How To Get the Most Out of Your Social Ads Budget?

You’ll agree with us when we say:

Organic reach is harder to achieve.

When that happens, using social media ads to achieve your business results seems a sensible and profitable alternative to opt for.

Initially, you might be a little uncertain about your social media campaign because you can’t tell if your budget is paying off or not.

But don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.

In this blog post, we not only discuss how you can utilize social media ads of various types to enhance your business goals but also how you can optimize your social media budget. Let’s get started!

3 Prime Benefits of Social Media Ads

With social media platforms becoming increasingly monetized, it’s not surprising that companies are willing to spend big on social media ads.

After all, why would you not advertise where over 3.6 billion people hang out regularly, right?

Let’s have a look at the benefits of social media advertising.

1. Improved Brand Recognition

If you regularly post valuable content on your social media platforms, you are most likely to reach a significant amount of users. This makes people recognize your brand.

This further enables you to interact with your potential customers and build a sense of credibility.

Once your customers start to recognize your brand and find it trustworthy, they are definitely going to recommend it to others.

Pro tip: Stick to a particular theme of colors and fonts. This helps your target audience recognize your brand.

2. Improved Conversion Rate

A considerable population uses social media every day and has different purposes for using it. For instance, entertainment, buying, selling, etc.

This fact makes social media advertising a valuable tool for targeting the right audience for your brand.

As a result, more leads will visit your website, improving the conversion rate.

Pro tip: Include compelling calls to action (CTAs) without being pushy.

3. Reduced Marketing Cost

Social media marketing has taken over traditional marketing in terms of cost-efficiency.

Although you do have to spend money on social media advertising, it can still help reduce the overall marketing cost with its accurate targeting capabilities.

In other words, you will be spending money only to reach your most relevant target audience.

This will ensure more ad clicks resulting in conversions within the same amount of monthly budget.

Pro tip: Review paid ads on social media and end the campaign that doesn’t provide useful results.

Types of Social Media Ads

To boost your social media marketing you must choose from the different types of social media ads, based on your target audience.

1. Facebook Ads

As the largest social media platform in the world, it has the highest number of users. Using Facebook for business, you can segment your audience by demographics or lookalike audiences.

The actual Facebook ad cost is decided in the Meta ad auction. Campaign objectives, audience size, daily budget, and bidding strategy are some factors that influence Facebook ads’ cost.

2. Instagram Ads

Instagram ads give you an opportunity to reach your target audience by showcasing your product, followed by building relationships in a creative way. In order to succeed on Instagram, do an in-depth study of your competitors and optimize your images and videos accordingly to stand out.

Instagram ads cost slightly more than Facebook. Click-through-rate (CTR), budget, audience size, and campaign objective are some factors that influence Instagram ads’ cost.

3. Twitter Ads

With Twitter, advertisers can create campaigns that target conversions, leads, and app installs, among other objectives. Make it more rewarding by combining it with artificial intelligence.

Ads on Twitter are cheaper as compared to other social media platforms. There’s no set amount that you should spend on Twitter. The site offers a mix of advertising items at distinct prices and all you have to find the most suitable one for your business.

4. LinkedIn Ads

With a large professional user base, LinkedIn can be used to reach the audience that you’re looking to target through B2B marketing.

LinkedIn paid ads not only help with added reach and recognition, but also give you an opportunity to increase sales, hire talented people, and be a part of your industry’s social media presence.

5. YouTube Ads

YouTube ads are one way to ensure your video content is seen majorly by your target audience. Additionally, you can track its ROI with new formats and tracking capabilities.

How Much Do Social Media Ads Cost?

Setting up social media accounts on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest is free but advertising your product/service here may introduce new costs.

Most social networks sell ads through auctions.

It’s possible to set the highest bid for a particular result (such as a click) or a maximum daily budget.

There’s no set amount to pay. The ad manager interface will recommend a bid based on your stated goals when you create your ad.

The method of payment will generally depend on your campaign goal –

1. Cost Per Click (CPC):

A cost-per-click (CPC) bid refers to paying for each ad click.

2. Cost Per 1000 Impressions (CPM):

A way to bid where you pay per one thousand views (impressions).

3. Cost Per Conversion:

Cost per conversion (CPC or CPCon) refers to the total cost paid for an advertisement in relation to the success in achieving the goal of that advertisement.

4. Cost Per Video View:

A bidding method for video campaigns where you pay for a view. You are credited with a view after your video ad has been viewed for 30 seconds. Several factors impact how much you will need to pay for social media ads, beyond what your competitors are bidding.

These factors include –

a. The quality of your ad
b. Your campaign objective
c. Which type of audience you are targeting
d. The country you’re targeting
e. Time of year, and even time of day

Therefore, it’s important to plan your paid social media campaigns effectively to drive engagement and conversions.

Social Media Budget Benchmarks

There’s no set rule for how much to spend on social media ads.

However, there are some benchmarks backed by February 2022 CMO survey.

Social media spending has increased slightly over the past 6 months (15.4%, up from 15.3% but is still trailing behind levels seen during peak pandemic.)

There is a consensus among marketers, however, that social media will continue to increase at a faster pace, reaching 23.5% of marketing budgets in the next five years.

B2C product and service companies are seeing the highest social media returns and will use nearly 33% of their marketing budgets on mobile activities in the next 12 months.

This relationship between marketing strategy and social media activities is probably influenced to some extent by employee advocacy.

It is a good idea to use these averages as benchmarks. Adapt them to your goals and resources when planning how to budget a social media campaign for your business.

Key Strategies On How To Gain The Most From Your Social Media Budget

1. Pick the Right Platform

To run a successful social media campaign, you’ll need to choose the right social media channel. But how do you determine which channel to choose?

You can find out where your ideal audience tends to spend time online by examining their buyer persona.

Analyzing your past results on your website analytics can also help you choose the right social media platform for your campaign.

Likewise, each channel has its most profitable content type and posting frequency. For example, what performs on Twitter won’t necessarily function on Instagram and there’s a massive contrast between LinkedIn and most other major social networks.

2. The Power of Videos and Images

Most people have a limited attention span.

A long-winded post with a lot of text turns off many visitors due to a time crunch.

That’s why you must resort to using images and videos that capture the audience’s attention.

It becomes easy for people to skim through your content to find what they are looking for.

The best way to boost SEO is to include a few images along with relevant alt and meta tags in every post. If possible, use hashtags when posting images to social media sites.

Additionally, video marketing also has a lot of potential. A basic sound tool and smartphone with a decent camera can suffice for producing videos.

In terms of processing tools, there are plenty of online tools available at affordable prices.

Nevertheless, you must consider your target audience before investing more in it.

3. Content Optimization

A revamped ad message is one of the easiest ways to optimize your social media ad campaigns.

To ensure content optimization, ask yourself –

a. Does it maintain consistent brand identity across all platforms?
b. Does it relate to your audience or tell a story?
c. Does it invite action?

Remember, ad copies should be brief and to the point. You only have a few seconds to capture your audience’s attention.

So don’t overstuff your social media ads with plenty of copy.

4. Measure Your Social Media Budget ROI

You can easily track sales by creating social media exclusive coupon codes and offers. Codes can also be redeemed offline at your physical stores if your company does not do eCommerce. You can generate leads through your website by setting up multiple lead-generators.

For example, contact forms, webinar registrations, content downloads, and email subscriptions could be used. All of these make it easy to measure social media’s impact.

Keep track of your lead generators by using CRM software coupled with web analytics.

Wrapping Up

If you want to get the most out of your social media budget, you need a strategy that encompasses all of the various aspects of marketing.

Your social media management and message dissemination are both a part of this.

So that’s it on how to get the most out of your social ads budget.

Do You Need Help With Optimizing Your Social Media Budget? Contact Us to Learn More!