Social Advertising Tips & Tricks

Lauren Owens - January 6, 2015

While no form of digital advertising is 100% perfect, social advertising comes close. Thanks to an abundance of targeting options (including remarketing options), social advertising is a boon for marketers looking for new and exciting ways to gain attention and drive qualified traffic. Whether you’ve been using social advertising for years, or you’re a newbie, chances are you could be doing it better. In this post, we offer some expert tips for making the most of social advertising. Want more? Download our latest social white paper, Social Media Advertising: Opportunities and Keys for Success.

Use Custom Audience Targeting

Custom Audience Targeting is the process of creating your own audience within the social networks with the help of your email list (via CRM). This targeting option enables you to market to users who already have a relationship with your brand but may not follow you on social media. It also helps you to increase the power of your email marketing campaigns, using the magic of repetition.

Custom audience targeting is available in both Facebook and Twitter.

Target Your Competitor’s Fans

In Twitter, you can target users based on who they follow. This means that you can target your ads to your competitor’s fans. When doing this, make sure you’re ad is clear on what you offer. This is especially important if you cater to different audiences. If Target, for example, wanted to promote its electronics department, it might target its electronics ads to Newegg.com’s followers.

Use Compelling Imagery & Copy

All of the targeting options in the world can’t replace the magic of good copy and imagery. No matter who you’re targeting or what you’re selling, make sure your ad imagery is clean and compelling, and your copy is focused on conversion.

Tip: If you’re running ads in Twitter, make sure your imagery fits perfectly in the 500×250 pixel image previewing space. Or, use Twitter Cards in conjunction with your ads to improve the usability of your ad.

Test Your Ads

You never really know if something is going to work until you test it. When devoting budget to a new campaign, test your ad to make sure it’s designed to perform. You can incrementally apply testing methods to various aspects of your campaign, including targeting options, campaign messaging and collateral, and landing pages.

Offer Value

It takes a lot to get the social audience out of their streams and onto your landing page. So make sure that your marketing message is compelling enough to entice them away from the meme of the day by offering a deal they can’t refuse. This doesn’t have to be a huge sale, but it does help!