Social media is a great way to reach out to key demographics in the 21st century. Young adults spend a lot of time on social media, and their purchasing habits are vastly influenced by what they see on their phone screens. A study showed that virtually all of Gen Z – a staggering 97% – is using social media as their primary inspiration for shopping.
While social media marketing could be a huge boon to businesses, particularly those who wish to target millennials and Gen Z, effective social media marketing requires a good understanding of how these platforms work. Here is how you can get the maximum out of your advertisements on some popular platforms:
Optimizing Instagram Ads
Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms among young adults. Instagram lets you promote a variety of formats – you can post story ads, which are viewable for 24 hours, carousel ads which allow you to display many scrollable pictures at once, or shopping ads, which promptly redirect the user to the product page. Here is how you can optimize an advertising campaign on Instagram:
- One thing that sets Instagram apart from other platforms is its widespread use of hashtags. Use relevant hashtags and take part in hashtag challenges to get your business noticed.
- Research your audience well and target ads to the demographic most interested in your business.
- Use all features of Instagram to reach a wider audience. If you stick to carousel ads only, you will miss out on people who usually only check stories. Collaborate with Instagram influencers and post story ads, live sessions, explore page ads, and shopping ads for maximum reach.
Optimizing Facebook Ads
Facebook is a social media giant that transcends demographics. You can reach all sorts of people of all ages, cultures, and regions on Facebook. With over two billion users, it offers a platform that can take your business to new heights, but only if you understand how advertising works on Facebook. One problem you can end up facing is Facebook ads not converting despite your best efforts. A few reasons why that happens include:
- Your audience selection is either spread out too much or is too narrow. You should re-evaluate your audience and target your ads only to them.
- Your landing page does not align with your advertisement. Ensure your landing page is the product page the ad was for and not your homepage.
- Your funnels are not optimized. Ensure that there are not too many ads between the first advertisement and the one propelling the customer to buy your product, making it easier for the customer to lose interest. However, too few ads would leave the customer not convinced enough to make that purchase.
Optimizing Twitter Ads
Twitter is shaping itself up well for social commerce. While Twitter is an unconventional market for social media marketing, it has been trying to improve e-commerce options on its platform, offering many users to market. The Twitter market is still new, so you will likely face less competition on the channel. Here is what you can do to optimize your ads on Twitter:
- Enable the Twitter website tag on your website so you can better understand the audience you should target through Twitter ads.
- Use Twitter Event Manager to better track your ad campaigns. Doing so will let you analyze your Twitter advertisement campaigns at a glance so you can make informed decisions on selecting the target audience.
Endnote
Social media marketing is an exciting avenue for businesses to market their products virtually and has various advantages for businesses. Not only does it allow you to reach larger audiences, but it also allows you to create customer loyalty and build brand value.
However, sometimes, these advantages are not felt by the businesses. This is usually due to a poor understanding of how to run advertisement campaigns on social media. Optimizing social media advertisements differently for each platform will result in your businesses getting the maximum returns for your investment.
