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4 Tips for Crafting the Perfect Social Ad

Feeling overwhelmed by the beast that is Facebook Ads Manager? Have no idea where to start when it comes to creating that perfect ad for your target audience? Kristine Zwick from Reach joined us at our August edition of Founders Night and shared her tips and tricks for mastering the social ad space. Before you even open any browsers, first open a notebook or your phone and jot down these three items about your top customer to begin defining your target audience:

1. What is a problem or frustration that your customers have?
2. What are some common questions that they ask you?
3. What product or service can you provide to solve that problem?

Now that your target audience is top of mind, let’s get into the nitty-gritty of crafting that perfect social media ad.

Tip #1: Be part of the conversation, don’t interrupt it

In the world of advertising, there is good disruption and bad disruption. As consumers, we’ve all seen examples of both. No one likes a spammy ad and everyone can appreciate one that makes us laugh or simply is aesthetically pleasing to the eye. When it comes to social ads, you are competing with highly curated individual content, so your ad needs to look like it belongs on your customer’s feed. Once your ad has caught their attention, your next step is to make it easy for your audience to take action:

• Use eye-catching visuals
• Make sure the content is sized for the platform you are advertising on
• Make your call-to-action clear and foolproof

At the end of the day, you know your customer better than anyone. You don’t always have to be selling to your audience. Let your customers get to know you and the story behind your brand while making it easy for them to take those next steps on their own.

Tip #2: Stop boosting your posts

Yes, you read that right. Stop doing it. While this strategy might be good for getting people to see your brand, boosted posts don’t offer enough targeting to reach the right people who will buy from your brand. To reach the right target audience and make your ads more custom to your audience, it all depends on the result you want from your ads. Do you want to increase brand awareness and get your name out there? Do you want your audience to seriously consider your business over your competitors? Or do you want to convert those leads into sales? By pinpointing the goal of your campaign, your ads should mirror that goal and work to reach it.

Tip #3: Segment your audience

So how do you fine-tune your audience so that you are reaching the best possible customers? You should only show your customers ads that give them solutions based on how ready they are to purchase from you. In other words, you should be one step ahead of them along their buyer’s journey so you are there for them every step of the way. In the awareness stage, target people who are:

• Interested in your competitors
• Interested in your product type
• Living close to your storefront
• Similar in demographics to your current market
• Using apps or software related to your products or services

Those who are in the consideration stage of the buyer’s journey:

• Are looking for specific information about your product or service
• Are aware that they need your product or service, or something like it
• Need to know why you are the best choice among competitors
• Have questions before buying

Customers who are in the conversion stage of the buyer’s journey:

• Know who you are and what product or service you offer
• Have visited your website, liked your social profiles, clicked your ads, or subscribed to your newsletter
• Are ready to buy and just need to know where to buy it

By segmenting your audience based on what stage in the buyer’s journey your customer is in, you will be able to reach your most valuable audience and in turn, make the most meaningful exchanges for your business.

Tip #4: Make your message hyper-relevant

If you do this right, it will seem like you're reading your customer’s mind. We’ve all experienced that feeling of scrolling through our social media and seeing an ad for a TV show we just started watching or a clothing brand we just added items to cart from. These brands aren’t reading your mind (we promise), they have just mastered the art of tracking their audience’s behavior. Your online search history, pages you like on social media, and what you’ve purchased recently are all examples of how brands track your behavior to serve you ads that will best fit your position in the buyer’s funnel. Showing your brand to people who aren’t relevant wastes money, doesn’t bring in customers, and diminishes your credibility. Your audience should know what you’re talking about, and if they don’t you should provide incentives for them to learn more. Tell them what the benefit of your product is in the first twelve words of the copy and let your content do the rest of the talking. Now let’s circle back to the beginning and take a look at those three questions you answered regarding your top customer. Each of them lines up with the three stages of the buyer’s journey: awareness, consideration, and conversion. By answering these questions and translating them back into advertisements geared toward your target audience, your social ads will garner meaningful transactions for both you and your customers. Check out our recording of Kristine Zwick’s Social Ads presentation to see some great strategies for creating ads in each stage of the buyer’s funnel. Be sure to tune in monthly to our Founders Nights and become a member on MeetUp for more tips like these on topics only relevant to entrepreneurs.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width="1/3"][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/3"][mkdf_button text="SCHEDULE A TOUR!" target="_self" icon_pack="font_elegant" fe_icon="arrow_carrot-2right" font_weight="" text_transform="" color="#ffffff" hover_color="#f89520" background_color="#f89520" hover_background_color="#ffffff" border_color="#f89520" link="https://kissimmeehq.com/schedule-a-tour/"][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/3"][/vc_column][/vc_row]