There are countless guides online that can teach you to create an engaging and successful social media marketing campaign. They mostly revolve around explaining how to develop and promote high-quality content across multiple social channels. However, far fewer guides delve into how to use paid advertising on social media platforms. That's odd, given that social platforms offer access to the broadest possible advertising audience. Plus, it's an audience you can hyper-target using the vast quantity of demographic data provided by the various platforms.

Here's a rundown on creating a performant advertising campaign on social media.

Set Measurable Goals

As with any other type of advertising effort, setting measurable goals is step one. Without them, figuring out how well your ad campaign works is impossible. Two simple, quantifiable goals work best with social advertising. One is conversion-based goals, measuring how many completed sales or actions each ad run yields. The other is traffic, measuring how much more exposure your brand gets from each ad. The proper goal depends on what you're trying to accomplish with your campaign.

It's important to note that your goals must remain realistic if you want them to have value. For example, don't expect a single ad campaign to double your sales within a week. You should learn how to develop SMART goals to keep your aims realistic. That framework will ensure your ad campaign doesn't fail because you expected too much from it. Remember, you can always adjust your goals upward if your campaign ends up overperforming.

Pick a Target Platform

After setting a realistic campaign goal, you should decide which social platform will best help you meet it. The key to making the right choice is understanding the various platforms' strengths and weaknesses. If you're trying to reach the broadest possible slice of the demographic pie, Facebook is best. It still boasts over 3 billion active monthly users, most of whom fall in the coveted 25 to 34 demographic. YouTube isn't far behind, with over 2.5 billion monthly users. However, its audience skews slightly toward younger males.

If you're looking for a younger audience, consider Instagram. It has over 2 billion monthly users, but the largest subgroup is between 18 and 24. The same is true of TikTok, but it has a slightly smaller audience of roughly 1.7 billion monthly users. It's worth noting that TikTok's user base is quite active and encompasses a staggering 78% of US Gen Z users.

Research Your Competition

One of the things you must do as you craft your social advertising campaign is figure out what your competitors are already doing. That accomplishes two things. First, it lets you understand what you're up against. The second is that it enables you to identify trends that you can capitalize on. For example, if all your competitors run ads revolving around similar copy, there's likely a reason. It may be that their multivariate testing found it most effective. In that case, you can follow suit and avoid spending unnecessary money on duplicative testing.

It's shockingly easy to conduct competitor research on social platforms. For any of the Meta sites, consult the Meta Ad Library. It lets you see every ad running on the company's platforms. You can use a similar tool for YouTube called the Google Ads Transparency Center. There's even a TikTok ads library you can use if you're targeting that platform.

---

---

Focus On Strong Visuals

Social media users have notoriously short attention spans. According to some research, you may have as little as two seconds to capture an ad viewer's attention. To do it, you must craft ads with striking visual elements. It's essential to try and think outside the box in your design efforts. Don't be afraid to experiment with AI image-creation tools to test concepts you're considering.

As you evaluate designs, consider the following factors that will make your ad stand out:

• Use contrasting colors – colors at opposite ends of the color wheel draw the most attention

• Minimize text – keep text elements simple and easy to read, and as short as possible

• Minimize empty space – empty space draws attention away from your messaging elements

• Make your CTA (call to action) clear – viewers must immediately know what you're asking of them

Ideally, you want at least three ad variations to begin a campaign. That will make measuring their relative strengths and weaknesses possible to improve your campaign's performance through iteration.

Make Appealing Landing Pages

Realizing that the ad itself isn't the only important campaign asset is essential when running a paid ad campaign. The landing page you're directing viewers to is equally, if not more, important. It must be clear, functional, and easy to use. Otherwise, you may waste the traffic generated by your social ad campaign.

Landing page design is another area where you can use AI tools to your benefit. You can use an AI page builder to prototype your landing pages rapidly. That can accelerate your testing process and help you lock in on the most performant page design. Then, you can spend more of your campaign funding on your final design and less on the testing stages.

Iterate Weekly for Maximum Impact

Finally, you should plan to analyze your campaign's performance data weekly to inform any changes you wish to make. That's the minimum run time to gather useful data points that won't lead to erroneous adjustments. For each iteration, choose the best-performing ad variant and double its budget. Then, take what's left and split it between two new variants based on that ad. Repeat the process weekly until you stop seeing measurable improvements in your ad's performance or your budget runs out. At that point, you'll have run your first performant social advertising campaign!

---