Some Social media platforms have grown and evolved to make the monetisation of their user base easier and more effective, while others prefer to prioritise user experience over advertising potential. This is basically what social media marketing boils down to - treating the user base as a captive audience, to which you can attempt to sell your product or service.
As with many other advertising channels in recent history, there is a shift in how advertisers and marketers are going about marketing on social media however. The interruptive and disruptive ads that have existed for decades on television and in print are no longer the status quo - a disruptive ad on social media will not only lead to poor results, but can and has historically alienated the public. People don’t want to be advertised to. What they want on social media is social relationships, a requirement that has resulted in a significantly more subtle and casual brand of marketing. This is what sets it apart from the many other kinds of marketing out there.
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Promotion is a basic and in many cases, necessary part of any online presence. Social Media allows marketers the opportunity to ensure their brands are visible and a part of the community within which they intend to operate. Promotion tends to include the sharing of content, whether its the brands own content, or relevant content created elsewhere. Many platforms now allow any piece of content created to be shown to an audience outside of the brands circle of fans at additional cost, improving the reach of the content.
Lead Generation or List-building is the use of social media marketing to bring individuals into your company. More active than promotion, lead generation requests action from the user; asking that they offer their information (often in return for something). Once you have the contact info, you can then use it for email-marketing or direct sales contact.
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In general, payment for social media advertising is dependant on who you want to talk to, where you want to talk to them and how you want to talk about them. Many platforms use a bidding system as a way of giving every advertisement a fair shot at being shown (basically an auction for every ad-placement on the platform, where the advertisers that bid the most will get their ads shown). Within that bidding system, there are different methods of payment, related to the goals you have for your campaign. These are;
Cost per Click (CPC) - You pay for every click on your ads; these are optimised to get results
Cost per 1000 Impressions (CPM) - You pay for every 1000 views your ad gets; this is best if you want to get your ad in front of as many people as possible.
Cost per Conversion - You pay for every successful conversion (which you dictate) that your ads lead to, a common example would be form submissions.
Cost per Video View - You pay per video view (which isn’t always the full length of the video)
When you place a bid for your advertising, you’re bidding against your competitors for the same audience. If two brands want to advertise to 18-25 year old men who are in university and like driving, then they both bid for the right to advertise. The brand that bids more gets the better placement. Times that by thousands of brand’s of brands competing for millions of users and you can see how the bidding war can get pretty substantial for some audiences. On top of that, there are other factors that have an impact; when you’re advertising, what channels or placements (where on the page) you want to advertise, etc.
We talk a lot about setting up business and advertising goals, but when it comes to Social Media advertising, you often need to be even more specific. Be extremely clear about what you want people to click your ad to do; is it to download something? Fill in a form? The goal affects the best method of advertising, so the clearer you are, the better your returns will be.
As a social media user, there’s nothing more annoying than seeing the same ad pop up every time you open the app, even if it’s relevant. This generally means that the ad’s ‘frequency’ (how often it appears per-person) is far too high. If you don’t get someone after a couple of views, you’re not going to get them after 20 (in fact you’ll probably alienate them, which is far worse)
The more accurate and specific you can make your target audience, the better the returns are going to be, People respond to ads that are relevant, so take the time to get specific. Bonus tip; Facebook recommends chasing audiences of between 500,000 and 1,000,000 people for best results - personally we recommend the lower end of that spectrum. 1,000,000 is a very wide, general net.
Split-testing (also known A/B Testing) is when you run two variants of the same ad (or landing page/form/etc.), with one difference, then see which performs better. Many online ad platforms have this functionality built in, allowing you to create and run two ads to the same audience natively. Use this whenever you can to ensure your ads are optimised to be the best they can be.
Indeed some social media channels, such as Instagram and Snapchat, are basically mobile exclusive. As such, it makes sense to design your ads (and wherever they take people) with that in mind.
The first part of any solid strategy is defining the audience. Our process for establishing who you need to be selling to goes all the way from interviewing your current audience to providing you with a persona breakdown of each of your ideal customers.
An ad that doesn’t have a goal in mind, whether it’s a conversion a click or even just a view, is wasted. We work with brands to ensure that every ad has a purpose and is always driving people to complete that goal. Part of this is ensuring that advertising is supported by a robust campaign of landing pages, content offers and more back on your website - the job doesn’t finish with someone clicking an ad; that’s where it begins.
Whether we’re making an under-performing ad pull it’s weight, or making a good ad great, we’re always looking for ways to update and optimise in the long-term. We’ll continue to edit and improve the ad to ensure that the ROI is as good as its going to get and our brands are seeing great results.
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