Social media marketing is bigger than ever. With social media influencers/content creators now commanding budgets large enough for agencies to take notice, companies must pay close attention to the growing influence of social media on brands. 3 of the largest social media platforms are Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube.
There’s a reason that Facebook and Google command the vast majority of digital ad spend. Apart from being the only effective solution for small businesses which don’t have a significant amount of ad spend, Facebook is also relatively easy to use. There is no need to connect to a DMP to buy 3rd party data, as FB has a plethora of custom audience targeting data. You can also place FB pixels on your own website and retarget users who’ve landed on your page.
Ad Creation
Facebook provides many different campaign objective options in 3 major buckets: awareness, consideration, and conversion. The ones that I have found the most powerful for my strategy are engagement, traffic, and conversions.
- Engagement: Start by engaging your audience. Encourage audiences to like, comment, and share your ad/post
- Traffic: After the ad has enough engagement, it’s time to open the flood gates. Bring in the bulk of your traffic. This wave of users are more likely to react positively due to the social proof that has been established during the engagement step.
- Conversions: Collect enough users who have shown interest in your product/service via pixels, comments, likes, or any other indicator. Retarget these users with another ad as they will be much more likely to convert at this point.
Choosing an Audience
Below is the audience creation dashboard where we can create custom audiences with the targeting options that Facebook has available.
Choose Placements
There are a variety of places in which we can place facebook ads. I’ve found feeds to be the most effective. Messenger is a new option that may be worth trying out due to higher user attentiveness to instant messaging.
A Note on Youtube
Youtube is a top contender in the video space, and it millions of creators have the freedom to post content and have their content monetized. Advertising through this medium can be a great alternative for advertisers who utilize video creatives.
Methods of Advertising
- Pre-Roll and Midroll Ads. These are the standard ads that are used across Youtube.
- 3rd Party Sponsored Ads. This is a new wave of ads where the brand negotiates a sponsorship directly with the content creator so that the ad is a part of the actual content. In essence, the ad would still show even if a user had adblock. Below is an example of this in NBA commentator Mike Korzemba’s channel.
Sources
Online I see people committing ‘social media suicide’ all the time by one of two ways. Firstly by responding to all criticism, meaning you’re never going to find time to complete important milestones of your own, and by responding to things that don’t warrant a response. This lends more credibility by driving traffic.
— Tim Ferriss
Simply Ad Tech 