To make the most informed decision for your business, we have answered some of the most common Social Media Marketing questions.

Social media advertising is a digital marketing tactic where you pay for ads to target users on various social media platforms, like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram. 

Why do this? 

With 2.8+ billion users on Facebook alone (a third of the planet) you can bet the audience on social media is massive — and so is the opportunity. If you’ve ever dreamed about expanding your reach and growing your business year in and year out, social media advertising is the way to do it. In fact, 64% of all online shoppers say videos they saw on social media influenced a purchasing decision.

So how does it work? Social networks let you tap into their user information to serve highly targeted and relevant advertisements. You can serve ads to Facebook users with Facebook Advertising, inspire Instagrammers to buy with Instagram Advertising, or connect with professionals using LinkedIn Advertising. Regardless of the platform, social media marketing can deliver brilliant conversions and sales with a stunningly low cost per acquisition — provided you’ve got the right strategy in place. 

On top of different audiences, each social media marketing channel has its own advertising tools and features to help advertisers get the best from their ad budget. When you create Instagram ads or YouTube Ads that stand out, you can bet your ROI is going to go through the roof.

1. Understand your business needs and wants: When you’re starting a company it can be hard to know all of the services and tools that you may require upon start up.

It is important for you to identify what makes sense for your business right now and what should be considered for future plans.

2. Define your budget: Just like any other service, digital marketing solutions can be tailored towards your budget. It is helpful to understand your budget and expectations up front to ensure we can align with your company goals and KPI’s.

3. Define your timeframe: Understanding the timeframe that you have to work with will also help narrow down the list of potential agencies. For example, if you are planning to scale quickly, it will make sense to look for an agency that has expertise working with fast-growth companies and can be agile in its response.

4. Ask yourself what you need help with? You may not have all of the answers to this question right now, but figuring out your current digital marketing skill level will help with determining which agencies to contact and how much time you will need to spend with them.

5. What is your main objective: It may be better for larger businesses to seek out a long-term digital marketing partner, whereas smaller businesses may just want some one-time assistance with strategy or implementation of a particular project or campaign.

Social media marketing allows you to reach your ideal target audience in the right place, at the right time. Platforms like Facebook house extremely powerful, valuable data that allows you to effectively target people not just within your target market, but those likely to make a conversion action. Through running digital campaigns, you can acquire valuable consumer behaviour data on your target market, which contributes to enhanced campaign performance the longer you run paid ads. The reach of social campaigns far exceeds traditional platforms, enabling a better return on investment.

While Facebook Ads and Google AdWords are both effective advertising platforms, their approaches are entirely different. Facebook uses strictly social networks, and because social media has the most users, it offers a highly competitive platform for attracting audiences. Google focuses on paid searches where advertisers bid on keywords that they expect their target demographics will be using when searching the web.

Facebook gives you complete control over your budget and how much you are willing to pay per click. What’s more, there is a greater versatility in advertising mediums as you can use videos or images, in addition to text. Facebook’s global audience also provides more data that marketers can use for precision targeting.

While Google’s approach is broader when targeting audiences, it is the most used website and generates trillions of search queries each year. The broader audience promises an immediate influx of traffic that you can see with Google Analytics. Plus, Google Ads provides several advertising options for optimised engagement.

You can get results from your Facebook ads within 3 to 4 days of going live. This is the recommended period when you should check each ad’s performance. If the ad is doing well, you can boost it to reach a wider audience. If it performs lower than expected, you can refresh the campaign using new images or test it with a different target audience. The most successful Facebook ads understand the customer journey, from awareness of the product to closing the sale. In general, divide your ad campaigns according to the 40/60 principle, which is that 40% of your campaign should focus on raising awareness and 60% on lead conversion.

Additionally, you can use different copy styles to appear before targeted audiences so that new audiences will see a different ad from those who have already purchased from your business. Always begin with the objective of your ad: is it to introduce the product, lead customers to subscribe to your website, or to encourage your audience to purchase your product? Once you understand that typically 1 out of 100 leads will convert to a sale, use different tactics to improve the success of your Facebook ad campaigns.

Compared to other online advertising options, Facebook ads are effective. The cost of the ads is worth the high quality clicks that drive growth for your business. Facebook ads have an average of 20% more clicks and 70% higher conversion than search engine ads, and the cost per conversion is over 75% lower. Given these numbers, most businesses find that advertising on Facebook is affordable and profitable for them.

However, it is important to review your business to see if Facebook ads are a good fit for your marketing strategy. Typically, if yours is a B2C company directly advertising to customers, your costs will be lower than a B2B company that targets other businesses. The Facebook Lead Ads tool is also a great way to get leads at a lower cost by automatically filling the user’s data within a Facebook form and guiding them to your website. You can design your lead form with custom questions and data privacy information, choose which fields will be auto-filled with user details, and integrate the ads into your CRM system. This gives you an effective platform for reaching a greater audience at a lower than average cost per lead.

At Flip, we provide monthly reports along with our LIVE 24/7 Client Dashboard, to help you understand progression month on month.

Our Reports Include;

• Cost analysis on any active digital marketing campaigns being provided

• (For SEO) Positions in search rankings for all keywords, Desktop, Mobile & Local GMB

• Conversion/Lead Generation Reports

• Return-On-Investment

We share written reports with our clients once a month. Along with this we believe in weekly, or bi-weekly client meetings to help you understand your digital marketing campaign results.

Claim your Complimentary Business Consultation! This no-obligation consultation will put our expert team to work assessing your digital presence, however big or small that might be. We’ll look at your SEO strategy, paid advertising and social media strategy, then show you where we can make improvements. We’ll then guide you through a strategy session that recommends the next steps to help you reach your revenue targets.

Our free strategy sessions are available for Australian businesses that we know we can add the most value to. If this is you, lock in your free digital consultation today and watch sales go through the roof.