An Easy To Follow Approach To Increasing Conversions Through Social Media Advertising
With estimates of users reaching 2.77 Billion globally by 2019, social media advertising is becoming ever more important to businesses. As the number of users increases so too does the challenge of gaining and sustaining attention among the plethora of content that passes through any one user’s news feed. But despite a growing number of social media users, trends indicate an overall decrease in actual usage. Most notably, earlier this year, Facebook reported a 5% decrease in time that users are spending on the site. Additionally, the platform recently instituted changes that prioritize material from family/ friends over businesses. The impact of these recent changes are not yet known, though it does indicate a necessary shift in social media campaign strategies for businesses.
The result of successful social media campaigns is favorable conversions, be it monetization, subscriptions, or whatever the desired action may be. With an ever-changing landscape, social media advertising isn’t as straightforward as we would like it to be. Simply generating and sharing content is not enough to lead to conversions. Now, more than ever, the emphasis must be in creating high-quality content that increases conversions in less time. This means that marketers must be able to produce meaningful content that boosts user engagement. To do this, there are some things that must be known.
4 Things You Must Know To Increase Conversions Through Social Media Advertising
1.) Know Your Stuff
Set the goal of becoming the “Go-To” place for your field by generating confidence and trust through efficient, reliable, and high-quality content. With the need now to be even more succinct yet informative, you must articulate your message quickly and effectively. Albert Einstein said, “ If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” There are a couple of ways that you can do this.
One is by creating pre-generated content in a more visual way through a hybrid approach across social media channels. Instagram’s reign as the top platform for engagement brings truth to the expression that “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn also report a significant increase in shares among posts with images. Combine that with the Pinterest pin approach where core ideas are displayed in aesthetically pleasing visual formats and you have a post that catches the eye, communicates your message, and encourages users to engage.
Another way is by using the Facebook Live feature. Trends indicate that Facebook Live is performing better than traditional videos through higher levels of commentary. Additionally, Facebook Live is a great opportunity to demonstrate your expertise by being able to engage with users in real-time. This tool can serve as affordable social media advertising because it is free both to you and to consumers.
2.) Know Yourself
This is not exactly Socrates’ “Know thyself” philosophical advice, but rather a point of making sure that you know how you are measuring up or in other words, know your data. Once you have enough content up and have begun to share and market that content, then you’ll be able to best know if you’re in a favorable position or not. Knowing and understanding your score reports on social media platforms will help you know how to fine-tune your social media ads. Quality Score with Google or your Relevancy Score with Facebook, paying attention to your ranking will provide insight to which keywords are having the highest influence on your cost-per-click.
3.) Know Your Audience
Before you begin advertising, your audience has already been identified. However, knowing your audience once you’ve begun advertising has more to do with targeting to maximize your efforts and your reach. You have to become more intimately familiar with the data in your page insights so that you can make the data work for you. Essentially, you’re identifying sub-audiences within your larger audience. These sub-audiences show you where you’re performing well so that you can work on retention efforts or they show you areas that you need improvement. Targeting the right audience can drive higher conversions and reduced costs.
There are many tools to assist you in understanding how to best target and work with your audiences.
One tool is the Facebook Pixel that can be placed on your website. This tool tracks conversions from your Facebook ads in order to target audiences for future ads or remarketing. Knowing this data can aid you in creating even more niche audiences through custom audiences whereby you utilize specific keywords.
Another tool that you can use is one of the many social media management tools, such as DrumUp. This tool allows you to schedule your posts on various social media platforms. Post scheduling is very important for audience engagement. This is because people have different social media use habits depending of various factors. It is best to target your ads during times when their use is the highest. Also, being consistent with scheduling builds up your reliability and trust to your audience.
4.) Know Their Emails
Social networks, email conversion rates are still four times higher than the average conversion rate via social media. Furthermore, given the recent changes to Facebook advertising, email is of increased importance. Therefore, you can use the high traffic and audience targeting of social media to build your email list. By gaining access to emails, you create an entry point for easy follow up and conversions.
Conclusion
In sum, social media advertising is very complex due to its constantly evolving nature. Marketing teams must constantly innovate, adapt, and strategize to keep up with developing trends without suffering high costs. While users are spending less time on social media, you can still have affordable social media advertising.