Introduction to Social Media Advertising PDF

Transcript: Introduction to Social Media Advertising Video 1: The Advantages of Social Media Advertising Every month, there are nearly 2.5 billion active users on Facebook, 1 billion on Instagram, and 330 million o...

Transcript: Introduction to Social Media Advertising Video 1: The Advantages of Social Media Advertising Every month, there are nearly 2.5 billion active users on Facebook, 1 billion on Instagram, and 330 million on Twitter worldwide. Why is social media a popular advertising channel? Whether it’s to chat with friends, stay connected to people across the globe, or for business and networking purposes, consumers are on social media for a multitude of reasons — and marketers know it. Due to the sheer number of active users on these platforms, advertising spend invested in social media channels is at an all-time high. How Much Are Advertisers Spending on Social Media? Social media advertising across the world is projected to exceed $8.5 billion. Why are advertisers spending so much on social media? In short, it is an effective, low-cost way to reach new audiences where they are already spending so much of their time online. What Are the Advantages of Social Media Advertising? Reach specific target audiences Variety of ad formats Invest in efforts that drive leads and sales With social media advertising, you can reach specific target audiences. There are a ton of social media networks out there — Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pinterest just to name a few. Across all of these platforms, you are bound to find audiences that are interested in your company’s products or services. And the beauty of advertising is that you can be very specific about who you want to pay to reach. Unlike in organic social media where you’re reliant on your followers, social media advertising allows you to target people who haven’t heard of you yet. Since you can target people outside of your network, social media advertising presents a great opportunity for tapping into new audiences. Social media advertising provides a variety of ad formats across platforms. Every social media platform brings unique value when it comes to the ad types that are available. There are ad types to support a variety of marketing goals, spanning brand awareness all the way down to sales. What Types of Ad Formats Are Available? Photo and video ads Shopping ads Lead ads Message ads And many more This means that no matter the industry you’re working in or the goals you have for your advertising efforts, there is a platform and an ad type that will match what you’re looking for. Social media advertising can drive leads and sales for your business. Nobody likes investing in efforts, advertising or otherwise, without getting some type of return. A huge benefit to social media advertising is the fact that you can prioritize efforts that match your business goals, like driving leads or sales. Each social media advertising platform comes with a robust ads manager where you can monitor how your ads are attributed to revenue for your business. Whether you’re working at a startup or scaleup, are an intern at a large enterprise or a sole owner of a new business, social media advertising can be a marketing strategy that solves for a business’ bottom-line.  Transcript: Introduction to Social Media Advertising Video 2: Exploring the Social Media Advertising Platforms There are many social media platforms to advertise on. Collectively, the major platforms can be broken down into two key categories: social media and search. We’re going to explore some of the top social media advertising platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok. We’ll cover best practices for advertising on each platform and explore the types of audiences you can reach on each one. Facebook is the most widely used social media network. Almost 2.5 billion people around the world use Facebook. That’s more than 30% of the world's population. With so many people using Facebook, you’re almost guaranteed to be able to reach an audience that’s relevant to any type of business. That’s where one of the most powerful features of advertising on Facebook comes in: audience targeting. The targeting capabilities on Facebook are really unmatched by any other social media network. There are 3 types of audiences that you can target on Facebook: Core audiences Custom audiences Lookalike audiences Facebook Core Audiences: An audience based on criteria like age, interests, and geography. Facebook Custom Audiences: Get back in touch with people who have previously engaged with your business. Facebook Lookalike Audiences: Reach new people whose interests are similar to those of your best customers. How can Facebook’s advanced targeting help you? Facebook’s advanced targeting can be used to target your ads to the most relevant audience — and even tap into new audiences you’d otherwise never reach with organic content alone. Advertising on Facebook includes a range of ad types, including: Photo ads Video ads Story ads Lead ads Using different types of Facebook ads come with different benefits. Photo ads are great for sharing collections of image content. Video ads are great for product explainer videos and branding. Story ads allow you to use a combination of photo and short-form video content. If you want to learn more about the different ad types, check out our Facebook Advertising course linked in the resources section. What Facebook ad type should you use? Personally, my favorite way to advertise on Facebook is with lead ads because they give you the best of both worlds: sharing visual content and generating leads all at the same time. Facebook Lead Ads: Capture lead information without directing people out of the Facebook platform. How can Facebook lead ads help you? No matter your business’ size or industry, you can use lead ads to find potential customers who are likely interested in their products or services. With lead ads, you provide a helpful piece of content that encourages viewers to sign up for a newsletter, receive a price estimate, or request additional business information. In return, when the viewer fills out the form, the business receives a new lead. Advertising on Facebook isn’t only limited to Facebook. You can also advertise on Instagram as well through the Facebook Ads Manager.  Transcript: Introduction to Social Media Advertising How many people use Instagram? Instagram has over 1 billion monthly users globally. That’s a little less than half of the number of users on Facebook. The majority of users are between the ages of 18 and 34. There are 3 ways that you can advertise on Instagram: Promote posts and stories directly from your Instagram professional account. Create ads from your Facebook Page and promote them on both Facebook and Instagram. Create ad campaigns in the Facebook Ads Manager to access full targeting capabilities. What’s the best way to advertise on Instagram? I recommend taking the third option and creating custom campaigns for your audience on Instagram. Instagram has similar ad types to Facebook, including: Photo ads Video ads Story ads Ads in Explore Shopping Post ads What types of Instagram ads should you use? By far, the most interesting ad types right now are ads in the Explore Tab and Shopping Post ads. Ads in Instagram Explore: People using Instagram Explore are exploring their interests and discovering new content creators. Ads in Instagram Explore are a great opportunity to put your brand in front of a new audience. Instagram Shopping Post Ads: Shopping Post ads allow you to include a tag that shows the product’s name and price within your image. Clicking on the tag takes your prospects directly to a product page where they can purchase the item — all without leaving the Instagram app. Another way to advertise with Facebook is on Facebook Messenger. Facebook Messenger is a separate messaging app that comes with its own advertising opportunities. Facebook Messenger is the go-to messaging app in countries including the U.S., Canada, and Australia. Other messaging apps like WhatsApp and WeChat are the more popular choice in countries throughout South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Across the world, 20 billion messages are exchanged between people and businesses every month on Facebook Messenger. How does Facebook Messenger fit into your advertising strategy? Ads play a big part in initiating conversations on Facebook Messenger. There are a few different ways you can use Facebook Messenger as part of your advertising strategy. Facebook Messenger Call-To-Action in Ads: Start conversations with ads on Facebook that include a call-to- action to send a message. Using Facebook Messenger Story Ads: Run story ads on Messenger Stories. Using Facebook Messenger Ads: Use messenger ads to deliver content directly into users’ Facebook Messenger chats. All of these ad types can come together to encourage your audience to kick-off conversations with your business. They can be used to get in contact with a sales team, request more information on a product, or even share other content like blog posts or ebooks.  Transcript: Introduction to Social Media Advertising My favorite way to advertise on Facebook Messenger is retargeting. Retargeting ads in Facebook Messenger are a great way to start targeted conversations and send personalized offers and content. What is retargeting in Facebook Messenger? Sponsored messages allow you to advertise to people who have already interacted with your business in Messenger. Sponsored messages are all about personalization. This is a great way to re-engage your audience in a personalized way. The LinkedIn platform has over 660 million monthly-active members worldwide. Users on the platform are largely made up of working professionals which makes LinkedIn a great place for B2B (business-to-business) advertising. LinkedIn is the go-to platform for working professionals, which provides B2B advertisers a large audience pool to reach. Plus, the advantage of advertising on LinkedIn is definitely its unique targeting capabilities. On LinkedIn, you’ll have access to unique targeting criteria that isn’t available on other platforms. You can target users on LinkedIn by unique demographics, including: Job title Job function Industry Maybe you only want to advertise to potential customers at the director level who work in customer service within the recruiting industry. LinkedIn’s targeting capabilities make that possible. Plus, with the option to include lead gen forms in your LinkedIn ads, LinkedIn can be a lead generation machine. This will allow you to not only reach a very specific audience, but drive leads from the ads that you serve to them without directing them outside of the LinkedIn platform. The most interesting ad type on LinkedIn is Message Ads. LinkedIn Message Ads: Send direct messages to your prospects to spark an immediate action. How to drive engagement with LinkedIn Message Ads: Deliver a targeted message with a single CTA. Drive stronger engagement and response than traditional emails. Measure the impact of your messages. Message Ads are extremely personalizable. But a word of warning: Don't send too many Message Ads to the same people or it will come off like spam. And make sure the messages sound authentic, too – if you were writing a LinkedIn message to a friend, what would you write in it? If your Message Ads are too stiff, they'll come off as spammy, too. Remember: This channel is a one-to-one conversation. Direct messages are sacred spaces – if you're going to advertise there, you need to be extra careful about taking the time to make your Message Ads feel personal and relevant to your end users. Make sure you're delivering value to them in a way that feels authentic. Twitter is one of the less popular platforms for advertising. Digital advertising is less common on Twitter because organic reach is still a significant driver of a brand's performance on Twitter. This is very unique to Twitter – but even so, ads can still deliver strong results depending on what your goals are. Twitter has over 330 million monthly users globally. That’s three times the size of Instagram, but half the size of LinkedIn. The majority of users are between 35–65 years old. Advertisers have discovered a few niches that have high engagement on Twitter: B2B and ecommerce. Many B2B companies are using Twitter as a digital marketing tool, and Twitter users are known to spend a lot of money online. This makes advertising specifically to these audiences a great strategy.  Transcript: Introduction to Social Media Advertising Twitter breaks down their ads into five goals: Awareness Tweet engagement Follows Website click App downloads Twitter ads cover a range of goals: Awareness: Promote your tweets and maximize your reach. Tweet engagement: Promote your tweets and get more retweets, likes, and replies. Follows: Promote your account and grow your Twitter following. Website clicks and app downloads: Promote your website or app and get more traffic and downloads. All of these can work together to help you grow your audience on the platform and convert users into customers. Pinterest is a unique social media platform with 300 million users who are highly engaged and predominantly female. Some people say that Pinterest is the only platform where users actually want to see ads from brands they love because Pinterest is all about visuals. How to advertise on Pinterest in four steps: Pick a pin: Promote your best pins so they appear in the most relevant places. Decide who sees it: Set up targeting so the right people see your ads. Pay for results: Choose to pay for engagement or visits to your site. Track what’s working: Once your campaign starts, see how it’s doing and make changes. Pinterest is great for businesses relying on photography to sell their products and who have a female target buyer persona. Rounding out the social media advertising platforms are three networks that are centered around video: YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok. YouTube is the second largest search engine, second only to Google, with over 2 billion monthly active users. Ads on YouTube appear before and during other YouTube videos or as a stand-alone promoted video that’s displayed after performing a search. Advertising on YouTube can be highly-contextualized. Since you can target by demographic information and interests, you can serve your videos to specific relevant audiences already watching videos from similar brands or on related topics. Snapchat’s 218 million users are predominantly made up of people between the ages of 18–24. Snapchat offers a few ad types, including: Story ads Sponsored tiles in Snapchat Discover Augmented reality (AR) lenses Snapchat’s ad types feel pretty similar to the advertising options on Instagram. What really makes Snapchat unique is the augmented reality lenses.  Transcript: Introduction to Social Media Advertising Snapchat Augmented Reality (AR) Lenses: AR lenses are sponsored by a business to create interactive moments that users can use and share with their friends. It might be hard to believe, but in this example from Dominos that pizza isn’t really there — that’s the AR lense at work. A new player to the social media advertising world is TikTok.TikTok is all about creating short, creative, and oftentimes funny videos. TikTok has exploded in the past few years and has reached 500 million monthly users. That’s more than double the size of Snapchat. Advertising options are still limited; they are mainly geared towards driving awareness. TikTok doesn’t hyperlink posts to websites and only recently started allowing advertising, so businesses advertising on TikTok focus on boosting brand awareness rather than leads or traffic. Most of the posts you’ll see on TikTok are aimed at getting laughs. From a brand perspective, you’ll want to create videos that are funny and feel at place within other content on the platform. Think things like dance challenges and memes. This type of content is the most effective. As you can see, there are a lot of opportunities to advertise to your target audience across social media platforms. But one last piece of advice: don’t feel overwhelmed by the opportunities available to you. By understanding the social media platforms that are available to you and matching them to the audience you want to reach, you can prioritize your efforts based on the platforms that you think will hold the greatest opportunity. Video 3: How to Create Remarkable Digital Ads for Social Media The content that you serve to your target audience is just as important as who you’re targeting with your ads and the platforms you use to attract them. Crafting custom content for your ads takes time, but I promise you your ads will perform better, meaning you spend less money in the long run. Remarkable ad content looks different depending on if you’re creating ads for social media or paid search. Let’s start off by exploring how to create effective social media ads. In previous years, you may have heard of a term called “relevance score.” Relevance score was Facebook’s way of scoring your ad based on its expected performance. This score was not that helpful for advertisers because it wasn’t clear which actions advertisers needed to take to achieve a higher quality score. Facebook uses three key metrics to rate the expected performance of your ads: Quality Engagement Conversion Why should you care about quality, engagement, and conversion? Analyzing your ads under the lense of these three criteria will not only allow you to improve the performance of your ads on Facebook, but can also serve as great pillars to guide you towards creating effective social ads across all the social media networks. Let’s take a look into what each of these metrics actually mean and how you can improve them. Quality: How good your ad is in comparison to ads from other advertisers competing for the same audience. Engagement: How much engagement your ad receives compared to others competing for the same audience. Conversion: The conversion rate of your ads compared others with the same campaign goal and the same type of advertisement.  Transcript: Introduction to Social Media Advertising These three metrics work together to tell the story of how your target audience experiences your ad compared with the other ads they’re being shown. How do you diagnose ad quality? If your ad isn’t being served to your audience frequently or costs a lot to deliver, then it might be a bad ad. How do you diagnose ad engagement? If your ad isn't driving the number of interactions you expected, your ad could probably be more engaging. How do you diagnose ad conversion? If you notice people who see your ad aren’t completing your ask, you can improve the post-click experience. So how do you create ads that perform well across the quality, engagement, and conversion metrics? Let’s start with quality. For high quality, create ads that resonate with your audience by: Using language that your target audience uses. Using imagery and video content that is representative of your target audience. Offering value up front and providing relevant content. For high engagement, create ads that stand out by: Experimenting with different types of ad content, like videos or GIFs. Making your call-to-action visible and direct. For high conversion, create ads that have a great post-click experience by: Creating a landing page that’s aligned with the messaging and style of your ad. Limiting your lead generation forms to only the most essential fields. Let’s take a look at an example social media ad from MEFA that does a lot of things right. In this example, the Massachusetts Educational Financing Authority, or MEFA, is using a video ad to encourage their audience to see their student loan refinance rate and begin their application. This is a great ad because it checks off all the criteria Facebook is looking for: quality, engagement, and conversion. The quality is high because the language “Don’t let your loans pile up” speaks directly to their target audience. The ad engages viewers by sharing an animated video that takes up a large amount of real estate in the Facebook News Feed. Plus, the landing page offers exactly what the ad says: find out your student loan refinance rate. This ad offers a great experience that does well across quality, engagement, and conversion.