Did you know that 74% of people use social media when making purchase decisions? Social media plays a fundamental role in nudging people towards buying your products or using your services. But there’s more to social media than just posting ?— you need to run social media ads to reach new leads and help them find your business.
In this post, we’ll provide you with 11 social media ad best practices for your business to use to drive more clicks, likes, and purchases. To stay up to date on the latest social media ad trends and tips, subscribe to Revenue Weekly!
1. Determine your target audience
One of the most helpful social media advertising tips is to determine your target audience. Your target audience plays a pivotal role in determining whether your ad succeeds or flops. If you aren’t targeting the right people, they won’t take an interest in your ad, and you won’t earn new leads or sales for your business.
So, how do you determine your target audience?
Look at your typical customer that comes into your store or visits your website. What attributes define your customer base?
You can focus on commonalities like:
- Age range
- Gender
- Marital/family status
- Occupation
- Hobbies/interests
- Income
- And more
You can use all this information to build a mockup of your typical customer. When you understand who you’re targeting, you can set your ads to target those people and deliver a message that resonates with them and their needs.
2. Choose the right platforms
If you want to follow social media best practices for advertising, start by choosing your platform.
You may feel as though you must have a social presence on every social network, but that’s not the case. It’s more important that you pick the right platforms, so you put your time and resources into the right place.
Knowing your target audience is one of the most crucial social media marketing best practices for two reasons:
- It helps you target the right people
- It enables you to choose the right platforms
You want to use social media networks where your audience hangs out online and is likely to engage with businesses. It’s essential that you know who you’re targeting so you can figure out which platforms they use the most.
Look at the demographics for each social media platform to see where your audience spends their time. If you find your audience spends time on more than one network, you can invest in a social media advertising strategy that focuses on multiple platforms. You aren’t limited to just one platform, and you certainly don’t need to invest in every platform if your audience isn’t active on them.
Finding the right social networks is an essential best practice for social media.
3. Set goals for your social media ads
If you run a social media advertising campaign, set goals. You can’t run a successful campaign without knowing what you want to achieve! Follow best practices for social media ads and set a goal for each campaign.
Generally, your social media advertising goals will align with your company’s overall goals. Whether you want to increase revenue or earn new clients, you need to know what your business wants to accomplish.
Your company’s larger goals influence your marketing strategy, which affects your social media advertising campaign goals.
So, for example, if your company wants to increase revenue, you may develop a marketing plan that aims to boost sales. As a result, you decide to set your social media ad objective to focus on earning conversions.
When you create ad copy for your campaign, you focus on ad copy that persuades people to purchase your products or use your services. Setting goals allows you to track your campaign progress, too. When you know what you’re aiming to achieve, you can deliver an ad experience that accomplishes your goals.
4. Set your brand tone and voice
One of the most fundamental social media ad best practices is establishing your brand tone and voice. Whether you share organic content or run an advertising campaign, your tone and voice should be the same. You want to create a consistent brand style, so users build brand recognition with your company.
When creating your brand tone and voice, think about how you currently portray your brand. Do you take a lighthearted and casual approach to your marketing? Or, are you more formal with your branding?
For example, if you own a casual clothing boutique, you want to convey that message to your audience. You want to use photos and text to communicate the casual tone of your business. When you emphasize your brand tone in your ads, you represent your brand better.
5. Use high-quality visuals
When you advertise on social media, use high-quality visuals. This social media advertising best practice is critical because visuals can make or break your ad. 
If you’re using low-quality photos or videos, your audience is less likely to trust your ad.
They will think your company is untrustworthy and won’t interact with your ad. Not to mention, high-quality visuals are more appealing to your audience and are more likely to catch their attention. When using photos in your ads, ensure you’re using images relevant to your campaign.
For example, if you run a Facebook ad for your clothing boutique’s coats, the image featured in the ad should be the coats. It wouldn’t make sense to have an ad that promotes your blouses or shoes. As for videos, use engaging and exciting videos.
You may need to do some testing to see how long you can make your videos, but the content should catch someone’s attention immediately. If you have relevant ad content, you’ll get users to watch your ad. By focusing on high-quality and relevant visuals, you’ll garner more ad engagement and build trust with your audience.
6. Create a relevant landing page
Another essential social media advertising tip involves your landing page. Having a visually appealing and exciting ad is only half of the puzzle. The other half requires creating a landing page that provides all the information a visitor needs about your product or service.
Your landing page is where leads go after clicking on your ad. To have a successful ad campaign, you must create a landing page (which you can do with a landing page creation tool) that fits with your ad. If you’re running an ad about your clothing boutique’s coats, for example, the landing page should have relevant information about the coats you’re selling.
For instance, users should learn what your coats costs, whether you have a return policy, and more.
When you create your landing page, focus solely on the content of your ad. If you’re creating an advertisement for your coats, the landing page should focus strictly on the coats and no other products.
Your landing page should provide your audience with relevant information that helps them learn more about your product or service. It’s an excellent opportunity for you to show how your product or service will help improve a shopper’s life.
7. Use the right call to action (CTA)
When you run an advertising campaign, you must guide people to the next step. If you want to get people to visit your landing page, you need the right call to action (CTA) to get them to click and visit your page. The best social media ads have relevant CTAs that guide users to the next step and tell them how to proceed.
With most social media ads, you will choose a pre-defined CTA for your ad. Even with these predefined CTAs, you must select the right one for your campaign. If you’re trying to get someone to buy your product, having “Sign Up” as your CTA may not be the best option for your advertising campaign.
Instead, a CTA like “Book Now” or “Get Offer” would fit your ad better. Choosing an appropriate CTA puts your audience on the right track and guides them to the next step.
8. Test your ads
One of the most critical social media ad best practices is testing your ads. When you create an ad for social media, you must test your ad content. The first version may not garner the most engagement, so experiment with different ad copy to see which version drives the best results.
When testing your ad copy, test each element separately. If you try changing and testing too many features, you won’t get precise results and know which parts positively impact your ad’s performance. You can test multiple elements on your page, including your:
- Ad copy
- Visual element
- CTA
- And more
You must check different aspects of your ad to drive the best results.
9. Monitor your ad’s performance
One of the most fundamental social media ad best practices is to monitor your ad’s performance. You don’t want to launch an advertising campaign and abandon it. If you don’t check your ad’s performance, you won’t get the best return on investment (ROI) for your business.
No matter which platform you choose, you’ll have access to metrics on your ad’s performance. You can monitor behaviors such as:
- Views
- Clicks
- Conversions
- And more
You want to watch your ad to see if you’re effectively driving the results you desire.
It’s critical that when monitoring your ad, you don’t just focus on one metric.
For example, let’s say you’re running an ad where the focus is on people buying your product. Based on the available metrics, you may think you only need to monitor your conversions.
So, you decide to track your conversions and see that they’re not as high as you want. You conclude that the ad isn’t working and that you should start over. If you monitored multiple metrics, however, you’d have a different perspective.
You could look at your clicks, for example, and see that your ad generated a lot of clicks, but not a lot of conversions, which could mean an issue with your landing page. So, as a result, you rework that landing page to drive better results. When you monitor multiple metrics, you spot problems easier.
Plus, you get a complete perspective when it comes to your social media ad campaign. You see where engagement drops off, which allows you to analyze your ad and make appropriate changes to drive better results.
10. Be mindful of ad fatigue
This next social media advertising tip goes with the previous tip. When monitoring your ads, look for signs of ad fatigue. Ad fatigue is when your audience becomes less responsive to your ads because they keep seeing the same ad from your business repeatedly.
You may have an ad that has high engagement and interest when you initially launch it, but then you start to see a decline in all your metrics as you continue to run the ad.
Ad fatigue is common, so it’s nothing to freak out over, though you do want to resolve it. If an ad isn’t working for your audience anymore, it’s time to cycle out that ad and try a new one to get more engagement.
When you create your ads, it’s good to build multiple versions of the same advertisement. If you create multiple versions, you have new ads to use when your audience gets tired of the old ones.
You don’t need to change the focus of your ad necessarily, but rather, present the information in a new and engaging way.
11. Utilize retargeted ads
One of the best social media ad best practices for your business is to use retargeted ads. Whether you want to earn email sign-ups, form submissions, or purchases, retargeted ads work for every conversion goal. These ads appear before people who checked out your business previously but didn’t convert.
These people may have put an item in their cart, for example, or spent a long time on a crucial services page. Retargeted ads serve as a reminder to your audience that they were interested in your brand. Social media creates an excellent opportunity for you to retarget customers you know have an interest in your business.
You can put your brand in front of them and get them thinking about your company, products, and services again.
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Put these social media ad best practices to work today
Social media ad best practices will guide you on your way to a successful advertising campaign. You’ll have everything you need to know about social media advertising and be able to use that knowledge to launch an engaging ad campaign for your audience. If social media ads sound like a big undertaking, don’t stress!
We have a team of over 500 social media experts ready and willing to help you run a successful social media advertising campaign. Contact us online or call us today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist!
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