With more than 2.38 billion monthly active users on Facebook and 500 million daily Instagram users, social media marketing is an incredibly effective tool to build brand awareness and reach an audience.

If you’ve tried your hand at social media marketing, you probably came to a quick realization: you can’t easily attract new customers by just posting occasionally or without a social strategy. Current algorithms on social media platforms prioritize certain content and that can mean fewer impressions for businesses.

One way to combat this problem and draw attention to your brand is through social media advertising. If you’re currently using traditional marketing methods, you’ll find social media advertising is much more cost effective.

Think about a billboard. Tens of thousands of people may see that billboard every day, but it’s probably only relevant to a fraction of that audience. With social media marketing, you can reach a much more targeted audience and make sure your advertising money is not going to waste.

How do you get started? Here are four steps to create effective social media marketing ads:

1. Choose your platform. New social platforms constantly pop up. It can be overwhelming to try to choose where you want to post your content. Here’s the good news: You don’t have to use every platform. Focus on your audience and the best place to reach them. For B2B companies, LinkedIn is the best choice. Ecommerce companies typically focus on Facebook and Instagram. Twitter can help you reach a middle-age audience. On each of the platforms, you have the option to target very specific groups of people with your product. You’ll see better results if you know more about the audience you want to reach.
2. Set your budget. Your budget does not have to be thousands of dollars, especially if you are just starting out. As we mentioned, social media marketing is a more cost effective option than other forms of traditional marketing. You can start by boosting a post on Facebook for $10. If that post performs well, you can boost more content or target the same audience with an ad. If that post does not perform well, you can rethink your strategy because you’ve only spent $10. It’s ok to start small, but you should increase your budget when you’re able. The larger your budget, the more people you will reach.
3. Create your content. Now that you’ve decided on your platform and your budget, it’s time to create your content. This is an important step. You don't want your ads to blend in. Your goal here is to create eye-catching content that will stop people from scrolling through their feed. Then, the headline needs to be catchy enough for people to want more information. The content can be a graphic, infographic, testimonials, or video -- but it needs to be catchy and it should showcase what makes your business unique.
4. Decide your goal. What do you hope to gain from social media ads? Do you want more leads? Do you want more traffic to your website? Do you just want to build brand awareness? Your overall goal will guide how the ads are set up. Having a clear goal will also help as you review metrics to see if the ads are working.

There is one more variable you need to consider: time. Do you or someone on your team have time to set up and monitor social media marketing campaigns? If not, it probably makes more sense to use experts like Lucie Content to set up and monitor your campaigns. We’ve already helped clients achieve millions of social media impressions.

We know how to get you the best results so you can create your news.