Last week, we rolled out Part 1 of our two-part guide to social media advertising for beginners. There, we discussed the importance of social media advertising for small business owners, plus three basic steps you can take to improve the success of your campaigns.
As you can likely guess, you’ll need more than a guide to successfully plan, launch, and track a social media campaign. However, these tips from our team will have you well on your way to becoming a digital marketing pro in no time.
If you haven’t read Part 1: Planning Your Social Media Advertising Campaign, we highly recommend starting there to ensure that you’ve checked every box before launching your advertising campaign. Otherwise, read on for our team’s top five tips for launching and tracking a successful social media campaign.
1. Determine a Goal for Your Campaign
If you’re anything like most small business owners, you put a considerable amount of thought behind…well, every decision you make. A social media campaign is no exception.
Fortunately, you don’t have to make it complicated. Instead, consider your overarching business goals and determine what actions would best support those goals. These may include:
- Increasing the followers on your social media account
- Reaching new customers
- Driving more traffic to your website
- Completing more conversions (i.e., a purchase, newsletter sign up, or scheduled consultation)
You can then leverage your campaign–and tweak your content and copy–to align with your goals.
2. Choose the Best Social Media Platforms for Your Campaign
Choosing the platforms you use to launch your campaigns plays a critical role in your digital marketing strategy. Currently, more than 200 social media platforms exist, and some experts believe that you and your marketing team should be familiar with at least 75 of them.
At YourVIBE Marketing, we’re big proponents of quality over quantity, though. With that in mind, we recommend choosing one to two relevant social media platforms to start.
Consider the following when selecting your preferred channels.
- Your audience’s preferences
- Your brand’s voice, style, and messaging
- Where your competitors are active
- The uses of each social media platform
- Your social media marketing goals
Most importantly, consider your resources. Every social media channel requires time, energy, and consistency. As such, if you plan to manage your social media accounts while running your business, caring for clients, and crossing countless other tasks off your to-do list each day, you may consider starting with one channel you’re already familiar with, like Facebook or Instagram, and growing from there.
3. Set KPIs to Track Your Success
As the saying goes, you can improve what you can’t measure. However, many small business owners launch their first social media advertising campaigns without setting any key performance indicators (KPIs) that enable them to measure the success of their campaigns.
Start your campaign out on the right foot by identifying a measurable, relevant KPI that aligns with the goals of your strategy, such as:
- Increasing web traffic
- Expanding post reach
- Boosting likes, shares, or comments
- Improving conversion rates
- Driving more sales revenue
- Reducing your cost-per-click
For example, if your main goal is to expand your audience and reach new consumers, then you may choose to track post reach or engagement. Alternatively, if your goal is to improve your bottom line, then tracking your cost-per-click can provide valuable insight into your campaign’s performance.
4. Stay Engaged
Unlike your favorite slow cooker, you can’t set it and forget it when it comes to your social media marketing campaign. Instead, your advertising efforts require consistent monitoring and engagement.
Tools like Buffer and HubSpot make it easy to manage likes, comments, and followers from a central hub. Instead of jumping from one app to the next, you can respond to direct messages and comments with a few clicks–saving you time and effort while improving your campaign’s engagement and creating a trusting relationship with potential customers.
5. Track, Tweak, and Repeat
Finally, commit to reviewing your campaign analytics daily, or at least once a week. Doing so will provide you with a wealth of knowledge on what worked, what didn’t, when your customers were most active, and where you can reallocate resources.
Based on the data, you may determine that morning posts perform better, or that your customers really love video content. You can then use the information to streamline your approach for your next social media advertising campaign.
Custom Social Media Advertising Campaigns from YourVIBE Marketing
Ready to make your next social media advertising campaign your best one yet? Our team at YourVIBE Marketing can help. Get in touch today at 404-403-9842 or hello@yourvibemarketing.com to request a free consultation and learn more about how we partner with our clients to achieve their goals.
