More and more businesses are understanding the power of Social Media and are embracing it making it part of their marketing strategies. But it’s hard for a company to be successful and experience growth on social platforms without advertising. 

Social media ads are a great way to reach new customers, generate more leads and sales for a business, and boost revenue in the long run. If you want to reach a new audience, social media advertising is a sure way for you to achieve that goal. 

It can be a bit overwhelming going from an organic marketing strategy to a paid one. I am here to understand the advertising landscape on some of the major social networks and give you a starting point. 

Facebook advertising. 

Facebook is the behemoth of the social media networks; it has the most users 2.6 billion users worldwide and 2.5 million in Uganda as of January 2020. This means the platform is too big to ignore and must be part of your social media marketing strategy. 

When it comes to Facebook ads, they are designed to help you achieve one of three broad types of campaign objectives, each of these objectives speak to each stage of the buyer’s journey so think about where your audience is in this journey when running an ad. These objectives are; 

• Awareness – increasing your brand awareness and post reach.  
• Consideration – sending traffic to your website, increasing engagement, encouraging app installs or video views, generating leads, or encouraging people to communicate with you on Facebook Messenger.
• Conversion – creating online conversions, making catalog sales, or driving foot traffic to offline stores.

With Facebook ads you can use two content types, photo and video ads; photo ads are simply still images that help promote your brand or product and include a 125-word caption and can include a call to action. When it comes to video, it is advisable to keep them about 1 minute long because long videos might drive away your audience. 

Instagram advertising 

To run ads on Instagram, you have to use the same ad platform as that of Facebook (Facebook ads manager) meaning the ads also speak to the three objectives we talked highlighted with Facebook advertising; awareness, consideration, and conversion.  

The ad types available on Instagram are:

• Photo and video ads. 
• Carousel ads – a carousel ad lets you include up to 10 images or videos, each with their own link, all in one ad. They work well to showcase different features of a product, or to explain a step-by-step process.
• Story ads – these can use photos or videos up to 120 seconds long. These ads display in full-screen format between people’s stories.

Twitter advertising.

When it comes to twitter, the business objectives are a little bit different, these objectives are; 

• Website traffic – promote a tweet to drive visits to your website so that people can take a desired action on your website. In this case, you’re charged per click. 
• Tweet engagement – the major objective here is to spark conversation among your audience around a given topic. 
• New followers – promote your Twitter account and pay per follower gained.
• Awareness – promote your tweets to a broad audience to increase awareness around your brand or a product. In this objective, you are charged per impression. 
• App installs – promote your Tweets with App Cards and pay per click to open or install your app.

Final thoughts. 

When deciding to run ads on social media, keep in mind your total budget, you don’t want to overspend. Also, think about your buyer persona, which kind of content works for them, and which platforms are they use the most? All Social platforms provide advertising options but you don’t have to use all, just the ones your audience is most active on.  

Do you want to become a Social Media Advertising expert? Sign up for this digital marketing course and get started.