8 Tips for social media ads.

Looking to create more effective social media ads? Here are a few tips I’ve picked up over years of advertising through social media channels:

1. 8 seconds to engage so make it snappy!! Yes we have a very short attention span on social media, so best create ads that catch people's attention in 8 seconds or less, if not, then goodbye...

2. Relevance, creating content is about audience relevance, it's the same with social media ads, keep them relevant, designed to resonate with your audience.3. Inspire, not the classic stand on the side of a hill arms outreached saying you can do it!! That’s great, but if you're not selling a Tony Robbins seminar, then best you think about how you can inspire people to click the link, like and or comment. Every action on social media should be about inspiring engagement, from ads to content as each time you inspire you are gaining more traction and wider reach. SO think about the end user and what will make them engage.

4. Imagery and video, as mentioned in my opening line, we have 8 seconds to catch people's attention, this means our ad creative, photo or video has to catch the attention and stop that ‘thumb scroll’, don’t even think of running an ad without images or video. If you do, consider strong and bright imagery that stands out in the sea of kittens, food and fail photos and videos.5. Targeting, the most powerful tool of any social networks for advertising is the data and targeting abilities. When building ads consider the likes, interests and habits of your audience. Test and refine these, often following the obvious ie a car brand targeting other competing car brands can make for a competitive ad bit, so mixing this up with complementary interests etc and lead to a lower ad bid and a better ROI. So, think more than just the obvious.

6. Call to action, some things never change. A call to action or the classic ‘close’ is still just as important today as ever. If you are looking beyond a brand campaign and are wanting your customers to take action, ask them. Guide and give direction to the action you are after, otherwise, people are not likely to do anything.7. Test, test, test. It’s digital so you can constantly test, tweak and refine your ads. We do this on the daily for clients, testing and tweaking the targeting, running multiple versions of ads to measure which gets the best engagement, constantly refining for the perfect conversion. This is the beauty of social and digital ads, we can constantly tweak and learn from the data and from the live audience engagement.

8. Measure, once again this is digital advertising so we can measure EVERYTHING, so do it, this way you can follow the click through to the conversion, then adjust your budgets to where you get the most revenue from.

In summary...

Social media advertising is not about the interruption, but the providing ads that are relevant, interesting, entertaining or informative, kept short and concise. Create ads with the inspiration of the end user in mind, inspire them to stop scrolling and engage.If you don’t have time to create ads in the fast-paced world of social media, then get in touch, me and the team at TAG The Agency would be delighted to help ;)