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Allocating dollars to a social advertising is a great idea. Even with the rising completion, the cost per result on social advertising campaigns are by far the most cost effective compared to other forms of digital advertising. When you have a strong strategy, that is! This article pieces together the 4 must-have elements of a strong social advertising campaign. However, before we jump into that, we need to have a realistic conversation about where social advertising fits into the buyer’s journey.

While social media ads CAN generate conversions, they often don’t receive the credit they deserve due to last-touch attribution which essentially gives credit to the last ad a user interacts with before they make a purchase. This isn’t ideal when you consider the fact that most social media activity is “top of the funnel” or awareness driven. That’s not to say you can’t structure campaigns to help convert people who are ready to buy at a higher rate, however that is for another blog.

When thinking about structuring a strong social advertising strategy, you will want to include 4 specific elements. Here they are!

Community Growth

Historically in social media marketing, wisdom has told us to not put too much stock in the number of followers you have. This is partly true. Attracting fluff followers to look good won’t help you much when it comes to actual business results. However, if you can grow a targeted audience that has interest in your brand, you can see lower overall advertising costs, greater reach and reinforced brand authority by using social advertising to grow your communities. There is no shame in having a small, engaged community if those individuals are helping move the needle on your brand’s key performance indicators.

Engagement

Brand engagement is the holy grail for social media marketing. After all, that’s why social media exists. Using social advertising to promote content to a specific audience helps ensure that you are delivering the right message to the right people and not having to rely on Facebooks’ jerky algorithm (yea, I said it!). The important thing to remember when using social advertising to drive engagement is not all engagement is created equal. Its very easy to get people to notice a catchy motivational graphic or a funny video. However, it is much more difficult to get people to pay attention to the content that REALLY speaks to what your brand provides. Id offer that you might need a little of both, however focus those advertising dollars on the content that seems to get traction organically. These content pieces will pop the biggest when some dollars are behind them!

Website Clicks

A social advertising campaign that drives highly targeted traffic to your website is going to be the top driver of quantifiable business results in my opinion. Yes, the other elements are important. However, to get users to convert, you must get them off Facebook and onto your site (unless you are running Lead Ads of course). Almost all the social media sites have robust targeting parameters that should allow you to hone in on you target customer. While social media traffic usually has higher bounce rates, lower time on site and less pages per visit than other digital advertising tactics, its still very important to get fresh users to your site and in your marketing funnels consistently.

Retargeting

Typically speaking, a user will see your ad on social media, click it, browse your site and then get distracted by something else and leave whether it be by closing their phone or leaving their desktop. This is where retargeting comes in! Using a website pixel, email list or even video views, you can serve ads to these users who showed meaningful intentions with your site (or content) but didn’t convert. This tactic is a great way to remind users about your brand at a cost-effective rate. We highly recommend leveraging retargeting in your social advertising strategy!

 The exciting thing about social media marketing is that there are always new tactics to try and strategies to test. The scary thing is that there is only so much budget to go around and days in the month. If you are trying to build a home base for your social advertising strategy, these 4 elements will put you on the path to success. Be sure to test relentlessly, abandon tactics that don’t yield results and always optimize!