What is the biggest mistake that people make in Social Media Advertising and how do you avoid it?
There are a lot of mistakes that we see people make, whether it's our consulting clients or coaching clients, or our done-for-you agency clients, but one of the biggest mistakes I see people make hands-down is they focus only on conversion campaigns.
What do we mean by conversion campaigns? I'm talking lead generation and sales. Now, don't get me wrong, that's really important. We're in business to make a profit and so we want to make sure that we are always generating leads and sales.
But you see, there is so much power in social advertising, so much power that is continually overlooked.
People are getting more and more tired of advertising in the way it's always been done, right? Think about it. We've changed the way we consume ads. Nobody watches TV commercials anymore. Nobody listens to commercials on the radio, we ignore billboards when we drive down the street. People are tuning that stuff out. They're tired of the message that is just trying to get them to buy your stuff.
How to Execute Social Media Advertising
So how do you break through that and how do you get people to pay attention to you and how do you get them to ultimately become a lead or a sale for your business?
The secret to success is the way we build out all of our client campaigns. And it's using the Three Pillars to Successful Facebook and Instagram Ads.
We've pioneered this strategy and it's really straightforward. It's simply focusing on three different areas of all of your paid social campaigns. Most people will only put their money behind conversion campaigns and they rely on other things to be able to build up the ‘know, like, and trust' factor with their clients. Conversions are incredibly important but it's like a three-legged stool. If you pull any one of those out you're going to tip over, you're going to lose your balance, right?
If you try to build an entire advertising campaign strictly on conversions, you're not going to win as well as you could.
So let's talk about this a little bit. So if you've ever followed Gary Vaynerchuk or read his book, ‘Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook', what he's talking about in that book is we need to give value, give value, give value before we ask. It's the same concept of Stephen Covey's, ‘Seven Habits of Highly Effective People' with the concept of the emotional bank account. You need to make deposits before you make withdrawals. I can't go to the bank today and ask for money that I don't have in there. I have to put the deposits in first.
The same is true of your social ads.
Three Pillars to Successful Facebook and Instagram Ads
The first two pillars, audience building, and engagement are incredibly important.
The first one, audience building, is often overlooked.
People want to have a big following but they don't want to pay for it. Well, that couldn't be further from the truth. One of the things we love about audience-building campaigns is we can utilize those campaigns to test out new audiences, new people, new targeting, and new interests to be able to see who's going to resonate with your overall message.
Also, when you focus on intentional audience building, those fans and followers can see up to four messages from you per day versus just two for everyone else. This becomes really valuable later on if you're running conversion campaigns or launches, etc.
The Engagement Factor: Building a Relationship
Then we have engagement. Engagement is putting out valuable content without an ask. Engagement campaigns are all about value. People need multiple touch points before they're going to make a decision to buy from you or give you their precious email or opt-in to whatever your call to action is. It might be they need to develop trust with you, and engagement campaigns are incredible ways to do that.
Using social paid advertising can amplify your message and create a much faster relationship. It can get you from a stranger to a trusted advisor much, much faster than if you're trying to do it organically. So if you think about engagement campaigns, think about it as paid amplification. You're taking value and you're amplifying it, and you're using the incredible targeting power of social platforms like Facebook and Instagram, and you're getting that message in front of the right people quicker and faster.
The Importance of the Journey
One of the things we do here at Sunlight Digital agency is we are customer journey experts. We really believe that if you use social ads properly, you can weave a golden thread from somebody who's never heard of you, to somebody who becomes a raving fan.
The way you can avoid making the biggest mistake in social ads today is to start thinking about how to grow your following with ad campaigns that also provide value.
Key things to consider regarding your content and growing your business:
- What content can I amplify?
- What value could I put out into the marketplace and where should I be growing my audiences? How can I start?
- How can I start deliberately and intentionally growing my following?
- How can I add value in the marketplace while decreasing decrease my cost per lead?
- How can we help increase the number of sales with this content?
Want help with developing your brand story and perfecting the customer journey for ultimate success in marketing? Contact Sunlight Digital and schedule a consult now!