In the current age of digital media and social networking, businesses find themselves navigating a new world to reach their customers. Social media is continually changing, updating, going in and out of style for specific demographics, and adapting to the world. Businesses need to keep up with this rapidly evolving and highly complex industry to stay relevant and visible to their customers. Every business, big or small, can benefit significantly from investing in their social media.
There are multiple aspects of a company’s social media accounts. There’s the actual account management, content creation, and paid social media advertising. The latter is one of the most valuable assets to a business’s social media and customer conversions. Discover the impact of a social media campaign for your business.
Why Social Media Is Important for Businesses
There are countless different social media sites. Most people are active on at least one platform, no matter their age or demographic. This results in billions of users who check their platforms multiple times a day.
The reach of social media is unlike any other platform available. It’s one of the most cost-effective advertising options across all platforms and methods. It’s wildly effective for raising brand awareness and increasing total impressions as well as impressions within a target group.
For companies looking for ways to creatively, effectively, and strategically showcase their brands, social media is the new billboard. Branding is crucial to creating bonds with customers, and bonds create customer loyalty—paired with great products and service, of course.
Everybody is on social media, especially during the current times; most people always have their cell phones within reach. People are checking their social media channels more than once a day. Not taking advantage of this easy access to a target market is doing a disservice to your business. In short, using social media is essential.
Social Sites on Which To Focus Efforts
Different social media sites appeal to different audiences by design. Some target younger generations and others target older generations, but more and more sites are moving to appeal to the individual. As social media algorithms advance, it becomes more crucial for businesses to invest in the right platforms.
Facebook and Instagram
Facebook and Instagram are currently the most lucrative social media sites in which to invest. These sites are the biggest, and they reach the largest majority of age groups. Some industries find more success advertising on these sites than other industries, but overall, the family of apps owned by Facebook is the most effective for a social media campaign. Understanding how Facebook advertising operates and effectively utilizing the tools offered is essential to any social media campaign efforts.
Facebook employs an algorithm that decides where to place ads across screens and across its multiple platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Facebook Marketplace. This algorithm uses data to determine where the ad will be most effective and with whom it will resonate the most. Facebook advertising is complex and effective. It requires a well-developed understanding of how the platform works.
TikTok
TikTok is ideal for targeting younger age groups. It typically appeals to preteen and teens, as this is currently their preferred social media site. Effectively targeting younger age groups can be challenging, as their social media interests shift frequently. Investing in TikTok advertising is also less beneficial than with some other social app options because preteens and teens are less likely to make purchases without parental consent.
Snapchat
Snapchat is another giant platform that reaches tons of teens and preteens. It’s excellent for brand exposure and online visibility among younger generations. Still, these users aren’t extremely likely to become conversions. For products or services that appeal to younger demographics, it’s vital to consider both the end user (the teen or preteen) and the conversion (typically the parent or caretaker), who actually makes the purchase.
Pinterest is a unique social media platform without a ton of user-to-user interaction. It can be a great resource and platform for paid social campaigns in the fashion and home-related industries. This platform reaches a broad range of ages and demographics. It relies on its algorithm to show users content similar to content with which they’ve already interacted. This creates opportunity for home, fashion, and other sorts of businesses to raise brand awareness and increase impressions and conversions.
Main Effects on Businesses
Businesses are mostly concerned with the effects of a campaign of any sort on their business. It’s crucial for business owners to set their own goals for different campaigns, but it’s also helpful to note what they can achieve with the platforms they’ve chosen. In the case of social media, businesses will see a few significant effects.
Brand Awareness
Brand awareness is typically the largest effect businesses see after investing in paid social media. Social media is the perfect platform to grow brand awareness and increase impressions. It puts your brand in front of many people and increases your reach extensively. Billions of people using these social platforms are within your reach when you invest in social media.
Growth
Brand awareness is the first step in a company’s journey to growth in conversions. When paired with a reliable funnel approach, brand awareness can pique potential customers’ interest and get them to the website through retargeting, ultimately leading to conversions. Growth in brand awareness eventually leads to growth in other channels.
Overall More Effective Marketing
The ideal online marketing situation is a funnel approach. Each channel of marketing should work together to reach common goals. Diversifying your marketing is crucial to helping your overall conversion rate and profitability: the fuller your funnel, the more effective your strategies.
Larger, More Engaged Following
Social media is all about a big following. This depends somewhat on a company’s actual page, content, frequency of posting, interactions, and more, but paid social media campaigns also get people to the account. This can skyrocket a business’s following. Larger followings on social media indicate trustworthiness and loyalty to consumers, furthering your impressions and conversions.
Challenges of a Social Media Campaign
Like any marketing campaign or effort, some unique challenges come with a social media campaign. Social media is continuously changing. It requires the people who run the campaigns to continually adapt and adjust their strategies to continue to see positive results. Social sites are continually changing and updating their features, so keeping up with these takes a vigilant effort. Social media campaigns are most successful for businesses that are patient and able to adapt to change frequently and easily.
Social media campaigns can also be confusing in general, and a lot of the language the platforms use regarding campaigns can feel convoluted. Without in-depth knowledge of firing pixels, content creation, and tracking, social media campaigns can be very difficult to run successfully.
Because of the complex changes and constant adapting, social media campaigns are often much more successful when they’re run by professional paid social agencies. Unless they’re well-versed in the social media industry with ample time to dedicate to constant research and evaluation, business owners may benefit from investing in an outside party to manage their campaigns. During a campaign, the account manager should continuously track successes and opportunities for further growth. There should be regular check-ins and open communication. The relationship between a business owner and a paid social media campaign account manager is crucial to a successful campaign. The teams should continue to discuss goals and upcoming promotions, explore what’s next for the company, and continuously communicate trackable growth and adapting objectives.
Ad Fatigue
There are also challenges within other elements of the ads themselves. Ad fatigue is something consumers experience frequently. Ads are everywhere. Thinking about the sheer number of ads the average person sees daily is astounding and explains how ad fatigue can come to be. Ad fatigue is when someone experiences the same ads too often, so they become tired of or annoyed by them and begin to ignore them. Updating audiences and creative often and shifting appropriately based on research and customer response can combat ad fatigue.
Misguided Creative
Another major challenge many social media ad campaigns face is low-quality or misguided creative. The creative needs to match the audience and movingly speak to them. Many companies miss the mark on creative by not correctly investing in it. Creative must be appealing to the target audience to be effective.
Most Important Elements on Which To Focus in a Campaign
Certain elements are more critical and impactful in any campaign designed for business growth, including social media. These should draw the most focus. These differ by the type of campaign, the goals for the campaign, and the kind of business. When it comes to social media, focusing on a few universal items is essential.
Creative
The most important and challenging element of social media advertisements is creative. Many companies make the grave mistake of neglecting to spend the necessary time, energy, and money on high-quality, eye-grabbing creative. The ad needs to stop people from scrolling through their social media timelines. An ad has one fleeting opportunity to grab the scroller’s attention. The ad not only needs to grab initial attention but also needs to hold that attention for a few seconds and eventually get that person to the company website.
Ad noise is a real battle companies and consumers face every day. Consumers are shown so many ads in their daily lives that they tend to start tuning most of them out. Only the ads with truly influential creative can grasp their attention and shine through the noise.
Strong Audiences
An equally crucial element of social media advertising is the strength of the target audiences. Selecting the right people to put your ad in front of and the perfect time to do so can be the difference between a campaign that reaches its full potential and one that flops.
Luckily, many social media channels track this for you. An example is the Facebook umbrella. Facebook provides tools which analyze each user and identifies the right audience for your business’s ads based on an algorithm that tracks user activity. This algorithm utilizes automatic bidding to decide what minute, second, and platform to display the advertisement. It also decides who to show it to based on who is most likely to complete the objective of the ad—typically clicking into the website.
Full Funnel
Social media advertisements alone won’t ensure a company reaches its full potential. Advertisement and marketing efforts should be linked to inform each other and to help the company reach its full potential. Social media ads are highly effective in reaching target markets and increasing impressions, but better conversion rates are always possible. A rise in conversion rate occurs most prominently when social media campaigns link with ad retargeting campaigns. The fuller the funnel, the more impressive and impactful the results.
What a Social Media Campaign Looks Like
When starting a social media campaign, many business owners aren’t sure what to expect. Social media campaigns begin with defining an objective or goal for the campaign. Most of the time, this goal is to increase impressions, audiences, or conversions. This main goal acts as a guideline to create an advertisement. The creative piece needs to be strong to appeal to a highly targeted audience; this trackable decision informs the rest of the campaign.
With a paid social media marketing agency, the campaign process should begin with a call with a dedicated account manager who aims to gain a comprehensive understanding of your business and customers. Once established, a full process should launch. A skilled team creates creative content, completes extensive research, and provides a final product (the ad) to the business owner for approval. After approval, the ad launches, and the campaign officially begins.
Success: How To Measure and Prove It
When it comes to a social media campaign, success mostly depends on a company’s specific goals. Some companies are sure of their goals from the start, while others need to do a bit of research to gain insights into what obtainable and beneficial goals look like for their specific operation. Brand awareness and return on investment are the two most popular goals among companies that invest in social media advertising campaigns.
Brand Awareness
Brand awareness increases reach. It also improves click-through rates and the amount of landing page views. Brand awareness is one of the most attainable goals when you’re venturing into a new social media campaign.
Return
Every investor ultimately wants a return on investment. In a social media advertising campaign, return looks like more conversions. Return helps with higher conversion values and even increased engagement levels—which is huge on social media platforms.
Ultimately, the way to measure success is by comparing growth and company goals. Goals need constant adjustments to continue propelling the campaign forward and boosting the business to its full potential.
The main takeaway from a social media campaign should be a positive effect on your brand’s awareness and conversions. The success of social media campaigns is nearly entirely dependent on a specific company’s goals, but there’s always a measurable impact. One of the best things about a social media campaign is how highly trackable each interaction is. Social media campaigns are also useful in informing other campaigns. They create a well-rounded digital marketing strategy that adapts and develops into a more comprehensive approach.
Investing in social media is no longer a luxury. It’s now essential to ensuring a business is considered legitimate and trustworthy. Online visibility is critical to a business’s success. The impact of a social media campaign for your business depends on your goals, commitment to the campaign, and ability to adapt and adjust your methods with the rapidly changing climate in the digital world.
Discover what a social media campaign from Logical Position can do for your business. We employ a dedicated team that devotes attention and time to analyzing your business and adjusting strategies to achieve your goals. Our agency offers a multitude of digital marketing services that work together to inform the best decisions, thus creating the most conversions. Contact us today for a free consultation, because everyone is on social media, and your business should be, too.
