As a small business owner, you may not find it easy to navigate the somewhat complex structure of the social media advertising arena. It doesn’t make sense to hop on to the social media bandwagon because you’ve heard about other small businesses radically enlarging themselves through this platform. This is not enough, the magic happens when smart strategies are well executed.
If the growth of your customer base depends largely on customer advocacy and word-of-mouth, it might prove worthwhile to look towards social media for help.
The following are descriptions of the ad products of two widely used platforms for advertising on social media: Twitter and Facebook.
Facebook Ads
Firstly, you need to define your marketing objective. Would you want Facebook fans to become customers or do you merely want more likes? Optimize accordingly. You could also optimize for app installs or engagements, website clicks, and RSVPs to Facebook events.
Once that’s done, Facebook will offer guidance to the most suitable ad type. You can then select where that ad will appear; for example- with the News Feed, or by its side. With assistance from Facebook, you can figure out the place where your ad will work the best. Choose a catchy headline, great images, and textual content for your ad.
Next, you need to decide who should see your ad. You can mention criteria related to target audiences like location, gender, age, interest, language, relationship status, education, and workplace. You may choose to target people connected or not connected to your app or page, or friends of those who have liked the app or page. This type of targeting is a unique feature of Facebook, and you should consider it carefully.
Finally, the most important consideration is your budget. Depending on how you want your ads to be spaced out, plan a daily budget or a lifetime one. Facebook will assist you in deciding an appropriate payment method – whether to pay for particular actions like Likes and website purchases, or for every thousand impressions. Prices vary according to the competition in the target demographics.
To track the progress of your campaign, you can use Facebook’s analytics dashboard. This will help you identify well performing ads and you can allocate the amount accordingly.
Twitter Ads
The ad suite of Twitter has two categories of small businesses – Promoted Accounts and Promoted Tweets.
For advertising a specific product or message, Promoted Tweets are best. If your objective is getting new followers, you are required to pay only when new followers are added.
You may choose from different types of targeting. Targeting by keyword allows you to target people who tweet about, search for, or otherwise use a specific term. Targeting by followers and interests allows you to reach people of various broad interest categories. Targeting can also be restricted to certain devices and by gender.
After the setup, you can define your campaign’s budgets. For Promoted Tweet campaigns, you’re required to specify how much you’re ready to pay each time there are replies, retweets, follows, favorites, or clicks on tweets. For campaigns of the Promoted Account type, you are required to pay per follower.
Other Networks
Some companies might find other networks and related ad products more suitable. Depending upon your target customers’ needs, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Tumblr might also be worth looking at.
