9 Rules For Successful Social Media Advertising

Worldwide internet ad spending caught up with newspaper ads back in 2013. Modern businessmen and large enterprises use various digital channels to promote their goods and successfully make money on this. While social media tools and networks are constantly evolving, the key principles of effective social media advertising are more stable. 

Learn more about the ways to use social media advertising and grow your business successfully. 

1. Determine your target audience demographics

Any analytical conclusions must be supported by statistics or experience. Targeting ad impressions to an audience you don't know can lead to cost overruns and poor ad campaign performance. Sources of data for audience segmentation include:

• Marketing audience research
• Data from Google Analytics
• Instagram or Facebook statistics
• Test advertising campaigns

The more you invest in marketing research, the higher your return on ad spend. The better you know your audience, the better the audience knows you.

2. Fill the site with content

A common mistake of novice specialists is targeting and advertising the empty site. Imagine yourself as a user. You click on a great offer, but instead of an interesting community or website, you see a terrible e,pty landing page. If you spend money on om advertising while not having content, you lose potential clients. Besides, you miss the opportunity to create a positive first impression on your audience. Create a unique design to make it interesting for the user.

Beautiful design and constant updating of content with unique news create a favorable atmosphere for the growth of subscribers. The days of joining thousands of groups and subscribing to hundreds of pages are over. Now, the users subscribe only to interesting and beautiful communities. 

3. Use retargeting

Retargeting is about showing ads to an audience that has already interacted with your business. There are two types of retargeting:

• Show ads to all visitors of your site. The customer who has been on your site for the last 28 days will see your "special" advertisement. Offer a discount if the client buys from you. For users who are still choosing where to buy, a reminder about you will convince them to choose your company.
• If you have a ready-made customer database that contains at least one of the following parameters: phone number, Instagram, Facebook, or email, then you can set up targeted advertising for this audience. Such advertising will be much more effective compared to advertising for a new audience.

For example, if you have a customer base with phone numbers, you can notify these people about sales and promotions. This type of advertising is more effective than email newsletters. 

4. Each segment should have its own ad

Never serve the same ad to audiences with different demographics. The advertising message for men aged 18-24 will be very different than for women aged 44-50. Even if they buy the same product, the advertising campaign that can attract their attention will be different. The more personalized your ad is, the higher its chance of success. 

5. Set a budget limit

Often, after the first attempts to set up targeted advertising on their own and waste money, the majority of people give up because "it does not work." If you don’t want to disappoint at the beginning, having spent the entire advertising budget on the first advertising campaign in your life, set cost limits. Strategic planning will help you set your budget limits and avoid unnecessary expenses. 

Remember that in online advertising, a large budget doesn’t guarantee a great result. But if you approach your expenses wisely and set up your advertising correctly, you will succeed. 

6. Give the user a reward for the action

Do you want the users to join your community? Give them a discount, offer a cool promotion, invite them to take part in the competition. Do you have a news public? Then show the news in your ad that might interest your target audience. You can also inform them that you regularly post such content on site. Clicking on the ad and joining the community is in some way a job that the user has done and it should be rewarded.

Examples of advertising values:

• Join the community and get hot offers every day
• Join the community and get discounts for your first order
• Subscribe and receive the latest news every day
• Join the community and get free shipping
• Get a bonus for referring a friend
• Branded mini gift with first order

7. Be careful

Your ad directly affects the reputation of the company, so don't make unrealistic promises or use provocative images and texts. Once you create the wrong impression on the audience, it can be difficult to change it. Respond to the harshest criticism in your most polite tone. If your clients don't like something, give them a gift. Only resetting to zero will help - the rebranding of the company. One satisfied customer brings in two, and a dissatisfied customer leads ten lost. 

8. Try to be concise and attractive

A person in our world has to pass through a very large amount of information. Have you noticed how you react to advertising? First, you see an image, then a picture, then a title, and a text in the end. If you make a mistake in this sequence, then most likely you will miss the potential client.

• Choose graphics so that it grabs attention throughout the entire interface of the selected social network. The image is formed by peripheral vision, while the image is analyzed by direct vision. Don't post a stock image of people smiling and shaking hands. These pictures are immersed in the general information noise. Post bright, emotional images that customers want to see.
• Users only analyze the headlines in the news feed. Work out the headers of your ads in detail. If they are boring, then no one will react.
• In the ad text, write briefly. Include more specifics, facts, emotions. Here you can "storm" and come up with some interesting proposals, which are then tested in advertising.

9. Don’t bother your customers

When setting up an advertising campaign, you can set the frequency of ad impressions from 1 to 5 times per user, but no one likes intrusive ads. It is optimal to show an ad 2-3 times for the very first launch of the ad and 1-2 times for the second one. If you show up too often, then users will start complaining about the ads. You risk not only losing your audience but also getting banned by the moderators of the social network. It will be better to show the ad again in two weeks.

The bottom line

Social media advertising is a terrible force. No matter how much you want to be unique in this world, there will always be at least a couple of hundred similar characters who have the same needs as you. In the near future, ads will become more and more personalized. The advantage will be for those companies that will hit the interests of narrow audiences and communicate with them in their language. This kind of work requires a lot of ideas and professionalism. Targeted advertising can be a huge success if you do it wisely.