About 91% of consumers are more likely to buy your product or service when you personalise your communication with them. Targeted ads are curated messages that focus on the audience’s demographics – who they are, what they like and what they want to purchase. Targeted social media advertising reaches the ideal audience with relevant content and messaging, maximising your social media Return on Investment (ROI).
Understanding the Benefits of Targeted Social Media Advertising
Targeted ads are the product of behaviour-based advertising. They collect and analyse online activity and use this data to inform the type of ads a user is shown. For example, if users often search for tech gadgets, they will be shown ads for the latest tech. Platforms and websites do this by collecting cookies, location information and mined data.
Targeted ads increase the likelihood of conversion and improve overall campaign performance and this often leads to an attractive ROI. Social media advertising can also provide valuable data and insights into customer behaviour and preferences, informing future marketing strategies.
Whether you want to target young audiences on TikTok or Instagram, make yourself known to millennials on Twitter or build brand awareness on LinkedIn, success on social media lies in a great, adaptable advertising strategy.
Defining Your Target Audience
If you think everyone will want your products and services, you might want to reconsider! Not everyone will buy what you sell and that’s why defining who is likely to buy is key. Audience segmentation and retargeting tools help businesses tailor their ads to specific demographics, interests, and behaviours.
One of the key advantages of social ads over other forms of advertising is the ability to laser-target your audience. Smart Facebook ad targeting can help you reach the people who are interested in your brand. Facebook ad targeting helps you to define the audience that will see your ad, thereby improving the effectiveness of your campaigns and social media ROI.
On Facebook, ad targeting is based on three types of target audience:
- Core audiences – based on demographics, behaviours and location.
- Custom audiences – these allow you to reconnect with people who have already interacted with your business.
- Lookalike audiences – these allow you to target people similar to your best customers but who may not know about your business yet.
Selecting the Right Social Media Platforms for Advertising
Audience is one of the most important factors when choosing a social media platform. If your audience is not active on a channel, it’s not worth your time to invest in it. For example, Facebook has more active audiences than any other network, but if your audience hangs out more on Instagram, then that’s where you need to be. The best social media channels for B2B marketing that we recommend to most of our clients include LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok and Instagram. But then again, every business is different.
By choosing the right platform for your social media efforts, your activity will be more effective, thus increasing your ROI. It’s also strategic to look at where your competitors are and what content they’re posting. If all your competitors are doing well on LinkedIn and not so well on Facebook, then this is a clear indication that this could be the case for your business too.
You may also consider your social media marketing goals – are you trying to increase brand awareness? Do you want to increase lead generation or improve community engagement? Certain platforms are suited better depending on what you intend to achieve.
Utilising Advanced Targeting Options
With advanced targeting options on Facebook, you can go a step further and reach the people who are likely to be interested in specific products and who have already shown they’re willing to purchase.
On LinkedIn, you’re targeting a quality audience in a professional context. LinkedIn’s audience has twice as much buying power as the average web audience. This platform has precise and powerful audience targeting where you can target your ideal customer based on traits like their job title, company name or industry as well as personal or professional interests.
Creating Engaging Social Media Campaigns
Posting the same content on all platforms is a common social media mistake to avoid. You’re going to want to tailor your content to the platform and its respective audience. The type of content people are looking for on Instagram is very different to what they expect on LinkedIn.
Social media tools such as scheduling tools can make creating and managing your content much easier. They assist you to be consistent with your social strategy and post at the most optimum times.
Setting Realistic Advertising Budgets
Determining your ad spend is crucial when running a social media campaign. Most companies spend about 35% to 45% of the total marketing budget on digital marketing activities. Of the digital marketing budget, about 15% to 25% usually gets spent on social media marketing efforts. Like anything that refers to a return on investment, calculating social media ROI means taking the value of your social media activities and dividing it by the investment made.
Your overall digital marketing goals should also play a factor in deciding your social media budget. It’s important to note that ad spend is only part of social media costs. There is also strategy, design and tracking results included in the process.
Measure Social Media ROI and Adjust Your Strategy Accordingly
Now that you have your action plan in place, it’s time to track your activities and the results they produce through measuring social media ROI. Have a look at your social dashboards to understand your performance. For example, which types of content are your top performers? At what times are you getting the most engagement? From all this data, you can draw conclusions to improve and adapt your social media strategy.
Continual analysis and adjustment of ad campaigns are necessary to optimise social media ROI and advertising budgets. Social media can be daunting so outsourcing your social media management can be the best option.
Our team of dedicated social media marketers are experts in their field and can help you to advertise your products on the right channels in order to maximise your social media marketing ROI.
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