prospecting, remarketing, and retargeting) to ensure you’re engaging with your audience at the right time along their journey.
Here’s an example to get you started:
Prospecting (awareness)
Audience segment: Those who have never heard of your brand.
Objective of the campaign: scope, awareness.
messenger: Focus on the user. What problem are you trying to solve?
Content type: educational articles, industry news, research stories.
Reorientation (consideration)
Audience segment: Those who have engaged with your brand in the past, but only with your website, social media or educational resource.
Objective of the campaign: Engagement, clicks.
messenger: Focus on the benefits of using a product or service to solve the problem.
Content type: E-books, white papers, company events.
Remarketing (decision)
Audience segment: Those who are ready to buy, often shown by having items in a cart or having spoken to someone in your organization.
Objective of the campaign: Conversions, purchases.
messenger: Focus on why they should choose your solution to solve their problem over your competitors.
Content type: Testimonials, reviews, case studies.
For step-by-step instructions for each individual social network, check out the following resources:
Final thoughts
Ultimately, creating an effective paid social media strategy will take time, and you’ll be constantly iterating, revising, and optimizing.
As with anything, successful business is all about testing, but doing your research before jumping into paid media, and then using paid media as part of your testing, is crucial to a successful overall strategy that complements your SEO and other digital marketing efforts.
Always define your goals, consider the commitment you want and expect, and then use the steps above to make it happen!
More resources:
Featured Image: Dean Drobot/Shutterstock
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