Social Ads Beginners Guide.

Target Your Customers Across The Social Network

What Are Social Ads?

If you have a social media account you’ve probably realised you’re not alone with a quarter of the planet on just Facebook. There is plenty of opportunities for you to run social ads using the information users provide to be incredibly targeted with ads on social platforms. Social users leave marketers a ton of information in their social profile from there age, gender, relationship status and career. Not only this but every comment, like, laughter and sad face can determine what services will appeal to them. Every social platform has its own advantages and disadvantages that they could have users more suited to your brand.

Why Work With Social Ads?

Social ads are perfect for connecting with customers in multiple stages of the customer funnel. This gives you opportunities to find new customers and improve your brand awareness. Using your followers data you could create lookalike audiences to reach new customers who have not interacted with your brand.

You can also use ads to increase your following online and spread brand awareness. Thanks to transparency with Facebook you can also see what your competitors ads look like easily to try and gain an advantage over them in the social ads space.

With a quarter of the planet using social platforms, you are likely to find people that match your ideal customer across these platforms.

Social ads tend to be associated with all stages in the funnel but works particularly well with ‘Awareness’ and ‘Interest’ as you look for new customers. It is all very dependent on your type of business and the social network.

How To Do Social Ads Yourself

Each social platforms presents its own unique set of challenges, so before attempting to do ads on these platforms you need to build an organic presence. With a better understanding of how people act on the network and what they respond and don’t respond well too. It will help in making ads more likely to connect with new users.

Starting Out

To start we recommend beginning with Facebook advertising as its the biggest most diverse network, this way you can also easily transition to Instagram advertising later. Although if your business model is more Business to Business (B2B) then LinkedIn would be a better more effective place to start.

Whilst setting up your business’s page in the Facebook platform you will get notifications offering you some quick paid activity from there ad centre. This can include boosting a post or creating a basic ad with a simple gauge to measure audience reach. This is pretty simple and can be a good way to get a grasp on social ads. But this can potentially be costly in the long run with no possibility to set up tracking from your website. You will also have to set this up with your personal Facebook account which you may not want to do.

If you want the best Facebook social ads and want to avoid using your personal account we highly recommend Facebook’s Free Business Manager platform. This is a one-stop platform where you can manage your ads, creative, events and audiences across the Facebook Ads Network. The key aspect of this platform is the control of your Facebook pixel so you can truly connect together your social to your website and monitor results with much better insights.

Educate Yourself

The Facebook Business Manager platform is not the easiest to operate. Potentially you will need to put in two months of training if you want to run successful ad campaigns yourself. There are a number of online courses offering training for this, but we would recommend Facebook and there Blueprint program. All the lesson are online for free and you will only have to pay if you wish to get the qualification by doing the exam (Facebook Blueprint also looks good on a CV).

The main takeaway from starting out with social ads is to keep testing. Try multiple different variations with your ads. Then identify the best ways to engage with your customers and drive business.

Also, subscribe to social media newsletters or YouTube Channels as seen in our useful links section to keep informed on the latest news. If you find Facebook Blueprint overwhelming Social Media Examiner has useful tutorial videos. But if you want to get the most success out of the platform Blueprint is the best for overall view.

The Future

Once you’ve got a grip on Facebook, you can look to expand to other social channels. With social ads you don’t necessarily need big budgets with many with no minimum spend requirements, so you can start small and grow. So put some time aside to test new channels for your business throughout the year.

We would recommend usually following with Twitter as its easy and covers a large audience range. Then depending on your businesses service, target audience and tone of voice you could potentially follow up with Pinterest, Reddit, Snapchat or YouTube if it fits your brand. A new emerging social advertising channel is TikTok but as of 2020 the minimum spend for a campaign is $500.

Useful links:

Facebook Business Manager – Their ad managing platform that also includes Instagram.

Facebook Blueprint – Free online lesson on all things Facebook Business with a potential qualification to earn from a paid for exam.

LinkedIn Ads Manager – Their ad managing platform for across LinkedIn for business to business advertising.

Snap Ads Manager – Snapchats ad manager platform more suited for adverting to 18-35 year olds.

Twitter Ads Tool – Their ad manager platform suited to all target audiences with no minimum spend.

Pinterest Ads Manager – Their ad manager platform suited to businesses to promote by educating users about there products and services.

Reddit Advertising – built up of a diverse and passionate community advertising on this platform is not for all businesses you will need to appeal to the users.

Google Ads – This is where you can launch YouTube ads.

Tik Tok Ads – An emerging channel which is quite expensive for small businesses.

AdEspresso Newsletter – A good source of social ads news.

Social Media Examiner – A good source for social media tips.

Social Media Examiner YouTube channel – A good source to learn social.

Our Blog – Learn about our work with social.

How We Can Help.

Social ad platforms can get a bit overwhelming, each platform has its own unique tone and type of users. Not only this you also have giant like Facebook regularly adding new features and making changes. We’re here to help! We have experience in multiple social networks and know-how to reach the right users. Drop us a message and we can provide some free advice. If it still proves to much you can potentially hire us if we have space. Find the contact form here.