Approaching Social Media Advertising to your target market 1/3

With so many algorithms, keywords, segments, patterns, and behaviors to sift through, one can be overwhelmed by how to get your voice noticed. While you might have a clear idea of your target audience, getting the message out in front of them such that lead generation is getting the click-through rate you are looking for is important. Your advertising spend is essential to your business, as well as your conversion rate. As of 2021, 75% of Gen-Z and 45% of Millenials are influenced by social media ads and in the USA $40.3 billion was spent on social media ads alone. Here we will discuss the digital marketing side of your social media advertising strategy.

What are Social Media Ads?

Social media platforms gather data on their users based on behaviors, liked pages, and interactions that are captured in the background to formulate a user profile. Collectively, a social media platform can formulate user demographics that are more in tune with a product or service than a generic search on Google. Social media advertising uses this information for your business to target your audience with higher precision, which then improves your conversion rate and relevant traffic to your eCommerce store. The highly relevant advertisement is matched to these user profiles which gains interest in your products to spread your brand awareness and your message. The efficiencies can lower your cost of acquisition of highly relevant audience pools and can significantly improve your overall business performance.

Consumer vs. Business lead generation

While consumer-based social media advertising is more recreational in nature, Facebook Ads would present themselves as very relevant, while it might be a tougher proposition to use that platform for B2B lead generation. LinkedIn Ads might be more appropriate for B2B and affiliate marketing. Therefore, looking at the right platform to review where your target market resides is very important. Additionally, checking your competition and where they are advertising is also crucial to review, break down their value proposition, and understanding their lead generation funnels.

Researching the tools

It may sound obvious, but as these platforms have evolved, they have gotten more complex in how they operate. For example, Facebook uses a Pixel to track the user's click-through to your site - it monitors their activity on your site to better optimize your Ad placements, as well are see about remarketing to them. Additionally, the tools to set up your Ad, having to select your budget, apply the right demographic, down to when to launch it may not be rocket science yet it is a new system to learn and get used to. This is why understanding where your market segment is most active is important for your digital marketing strategy, given the platform and the type of Ad have to be in tune with the users/platform for your lead generation strategy to get the conversion rate desired.

Managing a social media campaign

1. Run your Ad-campaign manually: This will be the least complex as well as the best way to get your feet wet on the Social Media platform you have chosen. Additionally, you get to see how the controls work and get a better understanding of the platform's lead generation, and conversion rate on the chosen demographics you get to pick out. Pros: You get to test out your Ads and their effectiveness with the use of 100% of your budget without agencies. Learning the language and the various features adds to your skillset even if you do plan to have an agency to lead this effort down the road. Cons: Time and commitment are required to learn and even master these platforms, so if you are tight on time as a business owner, this might be a challenge for you. Additionally, even if you do master the tools, communicating to your target audience may not be in tune with the audience where agencies excel in that space. Therefore, if you feel this is more outside of your skillset and reach, someone with the right touch might be best suited to start exploring. Ideal for: Companies on a tight budget that have some technical skills and time to learn and apply their skills on a social media platform.
2. Automated software to run your Ad Campaigns: Social media Ad Spending continues to climb as eCommerce grows, and global markets penetrate with mobile devices. There are several 3rd party tools that can help manage your campaigns. Pros: It can make the interface friendlier since on-site managers can be clunky at best. Tools such as AdEspresso and Revealbot make the experience a lot easier, making Facebook Ad campaigns run smoother than the Facebook Ad Manager. Adext is an AI tool that takes on optimizing your ads further so you can spend time on other parts of the business. Cons: While these tools are reasonably priced, it is an additional cost to your Ads as well if configured inaccurately, you might be spending your Ad spend without good results - thus troubleshooting the Ad Manager might be more difficult to see where it is falling short. Ideal for: This is the happy medium between being time/budget constrained as well as being able to run your Ads without an Agency.
3. Hiring managed service to run your Ad campaigns: It will be the simplest, yet the most costly option but will reap the most benefits in getting the results you want. Pros: You are hiring a skillset, and they know what they are doing, therefore your chances of success are higher. You get to save time and energy on other parts of the business that needs more focus. Cons: Hiring a bad agency can be self-proclaimed experts and do your background search to get trustworthy professionals. Ideal for: Immediate sales, and time to market. If the performance does not meet expectations, then it is clear where the fault lies and might have to go with another Agency.

Conclusion:

Traditional marketing has now expanded into the digital space and marketing teams have now adapted their techniques and methods to use Social Media platforms to reach their audiences. Keep in mind that there is more to conversions in bringing the audience over to your site - conversion rate optimization might be required for a frictionless checkout of your sales funnel. All this has to complement your content marketing, which has to be in tune with the search keywords for SEO. Getting the engagement takes more than a Liked Page, but user pages where customers interact and service/support help customers use their products. If you would like to discuss social media marketing and the strategies in digital marketing, give us a shout at wish@thegenielab.com