5 Things You Need for Paid Social Success

Running Paid Social Ads on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram is a brilliant way to build brand awareness and boost sales.

But, before you get stuck into actually building your ads, you need to do some prep work first. In this blog, I explain five important things you need to get right so that your ads have the best chance of success.

 

1. You know what you’re selling, who you’re selling it to – and why they want it

Sounds obvious, right? But you need to have a very clear goal in mind to get good results from paid ads.

You need to know how the carefully thought-out service, package or product you offer meets the pain points of your target audience. Without a clear picture of who your ideal customer is, you won’t be able to target your ads effectively or write ad copy that connects with them and offers them the solutions they want.

It’s vital your ads show people a service or product they need, talks to them in the language they use and motivates them to take action.

Need help? Don’t forget I also wider marketing strategy services if you need help with this. Work with me to develop a full marketing plan or choose a customisable marketing management service where you pick and mix exactly what you need when you need it – including specialist copywriting or tone of voice work.

 

2. Consistent and confident organic social

Uh-oh! Paying for ads doesn’t get you out of posting regularly on your social media accounts.

Platforms look more favourably on ad accounts connected to pages and profiles with good levels of activity and engagement. But more than this, that organic engagement gives LinkedIn and Facebook data about who your people are.

You can specifically target your LinkedIn and Facebook followers with ads, or people who have engaged with your posts or ads previously. Alternatively, the platforms can create lookalike audiences of the people who already know you and love you.

So if your social media profiles have been gathering dust, pay them a bit of attention and get some activity going before you start paying for ads. It will make your ads more effective and save you money in the long run.

Ads are also very likely to interest more people in your organic posts. It’s a complementary relationship between organic and paid social, so get them working together and make sure your platforms are worth visiting.

Need help? Why not outsource your organic social media management to us? If you don’t have the time to keep on top of it, hand it over and one of my team can look after it for you – taking one more thing off your to-do list! Book a Free Discovery Call to chat more about the level of support you need.

 

3. A great landing page

Before you even think about spending money on ads, you need to consider where those ads are going to send people.

The web page they land on has to give them what they need to see. The content of the landing page needs to connect to what they’ve seen in the ad. So if you’re advertising a specific service or blog, that is what they should see when they arrive on your site.

If you’re gathering leads, ideally the sign-up needs to be above the fold (in other words, it should be instantly visible – they shouldn’t have to scroll down to find it).

The landing page also needs to be fast loading, so people don’t click off while they’re waiting. While you’re at it, check everything else on your site is working properly – you don’t want to pay for hot prospects or warm leads to visit only to find the ‘Book a demo’ button is broken.

Remember too that Facebook ‘scrapes’ the landing page for information – if you have an irrelevant or slow-loading page, the algorithm will penalise you for it, showing your ad to fewer people, resulting in higher costs for lower results. It may take a small investment of time and money to get your web pages right, but it will stop you wasting £££ on your ad spend.

 

 

 

 

4. Pixel and friends

OK, I admit it – this should really have been first on the list, but I didn’t want to put you off by coming over all techy!

First things first, you need a pixel. Because for paid social advertisers, a pixel is important: Facebook has its Pixel and LinkedIn has its Insight Tag.

These are short pieces of code that go on your website header and enable Facebook and/or LinkedIn to track your site visitors. It means you can ask the relevant platform to show your ad to your website visitors, or the people most like them.

And it means that when someone has looked at a great service for them, but has not yet signed up, you can remind them about it by showing them an ad.

You’ll also need Facebook’s Conversions API code – to back up the pixel and make data collection even more accurate – and some Facebook domain verification code. Unless your domain is verified, you won’t be able to run ads.

All this sounds like an awful lot of coding, but honestly it isn’t. It won’t take a web developer long to sort it all, it won’t be expensive, and it’s absolutely crucial to Facebook ads success.

Need help? I work with web developers and a tech VA – if you need help with this give me a shout!

 

5. A big dollop of patience

It takes a while to optimise paid social ads.

Typically it takes about 12 weeks for the algorithm to learn where and when to show your ads and how to find the people who will provide the results you’re asking for. This will involve you testing different audiences, different ad formats, images, copy and calls to action.

You may see good results sooner, but generally, you’ll need to be patient. So if initial results are disappointing or you get off to a flying start but then see a dip, remember that this is all completely normal.

Success requires both testing and time.

 

So, are you ready?

So, are you ready to start running paid social ads? Or do you need some help getting set up? If you’d like help getting set up follow the link to Book a Free 20-minute Discovery Call so that we can figure out exactly what you need.

If you know that you want ads and are ready to go, chat with me about my fully managed ads service. Leave the whole process to me – I’ll create your ads, target your ideal audience, test, monitor and optimise your campaigns across Facebook, Instagram and/or LinkedIn.

Forget worrying about wasting your valuable budget and start generating new leads and sales! Get in touch today.

 

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