How does social media advertising support an organisation’s overall digital marketing efforts?
Social media marketing is one of the many forms of marketing used in a digital marketing campaign and utilizes social media platforms to promote a business, product or service.
According to Melbourne based marketing agency “Rev,” many inexperienced businesses believe that a digital marketing strategy is simply advertising through social media channels and generating likes and re-tweet’s on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, however this is not the case, and these actions do not necessarily translate into increased revenue (Rev, 2018).
A thorough digital marketing strategy will encompass both internet and non internet digital channels and may include the following:
Internet channels
· Website
· Search Engine Marketing
· Smartphones
· Mobile markets
· Email marketing
· Online banner advertising and Social media.
Non internet channels:
· Television
· Radio
· SMS
· Digital billboards
The benefit of including social media in a digital marketing strategy can be wide reaching when used effectively, and the exposure of your brand can be enormous due to the huge numbers of people who continue to join and use social media platforms worldwide on a daily basis.
The role of social media in a digital marketing strategy is varied and can include the following:
1. Manage your brands reputation. This can be achieved through the promotion of positive stories, and tracking the public’s reaction to your brand.
2. Build up and maintain relationships. Social media helps you provide accurate and valuable information to your customers as it allows you to observe comments and reactions to comments posted, and tweak content to suit the majority.
3. Enhance brand image and improve brand loyalty. Social media allows brands to be interactive with customers and respond to queries and complaints thereby generating goodwill and enhancing the brand image.
4. Increasing sales. By creatively advertising your products and services on social media, your customers will view content as an “add-on” or benefit to the brand and less as a marketing campaign. Social media Exposure can also generate interest in the brand and lead people back to the brand’s website (Tribulant, 2018).
In essence a social media campaign is designed to enhance your overall digital marketing strategy, not BE the entire strategy.
Admin (2018). ‘Online advertising is NOT digital marketing.’ Rev. [Online]. Available at: https://www.retaile-v.com.au/Online_Advertising_IS_NOT_Digital_Marketing. {Accessed 13 July, 2019}.
Tribulant (2018). ‘ The role of social media in your digital marketing strategy.’ Tribulant. [Online]. Available at: https://tribulant.com/blog/wordpress/role-social-media-digital-marketing-strategy/. {Accessed 13 July, 2019}.
What key objectives can be satisfied with Facebook advertising?
The key Facebook objectives fall under three main categories- Awareness, Consideration and Conversion.
Awareness:
Brand Awareness- objective is to raise awareness about your business without asking the audience to perform an action. This objective is useful when you are not concerned about getting an immediate return on investment (Essa, 2018).
Local awareness- similar to brand awareness but targeted towards users in your local areas.
Reach- designed to show your ads to the maximum number of people in your audience and control how regularly they see them (Lawrence, 2016).
Consideration:
Traffic — this objective is designed to send people to your pages without them needing to complete a specific action.
Engagement — this objective is used if you want to increase the reach and engagement of a post, particularly one that has done well organically.
Page likes- if you want to build awareness for your business by increasing the number of page likes
Event responses-this objective is designed to promote events specifically created in Facebook.
Offer claims- used to promote offers specifically created on Facebook.
App installs- this objective is designed to encourage your target audience to download your app
Video views- this objective is used if you have a video you want a particular target audience to watch.
Lead generation — this objective is used to build a list of potential customers normally through a call to action.
Conversion
Conversion objectives are used when you want people to perform a certain action. ie. Downloading a guide.
Product catalogue sales objective is designed for e commerce websites that allows you to remarket specific products to people who have viewed them but not yet purchased.
Shop visits objectives- are for people who have multiple businesses and encourages physicals visits to the nearest shop location to each user in your specified target audience
What are the main Facebook advertising formats?
Video ads- Facebook recommends limiting the video to 15 seconds or less to keep engagement (Childs, 2018).
Image ads — are arguably the easiest type of Facebook ad to create by using an image and some ad copy.
Collection ads — are interactive and allow people on Facebook who click in your ad to browse through products and learn about aspects of the product.
Carousel ads — are a format that show a number of cards, each with a different image and ability to link to a different destination (Mcleod, 2018).
Slideshow ads — use multiple images to create a slideshow, with Facebook enabling special effects and music options
Canvas ads — are full screen ad experiences which are interactive and consist of a video, images, text and CTA buttons.
Lead generation ads- users are taken to landing page where they fill out a form after clicking on the ad
Offer ads- are a great way to highlight discounts or offers you want people to be aware of (Childs, 2018).
Post Engagement- also known as boosted posts.
Event response ads are great for promoting an event by boosting awareness and providing people with a simple way to join the event.
Page likes ads- provide people with the opportunity to like your page and to expand your organic reach (Childs, 2018).
How can you target audiences when creating a Facebook advertisement?
It is important to map out your target audience’s persona in order to be able to target them correctly. This includes but is not limited to finding out their hobbies and interests:
- Their social media activity
- The stage of the customer journey they are in
- The influencers they follow and
- Their page affinities
Facebook has targeting options that can group segments into specific categories such as demographics, hobbies and interests and behaviours (Buryan, 2018).
Explain the key elements that make up a great Facebook advertisement.
Varying sources differ in their views on what makes a great Facebook advertisement, however there are a few key elements that are consistently agreed upon.
- Always include a clear CTA button to encourage people to click on your ad (Bernazzani, 2019).
2. Know your target audience so that you can understand who will be interested in your ad and likely to click on it. This information can be fine tuned by leveraging Facebook’s audience insights (Sean, 2019).
- Use good quality images and good quality copy. Whilst it is known that quality imagery can make or break a Facebook ad campaign, quality copywriting is also important to help your ad make an impact.
- Optimise your ad title and description by telling people what they should expect to see (Gollin, 2018).
- Grab attention early by engaging the target audience with the first sentence or two before they click away (Gollin, 2018).
- Focus on mobile users. Over 95% of Facebook users are accessing the platform on mobile devices and 65% of all Facebook video views are now coming from mobile users with mobile users having a higher engagement rate than those on desktop (Gollin, 2018).
- Grab attention early by engaging the target audience with the first sentence or two before they click away (Gollin, 2018).
- Focus on mobile users. Over 95% of Facebook users are accessing the platform on mobile devices and 65% of all Facebook video views are now coming from mobile users with mobile users having a higher engagement rate than those on desktop (Gollin, 2018).
References:
Bernazzani, S. (2019). ’13 of the best facebook ad examples that actually work (and why).’ Hubspot. [Online]. Available at: https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33319/10-examples-of-facebook-ads-that-actually-work-and-why.aspx. {Accessed 14 July, 2019}.
Buryan, M. ‘Target Audience on Facebook: How to reach and convert them.’ Socialbakers. [Online]. 3 May. Available at: https://www.socialbakers.com/blog/target-audience-on-facebook-how-to-reach-and-convert-them. {Accessed 14 July, 2019}.
Childs, A. (2018). ‘Guide to Facebook Ad Types.’ PPC Hero. [Online]. 22 February. Available at: https://www.ppchero.com/guide-to-facebook-ad-types/. {Accessed 14 July 2019}.
Essa, C. (2018). ‘The ultimate guide to Facebook campaign objectives.’ Social Media Worldwide. [Online]. 13 March. Available at: https://www.socialmediaworldwide.com/blog/facebook-marketing/ultimate-guide-facebook-campaign-objectives/. {Accessed 14 July, 2019}.
Gollin, M. (2018). ‘Facebook Video Ads: Best Practices for 2019.’ Falcon.io. [Online]. December 3. Available at: https://www.falcon.io/insights-hub/topics/social-media-strategy/facebook-video-ads-best-practices-for-2018/. {Accessed 14 July, 2019}.
Lawrence, C. (2016). ’14 Facebook advertising objectives you need to know.’
Charlie Lawrence. [Online]. 10 May. Available at: https://charlielawrance.com/how-to-choose-the-right-facebook-advertising-objective/. {Accessed 14 July, 2019}.
Mcleod, B. (2017). ‘Your ultimate guide to types of Facebook Ads.’ Blue Corona. [Online]. 28 March. Available at: https://www.bluecorona.com/blog/types-of-facebook-ads. {Accessed 14 July 2019}.
Sean (2019). ‘7 Facebook ads best practices you need to implement.’ Lyfe Marketing. [Online]. January 4. Available at: https://www.lyfemarketing.com/blog/facebook-ads-best-practices/. {Accessed 14 July, 2019}.
