Creating a successful social media advertising strategy requires extensive testing. It is virtually impossible to predict the performance of your ads ahead of time.
Why is it so hard to know the click-through-rate or conversion rate of a social media advertisement in advance? There are many factors that come into play. These factors include the demographics of the audience reviewing your ads, as well as the network that you are displaying them.
One way to scale your campaigns is by running your ads on other social networks. For example, many marketers have had great success running Facebook campaigns on Instagram. This can be a great idea when you have a strong campaign running on one social media site. However, you are going to need to invest resources testing it when you try transferring it to another platform.
Quandaries that you will face running ads across different social media platforms
CTR and conversion rate data from one social media platform can be a good bellwether for its performance on other social media sites. However, you need to take this data with a grain of salt. It is important to factor for other variables too.
If you are planning on running the same ad across different social media platforms, then you’re going to need a well thought out strategy. You are also going to have to be realistic about the limitations with your data. Here are some tips to get the most of a multi-channel social media marketing strategy.
Start running your ads on a platform with granular targeting capabilities
The number of social media sites has increased dramatically over the past few years. At first glance, the growing number of options makes it seem like it is difficult to know where to start your campaign and the path that you will take to scale it to other social networks. Your options become clearer when you realize that certain social media sites have better advertising products than others.
You may want to consider testing your ads on a social media platform that has granular demographic targeting options. Facebook and Instagram are the two best. If you start running advertisements on one of these networks, you can create different campaigns for various demographics that you intend to target. This will give you a better sense of the best ads to use for each customer group.
Once you have gathered engagement data from different demographics, you have a couple of different options.
Make sure you have a reliable ad server
You are going to need a dependable ad server to handle any large media buying campaign. Your traffic is going to put a greater strain on your server as you start expanding into different social networks.
This is especially concerning if you are trying to promote your services in a country with a less reliable Internet infrastructure, such as Australia. According to Nathan Finch of Best Web Hosting Australia, you need to choose your hosting option carefully.
“It is important to have a local hosting service when running any media buying campaign. Unfortunately, many Australian hosting solutions aren’t up for the task when you try scaling across platforms. It is important to do your due diligence.”
Test the same ads on another platform with demographic targeting capabilities
Let’s say that you tested your creatives on Facebook. You found that a certain ad performed best for 25 to 35-year-old women. You might want to try testing the same ad on Instagram and create a campaign for women in the same age group. Since you already know that it is the best performing ad for that demographic on one network, it has a higher chance of engaging with them elsewhere.
Run your advertisement on a niche social network that appeals to the same demographic
When you think of advertising on social media, you probably are thinking about major platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. However, there are hundreds of smaller social networks. Although these networks have a more limited reach, they have other benefits that you might want to consider:
- The cost of advertising on these networks is a lot lower
- They often target a more niche audience that may be in line with your target customers
You might have discovered a couple of niche social networks that appeal to your core customer base. Once you have found an ad that works well on Facebook for your target audience, you might want to try using it on one of these niche networks too.
Use Facebook‘s placement optimization feature to compare between Instagram and Facebook
Facebook and Instagram are obviously two separate social media networks. However, Facebook purchased Instagram in 2012. As a result, Facebook allows advertisers to reach customers across both platforms with a single interface.
One of the benefits of the combined interface is the Placement Optimization feature. This feature allows you to create a single ad and run it concurrently on both Facebook and Instagram. You will be able to monitor the performance data on both networks to see similarities. You can also determine if one social network is showing a lot more promise than the other, so that you can allocate your resources for the best ROI.
Be prepared to improvise for differences in ad formats
The data that you will receive from any social network can be transferable to others. However, there is an important limitation to be aware of. Different social networks have their own and formats. You might need to change the size of your images to make sure they fit. However, your data should at least indicate the types of images and add copy that resonates with different social networks have their own ad formats. You might need to change the size of your images to make sure they fit, but your data should at least indicate the types of images and ad copy that resonates with your audience.
In other words, your advertising data from one social network will be very valuable when setting up a campaign on another network. However, you’re going to need to prepare to make some adjustments along the way.
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