The Social Media Ads Manager: How to Create, Analyze, and Optimize Your Campaigns
In the world of information overload where everyone is vying for attention, it’s more important than ever in marketing history to have a solid social media presence to remain in the competition. Social media has quickly become the most popular way to stay connected with friends, family, and news as society becomes more digitized. Due to the heavy number of users on social media sites, businesses have taken note of these powerful platforms as an opportunity to advertise and market their products or services. This has resulted in the development of social media ads, which are becoming more and more commonplace. As a result of the constant bombardment of content, people have become more selective in what they consume. Social media campaigns need to be on point to make an impact and not get lost in the shuffle. With the assistance of a social media ads manager and contracting support from a digital marketing agency in Salt Lake City, like Sites by Sara, you can create effective campaigns that will improve your brand awareness and lead to conversions that stand out and generate demand.
What is Social Media Ads Manager?
The social media ads manager is an excellent starting tool for small businesses or those new to social media marketing. It is a tool that empowers you to create, measure, and optimize your campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Audience Network from a singular platform. The ads manager also provides insights to show your campaigns’ performance and areas that may need improvement. This is an essential tool for those looking to make the most out of their social media campaigns.
Creating a Campaign
The first step in creating a social media campaign is to develop your objectives. Determine what you want your campaign to achieve. Some options include increasing brand awareness, generating leads, or promoting a sale. Once you have selected your objective, you can select the appropriate campaign type.
The six campaign types are:
1. Awareness: Increases reach and frequency or brand awareness
2. Consideration: Gets people thinking about your product or service
3. Conversion: Encourages people to take a specific action, such as making a purchase
4. Engagement: Encourages people to interact with your content
5. Lead Generation: Collects leads for your sales team
6. Traffic: Drives traffic to your website
After you have selected your campaign type, you will need to select your ad format. The three ad formats are:
· Single Image: A single image with text
· Video: A video with text
· Carousel: Multiple images or videos that people can scroll through
Once you have selected your ad format, you must choose your audience. You can create a custom audience or use a Lookalike audience. A custom audience is one you have already created, such as your email list. A Lookalike audience is specifically created by Facebook and based on the characteristics of your custom audience.
After you have selected your audience, you will need to create your ad. When creating your ad, you will need to select your budget and schedule. You can choose to run your ad continuously or set a start and end date. You will also need to select your ad placements. Ad placements are where your ad will appear, such as in the newsfeed, on Instagram, or in Messenger.
After creating your ad, you will need to monitor your campaign to see how it is performing. The social media ads manager provides insights to show your campaigns’ performance and areas that need improvement. These insights will help you to make changes to your campaign so that you can achieve your objectives. As you monitor your campaign and make strategic adjustments, you will become stronger at generating leads, improving conversions, and increasing brand awareness.
Tips and Tricks To Get The Most Out Of Your Advertising Budget
Your advertising budget is a prized possession. You worked hard to earn the funds to prove to your organization that social media marketing is a valuable channel to invest in. Now that you have the budget, it is vital to use it wisely to get the most out of your investment.
Below are a few strategic tips and tricks to help you get the most out of your advertising budget:
· Create campaigns specific to your objectives: One mistake some social media leaders make is creating campaigns that are not specific to their objectives. For example, if you aim to increase brand awareness, create a campaign focused on increasing reach and frequency. If your objective is to generate leads, create a campaign focused on lead generation with the appropriate call-to-action. Mismatched objectives and campaigns will result in poor performance and wasted budget that could have been used more efficiently.
· Select the right ad format: Another common mistake is selecting the wrong ad format for the campaign objective. For example, if your objective is to increase brand awareness, then a single image ad that quickly conveys your message is typically more effective than a carousel ad which offers more intense visuals but requires people to click through each image. If you are a brand-new business and the bulk of the market does not know who you are, your format needs to cater to that by quickly introducing viewers to your brand.
· Start with a small budget: It is important to start with a small budget so that you can test different ad types, copy, images, and targeting options. Once you have found an ad performing well, you can increase your budget and scale your campaign. This is a common practice among social media marketers because it allows them to minimize waste, maximize efficiency, and build trust with their organization’s leaders that the budget is being used thoughtfully.
· Test, test, and test again: Always be testing different elements of your ad so that you can improve performance. You can test copy, different graphic design images, call-to-actions, targeting, and ad format. The key is to make small modifications so that you can isolate which change caused the decrease or increase in performance. This incremental testing will help you fine-tune your ad to perform at its best.
· Utilize reporting features: The social media ads manager provides reporting features showing analytics on how your ad performs. These insights will help you to make changes to your campaign so that you can achieve your objectives. Some key metrics to be aware of include reach, frequency, CTR (click-through rate), CPC (cost-per-click), and CPA (cost-per-acquisition). When it comes time to present the results to your organization’s leaders, include how you improved the metrics so that they can see the direct correlation between your budget and the social media ads.
By following these social media tips, you will get the most out of your advertising budget and achieve your social media marketing objectives. If you are new to social media marketing or want to extend your organization’s bandwidth, consider working with the social media experts at Sites by Sara. We are happy to help you create, analyze, and optimize your social media campaigns so that you can focus on what you do best – running your business. Contact us today to get started.
