Tips for Social Networking

Advertising on social networks: Designing a winning strategy

<strong>Advertising on social networks has become one of the best ways to achieve notoriety in a very segmented way. In other words, it allows us to get to know a very specific public based on some characteristics that we choose. We can segment according to demographic criteria, interests, type of technology, behaviors, etc.

This way we can target our ads to very curious audiences. For example, Facebook allows us to advertise to boyfriends who have engaged but are not yet married. In this case, such a special segmentation could be very interesting for companies that sell products and services for weddings. According to the sector, we can find multitude of segmentation of this type that can be useful.

Therefore, the first step we take in this type of projects is to clearly define the community or target audience of our advertising. It is not a matter of thinking about all the people who may be interested in our advertising, but, on the contrary, think about which profile has the best chance of becoming a customer.

Advertising on social networks

What goals can be achieved?

Advertising can be used primarily for the following purposes:

  • Increase the number of followers. Fundamental when we start an account or we want to increase the community.
  • Get interaction (like, comments, shared, RT, etc.) When we want to get a link with the brand (the famous engagement) through participatory content that does not directly seek the sale.
  • Notoriety. Fundamental to branding. When we want to know a brand for a specific audience we target the campaigns to this goal. We are buying impressions, reach or impacts.
  • Visits to the web. Usually, we use this goal when we want to target the sale and we are not so interested in Facebook interaction.
  • Remarketing is to advertise to users who have already visited our website. More than a goal is a great way to segment. If you have already seen a product or service on the web we are already aware that you are very interested. Through remarketing, we encourage you to finalize your purchase by increasing conversion rates.

Advantages of each social network

Facebook is the social network with the largest number of users and the great destination of advertising investment. Its main advantage is that we can choose our audience based on many criteria and is the most advanced network in this regard. We can establish the public according to interests, situations of public life, similar to our own followers, etc.

Twitter advertising allows us to differentiate ourselves because it is also less saturated. We can sponsor hashtags or trending topics and allow us interesting things like launching advertising to media followers in our industry and even announcing to the followers of the competition.

The great advantage of LinkedIn is that we can segment our audience based on professional and work criteria. A vital element for B2B companies that sell to other companies.

The great opportunity that offers Instagram is an average of younger age and we can draw attention to the eyes. It is the last network that has incorporated advertising and we manage it through Facebook. For sectors such as fashion, automotive, architecture, art, etc. is the key to the network.

How to establish an advertising budget in social networks?

The price of advertising on social networks is not fixed. It is determined by several factors:

  • Public: As it is an auction, if we target a public that is much in demand by the companies, we will get a little more expensive.
  • Quality of content: If our advertising is attractive and the social network is easy for users to interact with it, we get more results with less investment.
  • Linkage: As a consequence of the previous point it is usual that the advertising to our own followers is cheaper than the fact that we realize of that the users who have no relation with us.

In any case, the advertising in networks gets very good results with very low investments. To date, it has the best quality/price ratio of the whole universe of advertising options both online and offline.

For the big brands, it is best to make a simulation from the own creation tool of announcements of each social network. The tools themselves usually give us an estimate of the audience we would reach according to the investment. The cost of optimizing ads should be added to this budget. Since it is essential to see what creativity works best and to modify the target audience to improve results.

Keys for a winning strategy

The most important thing is to align the ad. That conform to the public, the content and the phase in which the user is located. The biggest mistake in networks is to advertise for anyone who can be a customer. It is better to target those users who are more likely to be and think about what phase of the customer journey.

The content must bring value and be integrated with the formats of the network. Basically, it does not look like a banner or traditional advertising because the user’s eye will dodge it. Productions that work well on television, do not work on social networks.

Every day is more important to link the organic strategy of communication (community management) with that of payment. The continuous changes in the algorithms of the networks make it compulsory to give a boost to the day-to-day communication through advertising. If we are investing resources in the community manager, the logical thing is that its content reaches more people.

Test and measure. As in the advertising in search engines, in the networks, we can also verify that our hypotheses are certain. Testing different creatives and viewing conversions is critical to improving results. The trends in the networks change every day, so we have to try new things permanently and choose the ones that work best.