Social media is core to any business that wants to cause a stir online and increase its customer base. Better yet, investing your marketing budget into a stellar paid social media campaign can drive enormous growth, with 61% of brands engaged in social selling known to have seen an increase in revenue. When it comes to paid social media campaigns, you must optimise them with your business goals in mind to reap the rewards. Let's jump straight into 'How to optimise paid social campaigns'.

How To Optimise Paid Social Campaigns

At Soar With Us, we like to think we know a thing or two about devising out-of-this-world paid social media strategies. In the last 12 months, our client Tallow + Ash saw an increase in revenue of 150% in just a few months; now, we’ll share some tips for optimising paid social media campaigns.

Understand Your Target Audience

Your target audience is arguably the most important when implementing a successful paid social media campaign. You should know them inside out based on their traits, pain points, needs, and desires. 

As paid social media marketers, we can build wider audiences based on job titles, locations, traits, interests, gender, relationship status, etc. Through the power of paid social, brands can now market directly to their target audience, focusing on users likely to engage and purchase.

You should begin by putting yourself in the shoes of your consumer; what challenges are they facing? What age bracket do they fall into? What is their job seniority?  This information will help you understand your ideal customer and inform your buyer persona for a campaign.

Use Creative Variations of Ads

Don't just let your ads roll; they need refreshing regularly. You can't expect the same ad to perform repeatedly; mindsets change, times change and the industry changes.  It would be best to tailor your creative assets to specific products, audiences and situations, as this is more likely to resonate with your audience. 

You should create a folder of designs, stock images, headlines and descriptions that you can use to build out new campaigns, tweak them and create new ones as you go so your audience doesn't become accustomed to seeing the same creative from you over, and over, and over again! 

Tip: your paid social media campaign should include at least four ad variations. Make these different, creative and eye-catching to reach your audience. 

Utilise Different Ad Formats

Off the back of our tips about creating various creative assets, it is crucial to utilise all the available ad formats within your social media marketing strategy. Switching up your ad format can benefit your brand and improve campaign performance. For example, video ads get 6x more engagement than image ads.

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Ad formats to consider to boost campaign performance: 

Carousel Ads: interactive ads that require users to swipe through for more information. 

Video Ads: use dynamic visuals to spread messaging. 

Image Ads: static ads that use only a singular image to convey messaging.

Messenger Ads: ads that appear within direct messaging and encourage users to start conversations.

Story Ads: interactive ads that can be static or video and appear as users navigate through stories on social media. 

Data is Your Best Friend

In digital marketing, data is crucial to informing and improving campaign performance. Like any business-orientated strategy, your social media marketing efforts are most effective when you incorporate data into your planning and execution of campaigns. 

Data like the engagement rate of particular creatives or the conversion rate of specific audiences can inform future strategies and better streamline your marketing efforts whilst hopefully encouraging your audience to take the desired action and convert.

Set some KPIs (key performance indicators) and discover which campaigns or assets hit them or at least get close to them. Use the data and social analytics to inform data-driven decisions and improve your social media advertising strategy.

Broad  Audience Targeting and Lookalike Audiences

Social media platforms like Facebook offer various targeting options for paid ads. However, choosing the right targeting option can significantly affect the success of your campaigns.

The most popular targeting options include lookalike targeting and broad targeting. Lookalike audience targeting has been the go-to strategy for years, as it groups audiences with interests and traits similar to your other audiences. However, broad may take the biscuit here.

Broad targeting relies on Facebook algorithm to determine who sees the ads rather than specifying specific demographics, interests or behaviours. Broad targeting allows businesses to make creative assets and use the power of the algorithm to reach new and broad audiences, which in many cases can target larger, more appropriate audiences, which in turn can increase the engagement rate of your ads and subsequently improve campaign performance.  

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How Can Paid Social Advertising Help Your Brand? 

Paid social media advertising can help brands like yours to increase online visibility, drive in-market traffic and generate leads through enhanced targeting strategies on various social media platforms. Social media is a powerhouse for cultivating brand awareness, reaching potential customers and discovering new business opportunities. 

These ads are marked as 'sponsored' on social media platforms so viewers can decipher between social media ads and an organic post. For more information, see our blog 'What is the Difference Between Paid and Organic Social Media?'

Paid social ads shine a spotlight on your brand, helping you to stand out in the saturated online market. Over half of all brand discoveries occur on social media, so you need to incorporate social media advertising.

No paid social media advertisement isn't free, but it offers control over your budget, your marketing efforts, and your audience, and the benefits simply outweigh the costs. Plus, with advanced targeting options, you're not just throwing money into the wind – you're reaching the exact people who are itching to engage with your brand.

For more on the benefits of paid social media, discover our recent blog, 'Why Use Paid Social Media Advertising?'

Our Final Thoughts

Social media is like the secret sauce for any business hungry for online success and a growing customer base. But why stop there with just a profile? Invest in a paid social strategy and take your social media channels to new heights with targeted, engaging campaigns to drive results. 

Sure, paid ads aren't freebies like the organic posts you make on your social media channels, but the control and targeting options? Priceless. So, what are you waiting for? 

So, if you want to take your brand to new heights, speak to one of our specialists to understand how Soar With Us can help your business unlock its true online potential.

Our savvy social media specialists utilise dynamic social strategies to unlock exponential growth for ambitious E-Commerce brands. Check out our Paid Social Media Services today!

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