The Power of Social Media Advertising

It’s estimated that at this point in time 78% of adults in the UK are using Facebook but are you using it to its full potential? Despite the overwhelming popularity of Facebook, its still met with some scepticism when it comes to small business owners and Facebook advertising. However, you can’t dispute facts, and in 2015 Facebook was the primary influencer for 52% of online and offline purchases. So, what do you need to do to capitalise on the incredible influence of social media advertising on your customers?

Start with a plan

Your plan will need to account for the following:

• Editorial calendar: you need to have a list of local and national events in place to base your advertising around. This lets you create content and focus your posts towards ideas and dates that your customers will be familiar with.
• Content: There’s no denying the importance of high-quality content in both paid-for advertising and organic traffic. You’ll want to create a backlog of high-quality blog posts, video content and images to use in your adverts.
• Budgeting: Before you start advertising, make sure you have a plan of how much you want to spend. This stops you going over-budget and being underwhelmed with the results.
• Social networks: Decide which social networks are right for your business to advertise on. There are so many social networks out there, and all of them are great for different businesses..
• SMART objectives: SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-based. In short, you’ll want to specify what you want to accomplish and over what stretch of time.

Once you’ve got your plan in place, you’re ready to get started with your social media advertising.

Choosing content

There’s a lot to do when it comes to choosing content. You’ll need to decide whether you want to include a single image, a multiple image carousel or a video. Video content has a long-standing reputation for having the highest ROI for businesses.

You’ll want to use the same kind of glossy, professional shots as you would expect from magazine or TV advertising. You need to be grabbing people’s attention and getting them to come to your site.

Recommended Reading: Making Social Media Work For Your Business

Targeting your social media advertising

Targeting your adverts ensures that they’ll be seen by the right people. Facebook’s social media advertising system is particularly good for this. It’s so in-depth that you could ensure that your advert is seen only by 40-55 year old single men from within 20 miles of your business. The rub for this though, is that being this specific will ramp up the costs you pay per click. However, the people clicking your advert are going to be the ones who are likely to buy your product, so you can capitalise on that. Blanket adverts are much more likely to result in money-wastage and over-spending than highly targeted ads.

In addition to this, you can upload your email and phone databases to Facebook and it will find these people on the platform. This lets you engage with your existing client base as well as advertising to new customers.

Measuring success

This is always the nicest part, as well as the most important. Ensuring that you’re constantly measuring the success of your advertising stops you from throwing money away on advertising that isn’t working. There are a number of ways to measure the success of your social media advertising:

• If you were using advertising to direct more people towards your website, opt for Google Analytics. This lets you see your site’s traffic and where it came from.
• If you’re using an online store, install Facebook Pixel to track your conversions from social media. This means that you’ll be able to see whether people bought things as a result of your ad campaign or not.
• If you were simply trying to raise more consumer awareness towards your business, Facebook Insights and Twitter Analytics are both used for showing engagements (i.e. when people clicked, commented, or reacted to an advert) as well as impressions (when your advert appeared on someone’s feed).

You should also be aiming to keep track of how many followers you’ve gathered on your social media platforms since the ad campaign started to compare it to the figure as it stood before you started advertising.

Get some professional help

It’s not easy to go from a complete novice to a social media advertising expert overnight. In fact, you could argue that it’s completely impossible. Fortunately, that’s where expert help comes in! At Sites For Business, our social media management team are experienced in generating organic interest in your business as well as paid advertising. For more information about what Sites For Business can do to help you, get in touch today!

Contact us!