Social media advertising is a relatively inexpensive, highly effective form of advertising.
With a budget as small as $20 to $100, your content, products or website can receive thousands of views and dozens of clicks. It depends on the objective you choose. But how do you get the results you want?
When setting up an ad, you’ll need to choose an objective, which tells the platform “this is what I want my ad to do.” In return, the platform will push your ad to social media users who are likely help you achieve that goal. Typically across all social media platforms, there are three objective categories available: awareness, consideration and conversion.
Each category will differ platform to platform, so for the purpose of this blog, we will use Facebook advertising objectives as our example because Instagram has the same options and LinkedIn’s are very similar. Let’s dive into the categories:
Awareness is sharing general information about your business such as what your business is, what you do, your products or services and what makes your business unique. This is done through two choices: brand awareness or reach. Brand awareness is again sharing what your business is and what you do, while reach is specifically saying “show my ad to as many people as possible.”
Consideration ads entice the audience to want to learn more about your business. More specifically this includes encouraging website traffic, engagement with your content or page, app installations, video views, completed lead generation forms and sending messages.
Conversion ads are the next step in the consideration process, meaning the audience is ready to take a specific action. This includes making a purchase online or in store or diving further into your website than just the landing page.
Objectives aren’t one size fits all, so depending on your business and what you want to promote, there may be more than one objective that fits your needs. Test out your options in two or three short campaigns to see what gets your desired results. Ad campaigns can be as short as a week to see results, so it’s OK to try different options. It can also be helpful to switch up your ad creative and copy.
Whether you’re trying social media ads for the first time or considering a different objective for the first time, give it a try and see what works for your business.