Rochelle Rahim is my go-to for everything related to social media ads. This is why I approached her to help break down this sometimes-confusing conversation about- “how to use paid social media for your small-medium business.”
As a small or medium business, social media can become an essential tool in communicating with and listening to your audience. Or rather the community you’ve built on these respective platforms. Since these platforms are free to use, making the step toward paid social can feel harrowing. But it doesn’t have to. While your organic content may encourage engagement and interaction with your audience, paid social is more likely to put you in the path of those most likely to become your customers. Ideally, your paid campaign works hand in hand with organic to bring a more qualified audience to your pages in the long run.
But how do you even begin using paid social? Here, I’ll give you an easy 4-step breakdown to follow so that you can be doing social media ads in no time and effective ads at that and learn how to use paid social media for your small-medium business.
Step 1
First Things First establish clear goals and objectives for your paid campaigns.
Are you looking to drive engagement? How about generating some leads? Maybe build some brand awareness?
These are all possible but they should be made into measurable goals and objectives so that you can tell when and if they’ve been achieved.
For example, the objective should be “I want to increase engagement by 3% month on month for the next 6 months.”
Step 2
Next, Decide On Your Platforms because this is where you’ll be attracting your potential customers. Knowing what platforms to use should be determined by your potential audience reach, campaign budget, the possibility of driving traffic, and the demographic as well as how granular or not the targeting can get for this demographic.
Step 3
Be Clear (And Appropriate) with your Creative as this will help to better reach your intended audience, as well as stay in line with the relevant policies based on what platform you’ve decided, fits best with your objectives.
Ensure that your ad specs and sizes are accurate based on platform and placements. Do some research on copywriting especially for ads so that you have an idea of what will help your ads to land, and, take a deep dive into your target audience to learn about how they make their decision-making process so that you know how best to appeal to them.
Step 4
You MUST Track your Results with Analytics in order to ascertain how effective (or not) your campaign was. Using platforms such as Google Analytics can help you delve deeper into your campaign’s performance and not just look at mere engagements and clicks. It will allow you to see which parts of your campaigns were successful, where drop-offs might have occurred, and how best you can optimize this for future campaigns. While analytics may take some time to learn and understand, once you do, creating campaigns will be a breeze when guided by data.
Now that you know a little more about paid social, it might not seem so intimidating and you might be even looking to create your first big campaign. Or you might opt to let someone else (like me) handle it, but at least now you know where to start if you need to. All you need to know is that ultimately paid social eventually pays you.
Need help getting started on your paid strategy? Then contact me at any of the following:
We have been in this business of helping other businesses exceed, grow and breakthrough new markets for quite a number of years and there are a few key things that we have learnt along the way. Some of them include:
1. Always keep learning
Reading and educating yourself is key to your success. You never know too much. There is always a new way, a better way, a more unconventional way. How can you help your clients if you yourself are not educated about the products and services that are available on the market.
Do You Have A Marketing Plan?
The one thing I know for certain when most people start working with me is that they do not have a Marketing plan. They may have a social media page and even a website and even an email list, but they have no idea how to make all these things work together.
Everybody needs a sales funnel in their business. A sales funnel is the journey you carry your audience through as they build know, like, and trust with your brand so they can ultimately buy from you. But there are other reasons you need a sales funnel...besides money. A sales funnel is not just about bringing in the money in your business even if that is the ultimate goal. But as an entrepreneur, you also want to acutely aware of the other functions of your funnel. These are 3 reasons you need a sales funnel....besides money
