Social media advertising is a powerful tool – but only if you know how to use it. There can be a lot of pitfalls and confusion that can result in wasted time and money on this type of advertising if you’re not careful. The good news is that anyone who dedicates just a bit of time and energy into establishing a solid foundation of knowledge on this topic can excel at social media advertising for their business.

If you’ve been disappointed by your social media advertising efforts thus far, chances are you’re making one or more of these common mistakes. Take a look as we outline the four main areas where people can get tripped up on social media advertising, and how to avoid making them for your own business.

 1. You’re simply boosting a post when really you should be creating an ad in order to reach a broader audience.

If you manage social media pages for your business, especially on Facebook, you’ve likely seen the offer to “boost” a post to increase engagement. Often Facebook will tempt you with a very low and reasonable price point of $5 or so and will give you an estimate of how many more people you can reach with this modest investment. The trouble is that when you boost a post you are only reaching people that already follow your page, so this is not a good new client acquisition tool.

Additionally, boosting is only one option for paid social media content. If you continue to default to this generic suggestion, you may be missing the bigger picture. Be sure to visit the “Ad Center” on your business’s Facebook page to explore all options for ad placement and learn the unique benefits of each. Having a clear goal for the call to action you hope to gain from your social media advertising will also help you select the best option between boosting a post, placing an ad, pushing people to your “contact” button, pushing people to your website, or a combination of any of these things and more.

While helpful article, like this one, will provide some insight into the tools available and how to use them, the best way to learn is through first hand trial and error. Test a variety of ad placement type and monitor which works best for your business!

2. You’re spending $5 here and there with no real plan or purpose for your ads.

It’s true. Social media advertising can be very cost-effective especially when you compare it to an investment in a billboard, or other digital advertising strategies. However, don’t be fooled that spending $5 here and $15 there on social media ads will really give you your desired results. Depending upon your goals, you don’t necessarily need to spend thousands of dollars per months to run an effective social media ad campaign, but investing about $100 per piece of paid content is a reasonable place to start.

This type of budget will allow you to run a campaign for a longer duration, and reach more people within your target audience. If you’re only spending a few dollars here and there on your social media advertising strategy, and with no real plan or purpose for your ads, you’re only going to be a blip on someone’s newsfeed – which won’t lead to the high engagement and conversion rates you desire.

3. You’re not targeting the right audience – it’s either too big or too small.

Be like Goldilocks when it comes to selecting your target audience for your social media ads. You don’t want an audience that is too big or too small, you want it to be “just right.” Too large of a Facebook audience will spread your advertising budget thin. It is also more likely that you will be including people who aren’t going to be a part of your customer base. In contrast, an audience that is too small won’t give you the reach you need to cast a broad net and attract new people who do share the profile of your ideal customer. You’ll want to explore and become familiar with Facebook’s tools to targeting and audience. Get honest about who your customer is. Determine their age range, geographic location, likes and interests, and gender. Manipulating all of these tools to create a broad, but targeted audience will greatly enhance the value of your social media ads.

4. Your call to action is either lacking or it’s ineffective.

Finally and most importantly, test, analyze, and revise your call to action on a regular basis. Where social media ads are very helpful is that they will tell you exactly how many people have been “served” your ad. You will know how many people saw your ad when scrolling through their newsfeed. You’ll also know how many people who responded to your call to action by clicking on the link. If you’re finding that many, many people are seeing your ad but only  small fraction are clicking the link, your call to action may be lacking or ineffective. This means it’s time to change things up!

Try a new call to action, or A/B two different calls to actions on two different social media ad campaigns running concurrently and compare results. All of this is a valuable learning opportunity when it comes to social media ads – and you will get better and better at refining them as time goes on.

Knowing these four mistakes – and learning to avoid them should give you a solid starting point for building a great social media advertising campaign. Watch a brief recap of these main points in this Media Minute below…

We realize we can only really scratch the surface of the ins and outs of social media advertising in this article and video clip. For more advice…just reach out! We’d love to help you reach your goals. Contact us today to set up a time to dive deeper into your social media advertising strategy.