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This post was updated in October 2024 to provide you with the latest information.

What are the benefits of carousel ads for Facebook advertisers?

Facebook carousel ads offer an interactive format where advertisers can include up to 10 swipeable cards, each featuring a unique image or video. Each card can have its own headline and link, allowing you to showcase multiple products or services in a single ad. This format not only introduces your brand to your audience but also provides an engaging way to highlight your offerings in a dynamic, visually appealing manner.

Facebook carousel ads can be effective for just about any business or industry. But some businesses and industries have qualities that make them especially well suited for using carousel ads. 

Facebook carousel ads may be an especially good fit for you if:

• You want to showcase the visuals of your brand or products. Industries like fashion and travel can especially benefit from the visual storytelling capabilities of carousel ads.
• You have multiple products to highlight. E-commerce stores with diverse product lines can use carousel ads to display various categories in one cohesive ad.
• You’re new to Facebook advertising. Carousel ads are flexible and easy to set up, allowing you to experiment with images, videos, or a combination of both to see what resonates most with your target audience.

Facebook carousel ads best practices when setting up campaigns

Due to their dynamic and interactive format, Facebook has established specific ad sizes and limitations to ensure carousel ads are displayed well across devices, particularly on the Facebook app. Before launching a carousel ad campaign, familiarize yourself with Facebook’s ad specifications.

Facebook ad specs for carousel ads

​​The Facebook carousel ad specs can vary based on the placements you choose. If you’re using Meta Advantage+ placements, Facebook will automatically select the best placements for your ads, including Facebook, Instagram, and other sites or apps within the Meta advertising network.

If you prefer manual placement selection, you can choose from the following options:

• Facebook Feed
• Facebook In-stream Video
• Facebook Video Feed
• Facebook Marketplace
• Facebook Stories
• Facebook Search Results
• Facebook Reels
• Ads on Facebook Reels (Overlay)
• Facebook Business Explore

To ensure creative compliance, review the table below for the technical specifications and size requirements for Facebook carousel ads across each placement:

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Further Reading

Exploring Facebook Reels Ads? Here’s Your Guide to Getting Started

Facebook Reels provide an interactive way for brands to express their authenticity and connect with audiences. With an easy-to-digest format, Reels are reminiscent of TikTok and YouTube Shorts, offering advertisers a versatile platform to create and refine short videos that effectively grab viewers’ attention.

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How to create Facebook carousel ads

There are two distinct ways to start creating carousel ads on Facebook: from your Facebook page or from the Facebook Ads Manager (now Meta Ads Manager).

From your Facebook page

• Go to your Facebook page and click Create Ads in the left-side menu.
• In the following window, start by selecting your creatives. To ensure your ads display in carousel format, make sure to upload multiple images or videos.
• To capture the audience’s attention, include a headline for each carousel card.
• Choose a call-to-action (CTA) such as “Learn More” or “Book Now.” If you want users directed to your website upon clicking the button, select Website as the Button Destination and enter the specific URL.
  • Depending on the chosen CTA, you can also include a contact form so users can easily submit their information without leaving the Facebook app.
• Proceed with the remaining ad campaign setup, including budget, duration, and audience targeting.
• Before clicking Publish, preview your Facebook carousel ad in the upper right corner of the screen to ensure everything appears as intended. Click See All Previews to view potential placements within the Meta advertising network.
• If everything looks good, click on Publish.

From Ads Manager

• Go to the Meta Ads Manager. You can add a carousel ad at the campaign, ad set, or ad level. For this example, we’ll add a carousel ad at the ad level for an existing awareness campaign.
• Click on your active campaign, then choose the ad set where you want to add the carousel ad. Click on Create.
• Under Ad Setup, select Carousel as the ad format.
• Scroll to Ad Creative and click on Add Cards. Similar to the previous method, you can combine images and videos.
• Enter a headline and description for each carousel card. For the website URL, input it on one card and click Apply on All Cards to automatically copy it to all other cards in the carousel.
• Finish the rest of your ad and campaign setup.
• You can see a real-time ad preview on the right side of the screen as you update your creatives. Before hitting Publish, check how your Facebook carousel ads appear in different Meta network placements.

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Further Reading

Reach the Right Audience Using Facebook Audience Insights

The Audience Insights tool is tailored to assist brands and advertisers in understanding their target audience better. It offers valuable information, including page likes, geographic locations, household demographics, and purchasing behaviors, allowing Facebook advertisers to connect more effectively with potential customers.

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Additional best practices and tips for carousel ads in Facebook

While there are established strategies for using Facebook carousel ads effectively, there is ample room for innovation and creativity. Here are some key practices to consider:

• Put your strongest image first.
  • The first image in your carousel ad is the one that your audience will always see, whether they swipe through the rest of the pictures or not. So it’s really important that this image stops the viewer’s thumb and encourages them to check out the rest of the ad.
• Use high-quality creatives and visuals.
  • All images or videos must be of high quality and maintain a consistent theme throughout the carousel. Some advertisers opt for a continuous storytelling approach, prompting audiences to swipe to see the complete narrative, while others choose striking visuals to capture immediate clicks.
• Be entertaining and helpful.
  • Even if the purpose of your Facebook carousel ad is to drive conversions, it’s best to avoid being a salesman in people’s Facebook feeds. Focus on entertaining, educating, and getting your viewer’s interest and your carousel ads will get a much better response.

Yet another engaging way to advertise on Facebook

As brands increasingly compete for ad space, particularly during peak advertising seasons, it’s essential to captivate audiences with diverse ad formats—especially the swipeable Facebook carousel ads. These ads offer a unique opportunity to keep your audience engaged.

Curious about how Facebook advertising can boost your engagement and conversions? Click here to explore our Facebook ROAS case study and discover how Strike Social can enhance the performance of your Facebook campaigns.

The post Facebook Carousel Ads: Best Practices for Creative Compliance and Campaign Setup appeared first on Strike Social.

So increasing your sales with social media just makes the biggest slice of your pie even bigger.

That’s awesome, right? We all want bigger slices of pie!

But social media advertising can be tricky. It’s easy to hit plateaus where we think we just can’t wring anymore out of our social media ad strategy.

The good news is that you can get more. A few strategic tweaks can help you power through those sales shelves and get back on the upward trend.

We’re here to help you stay on the path to growth.

The details of social media ads have been explained by more than a few experts. So we’ve got you covered with some strategic moves that will help you continue your growth.

1. Align your goals with the goals of social media platforms

The goal of any social media platform is to get people to engage and stay on the platform longer.

So, naturally, social media apps are going to favor content that drives engagement and keeps on-app time high.

Facebook and Instagram found that videos spurred more conversation on the platform and got people using the app more, so they optimized the platforms for video.

Snapchat used swipe-up ads to let users view ads without actually leaving the app.

This means that you’re going to get more help from the social media app design and algorithm if you produce ad content that encourages people to engage without leaving the app.

We understand that it might sound counterintuitive. But people are more likely to make a purchase or click-through on an ad after they’ve engaged with your brand on social media.

Building your ad campaigns to ask for engagement—likes, comments or direct messages—before asking for clicks keeps the social media apps happy and therefore helps you get more sales.

One more tip: most social platforms are prioritizing video now. Video drives better engagement and more conversations. So video ads have a very good ROI.

Related: 6 steps to creating a plan for social media advertising

2. Build a social media microfunnel

Most marketing funnels treat social media ads as top-of-funnel marketing. If you visualize the funnel, usually social media advertising is blocked into a big slab at the wide end of the funnel.

But, your social media ads should have a funnel of their own. Rarely do people convert after seeing just one ad.

Ideally, you’ll have at least three ad campaigns in your social media advertising: awareness, consideration and conversion campaigns.

These campaigns form a social media marketing funnel. It functions almost exactly like your macro marketing funnel. But the whole funnel is on social media.

Here’s a quick rundown of the keys to each ad type:

• Awareness ads should answer the “why” of your company or product. Why did you start your company? Why does your product matter?
• Consideration ads should demonstrate what makes your product or service superior to competitors. Be brief, but give the key info that people need to make a decision.
• Conversion ads are the ones that actually ask for a click to your landing page. This is where you throw your discounts and offers in, if you’ve got them.

Fortunately, the social media creators know that this funnel is the best way to go. You can configure your audiences to show consideration ads only to people who have seen or engaged with your awareness ads. Then you can set up your campaigns so that only people who have viewed your consideration ads see your conversion ads.

Building your ads in a funnel like this is an easy step to miss. It’s super tempting to focus just on driving people to your landing and sales pages, figuring that you’ll snare them once you can make your pitch.

But you’ll get much better results if you build your ads out as a marketing funnel of their own.

One more thing: metrics.

This is far from comprehensive, but these are the metrics that you should focus on for each stage of the funnel:

• Awareness ads: impressions. At this stage, you’re rarely asking for many actions. You just want people to gain some understanding of your product and business.
• Consideration ads: engagement. This can be comments or likes. Video completions or carousel scrolls are also good, since those help social media algorithms build a remarketing audience for your conversion ads.
• Conversion ads: click-through rate. This is where you’re actually asking for some real action, so clicks will tell you how well your funnel is prepping prospects to take action. Keep in mind that conversion rates typically measure the quality of the page that people land on once they’ve clicked an ad.

This might seem like a lot of steps to get people from a social media app into your larger sales funnel.

But if you use the custom audiences tool wisely, you can really narrow down your audience for your consideration and conversion ads. This way you’re only showing them to your most primed prospects—people who have already seen and showed a positive reaction to the ads that are at the wider end of your social media funnel.

Specific targeting will keep your ad spend down and your conversion rates up.

3. Incentivize engagement

One of the most underutilized strategies right now is incentivizing engagement.

The infrastructure for incentivizing engagement is still a little thin. But it can be done.

Offering incentives for engagement isn’t quite the same as offering a discount for clicking on an ad.

What you offer a reward for is commenting, leaving reviews, answering other customers’ questions and providing user generated content.

The rewards for participation can be as simple as featuring someone’s video or comment in a Facebook ad. Or you can go so far as to build a rewards program that rewards people who engage a lot with discounts or special items. Somewhere in between these two extremes is offering one-time discounts for reviews or user generated content and giving people who leave comments access to special sales.

Whatever method you use, offering incentives for engagement helps build a community around your brand that people enjoy being a part of, gives your business social credibility and can even help your customer service teams out if customers answer questions for each other.

So offer up a few bones and get people talking about your brand!

That’s a wrap for our social media strategy session.

Which of these strategies are you using? Which of them do you want to use?

Tag us on social media and let us know how you plan to improve your social media advertising!

The post 3 Powerful social strategies to increase online sales appeared first on Strike Social.

Video has already shown its chops as an online marketing tool. It’s expected that by 2019, 80 percent of internet traffic will be video.

That much video traffic means that marketers will need to use video to keep up, since that’s what they’ll be competing with in the digital landscape.

However, video is also going to evolve. Right now, there are a lot of ways to use video being thrown out. Not all of them are going to stick.

What digital video in 2019 will be like

That’s what we’re here to show you: what digital video in 2019 will be like.

To give you a sense of what ideas are going to stick around, we gathered some data and picked out the trends that show the most promise.

This is what we found.

Vertical Video

We took an in-depth look at vertical video earlier this year. Since then, vertical video has continued to gain ground.

Facebook tested how vertical rendering on the timeline affected response, and found that people watch vertical videos longer and more often with the sound on.

Right now, the indication is that vertical video will continue to rise. By 2019, it could be the standard. If not, vertical videos will make up a huge chunk of the video content.

Interactive Video

In the quest to get more user engagement, social media platforms have been creating more ways for users to engage in the app.

Live video, Instagram polls, swipe up ads. All of these are designed to get users to interact with the content.

Video is next up on the list of content types that can be made interactive.

So far, this has already happened to some extent. 360 videos give users a way to semi-immerse themselves in the video experience. Initial studies have shown that 360-degree video campaigns generate higher click-through rates and purchasing intent than standard videos.

The value of interactive video has already been at least somewhat validated.

Marketers and social media platforms will undoubtedly innovate even better ways to make video interactive in 2019.

Related: Are AR and VR the future of digital advertising?

Video Rewards

Video can be effective for improving conversion rates. But only if people actually watch the videos.

That’s why video completion rate matters.

Some marketers have been experimenting with systems for offering incentives for completing videos.

There’s been some skepticism around this tactic. On the surface, it seems that offering rewards for watching videos wouldn’t improve actual purchases. People are watching the videos for the rewards, not to learn about the product, right?

So far, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Initial research has shown that 53% of people who watch reward videos on an app within one week of downloading it kept the app for 30 days or more.

Now, not everybody makes an app. So app retention might not be the bee’s knees for you. But, the initial findings look promising.

In 2019, a lot more companies will be using this tactic. The chances that it keeps working are high.

User Generated Video

As digital video advertising becomes more popular, video content will get increasingly professional. High-end video content will be pretty standard by 2019.

This means that user generated content will stand out even more. Right now, user generated content works very well.

People like to buy from people, and user generated content gives your brand a face that people can relate to.

So, as video budgets rise and marketing videos become more professionally produced, user generated content will get even more attention.

As smartphones become more capable, more and more users will be able to create videos rather than just share photos.

Video is the next mode of communication between brands and customers. User generated videos will be a big deal in 2019.

These are the main things that will shape digital video in 2019.

Details like video length will get more precise as more data is collected. But details like this will be in the fine tuning stage.

Vertical video, interactive video, video rewards and user generated video are where the big changes will occur because there’s still a ton of room for innovation there.

Somebody is going to come up with a great idea and hit it out of the park with digital video next year.

Maybe it will be you!

Tag us on social media and tell us about your new ideas for using digital video!

The post How digital video will look in 2019 appeared first on Strike Social.

Gen Z is a smart, connected generation of consumers. Your marketing personalization must evolve to meet the demands and expectations of this younger audience.

There’s already a huge pool of information about Generation Z. So we’ve got an at least decent idea of what appeals to them.

If you’re looking for a way to update your social media marketing to appeal to Generation Z, try these tactics.

Use user-generated content

Generation Z not only consumes more digital content than any previous generation, but they also create more than any other.

Online communication and communities are staples for Generation Z. User-generated content (UGC) organically depicts a style that young audiences can identify with and naturally integrates with online communities.

Ask your customers to send videos or pictures with your product and solicit video reviews. Give them a platform to speak for themselves about your product. You’ll build customer loyalty and gather new followers.

Work with micro influencers

Celebrity endorsements have experienced declining success among Generation Z. Gen Z has a ton of information at their fingertips. They recognize the disconnect between themselves and most celebrities.

Generation Z responds much better to people who they feel have similar experiences. Micro-influencers are great for relating to Generation Z because they’re active members of the communities they speak to, and they aren’t so popular that they lose touch with their audience.

There’s a catch here, though. Endorsements and content from your micro-influencers shouldn’t look like advertising. It needs to be authentic content. The promotional parts should be quick and unintrusive.

Related: How to advertise to Generation Z

Use your values

The younger generation is very socially and globally conscious. They want to buy from companies that have a strong moral backbone.

So, ensure that you’re doing the right thing. It’s harder than ever to hide shady stuff. People will find out.

Then just be transparent. Use your social media channels to give audiences a look inside your offices or your production floor. Let them see how the people in your company are treated.

Just remember to be genuine about it. Flaunting your business culture will likely backfire.

Communicate via text

Young people almost never use voicemail and email is less popular than it is with millennials. Generation Z texts and communicates through chat apps a lot.

So reach out to them through their preferred communication channels. Open rates can go up to 98% — use SMS whenever you can and respond to messages in messenger apps. With such high engagement, partnering with an SMS gateway provider can help streamline these communications, making it easier to reach your audience reliably and at scale.

Marketing is at its best when there’s a two-way conversation. So use the lines of communication that connect to the people you’re trying to reach.

Use video

Social media is almost ubiquitous now. Young people move through their timelines very quickly and static posts like text and pictures are pretty standard.

Video stands out in the social landscape. Yes, eventually video will be as commonplace as images.

But right now, video is one of the best ways to stand out on timelines, especially to audiences who have grown up cruising timelines.

Give information in eight seconds

Recent research suggests that attention spans have shortened to eight seconds. An entire article could be written about this data itself.

But, that means that you need to compress your messages. You need to get attention and quickly communicate something useful. Fortunately, social media is very conducive to quick messaging.

Related: You’ve got five seconds: capturing your audience before they skip

Focus on getting your message across or telling the customer what the benefit of engaging with your content is in the first eight seconds. Also keep most of your videos under three minutes.

Marketing to a new generation might seem daunting. But, if you have another look at these tips, it’s not a huge leap from what works on older generations.

The fundamentals of human behavior haven’t changed. But the environment we live in has. Marketing to Generation Z is simply a matter of updating your marketing so it fits into this new digital environment.

Tag us on your social media channels and let us know how you reach out to Generation Z. If you’re part of Generation Z, tell us what you think of these tips.

The post How to reach Generation Z: personalization tactics that actually work on younger audiences appeared first on Strike Social.

Almost every type of customer is on Facebook. But, there’s a part of Facebook that has an even higher concentration of users than the platform itself: Facebook Messenger.

Overall, messaging apps now have more users than social networks. Facebook Messenger alone has 1.3 billion monthly users. So it makes sense that Facebook designed ads specifically for its messaging app.

Given the massive potential for reaching customers and starting conversations, you should be using Facebook Messenger Ads.

But watch out. Messenger ads have a few gotchas that standard Facebook ads don’t.

We created this guide to walk you through some of the do’s and don’ts of Facebook Messenger ads and cover some of the basics of setting them up.

But first, some Facebook Messenger Ad basics.

What are Facebook Messenger Ads?

Facebook Messenger Ads have two possible placements:

Click-To-Messenger Ads. These are ads that appear on the user’s timeline and look the same as standard Facebook image, video or carousel ads. However, the call to action button takes users to a conversation with your company in their messenger app.

^{Image credit: AdEspresso by Hootsuite}

Messenger Ads. These are ads that appear in the messenger app itself. They can either start a conversation or take users to a landing page.

^{Image credit: AdEspresso by Hootsuite}

The ads have two primary formats:

Sponsored Messages. These are ads that look exactly like a normal message. The company name on your Facebook page will be displayed as the sender. These ads are designed to start a messenger conversation.

Home Screen Ads. These ads appear between messages on a user’s messenger home screen. Home Screen Ads are essentially standard Facebook ads that display in the messenger app. These ads take users to a landing page.

Each ad type works for accomplishing certain objectives. Here’s what you need to know to get the most from your Facebook Messenger Ads.

How to use Click-To-Messenger Ads

Click-To-Messenger Ads are a great way to build your base of Facebook Messenger subscribers. In Messenger, subscribers are simply people who have messaged you in the past and haven’t deleted the conversation.

Having a conversation with a customer in Messenger gives you an additional channel to communicate with them and offers an opportunity for hyperpersonal interaction.

Additionally, you can broadcast messages to your entire subscriber base with Messenger marketing software. So Messenger can act as a pseudo email list.

Here are the key attributes of Click-To-Messenger ads:

1. Click-To-Messenger Ads work in both Facebook and Instagram, and on desktop and mobile.
2. You can use the same targeting as any other Facebook ads. Target behaviors, interests, custom audiences or anything else you can target in the Facebook Ads Manager.
3. Click-To-Messenger Ads are only available for Facebook campaigns with traffic, messages or conversion objectives. You can’t create Click-To-Messenger Ads in campaigns with other objectives, so you won’t see them in the drop-down menu.

Those are the basics. Now that you’ve got your feet wet, here are some best practices for running Click-To-Messenger Ads.

Related: How to use Facebook Messenger ads to scale your Facebook advertising

Click-To-Messenger Ad best practices

• Make sure users understand what they’re clicking. Since Click-To-Messenger Ads look like standard Facebook ads, it’s easy for a user to click on the ad expecting a landing page to come up.

When a person clicks expecting one thing and gets another, that’s a bad user experience and could hurt conversions.

So use a call to action like, “Start a Conversation” or “Ask Us Anything,” and clarify in the ad copy that they’re clicking through to Facebook Messenger. That way customers know what to expect when they click on your ads.

• Use Click-To-Messenger Ads for remarketing. If a prospect has visited your page or messaged you, but hasn’t made a purchase, there’s a reason.

Often this barrier to buying is a lack of information or understanding. So use Click-To-Messenger Ads as an opportunity to find out what questions or concerns a potential customer has about buying and clarify things for them.

Also, if you use Click-To-Messenger Ads for remarketing, you’ll get better results if you use other marketing channels to build your subscriber list. Include a link to start a Facebook Messenger conversation in your marketing emails and customer service emails to encourage people to message you.

• Ask a question people can answer. This works best if you’re targeting people who haven’t interacted with your brand before. However, it’s totally viable for renewing a conversation with prospects who haven’t contacted you in a while.

The big thing here is to ensure that you ask a question that leads to a sales conversation. Unlike an Instagram poll, which can be solely entertaining, questions in your Click-to-Messenger Ads should help customers express their needs and pain points to you so you can present a solution (your product).

Here at Strike Social, we might ask something like, “What’s your biggest challenge in social media marketing?”

• Use Click-To-Messenger Ads for traffic and messages objectives. Yes, conversions are the end goal of all advertising.

However, until you have a significant number of conversions, Facebook doesn’t have enough data to optimize your ads. This usually means they won’t get shown to enough people to be effective.

Those are the ins and outs of Click-To-Messenger Ads. Remember that many of the fundamentals of standard Facebook ads apply to Click-To-Messenger Ads, since they look and function very similarly.

How to use Messenger Ads

We’ll start with the simpler of the two types of Messenger Ads: Home Screen Ads.

Home Screen Ads are more of a new placement than a new type of ad. Basically, Home Screen Ads are just standard Facebook ads that show in a user’s messenger app.

The same best practices of Facebook ads apply to Home Screen Ads. However, there are a couple of additional considerations.

• Let people stay in Messenger. Unlike the Facebook timeline, people don’t idly cruise their messages. People open messenger to send messages. So they’ll be irritated if your ad takes them to their browser.

Stick with ads that show content in Messenger when a user clicks on them.

• Use static, understated ads. It’s best to create ads specifically for showing in messenger, rather than just importing your timeline ads.

Keep your ads simple and subtle. Avoid flashy ads that feel like they try too hard to get attention. Messenger is a very different environment than the timeline. It’s very easy for users to tell Facebook that your ads are not useful to them, which could reduce your ad showing.

That’s it for Home Screen Ads. Simple, right?

Let’s talk about Promoted Messages.

Promoted Messages have the same look as messages from friends. But they’re from your brand.

Here’s what you need to know about Promoted Messages:

• Promoted Messages are only available for campaigns with the messages objective. If you select a different objective for a campaign, Promoted Messages won’t appear in the “Ad Type” menu.
• You can send Promoted Messages any time. Ordinarily, you can only send messages within 24 hours of the last message they sent you.

• You can only send messages to people who have messaged you in the past. This is pretty self-explanatory. People who have unsubscribed or deleted your conversation cannot be contacted with Promoted Messages.

• Promoted Messages aren’t delivered immediately. Facebook says that your messages will be delivered 3-5 days after your campaign starts. Facebook automatically sends messages when people are most likely to see them based on how they use their messenger app.

Facebook recommends that you run a Promoted Messages campaign for at least seven days to ensure that all your messages get delivered.

• You can only send one message to each person. If you’d like to send more than one message per customer, you’ll have to create multiple ad sets.

Keep in mind that it’s easy to irritate customers with too many messages. Keep the message volume reasonable.

• Facebook charges for impressions. You’re going to get charged whether the user opens the message or not. Keep this in mind as you plan your budget.

Right now, the average cost of Promoted Messages is $30 per 1000 impressions.

There’s quite a bit there. Fortunately, the Facebook Ads Manager takes care of most of the important stuff.

The list of best practices for Promoted Ads is much shorter.

Since you can only send Promoted Messages to people who’ve already contacted you, these ads are exclusively remarketing ads.

• Use Promoted Messages for promoting events, sales or offering discounts. Since these customers have already messaged you, it’s pretty likely that they already have all the information they need to make a buying decision. They likely just need a little nudge.

Price reductions go a long way here.

• Target specific segments of your subscriber list. Just like email marketing, Promoted Messages work better when they’re more relevant. Facebook lets you get very granular with your segmentation and targeting, so take advantage of it.

That’s all there is to it. Easier than it looked at first, right?

We’ve got one last thing to cover.

Creating Facebook Messenger Ads

Facebook Messenger Ads can be created in the Facebook Ads Manager, using any campaign with traffic, messages or conversion objectives.

Creating Facebook Messenger Ads is similar to creating other ad types, so we’ll cover this quickly.

1. Go to Ad Creation and select “Traffic,” “Messages,” or “Conversions” as your objective.

If you want to create Promoted Messages, select the “Messages” objective.

1. Select the ad type you want to create.
2. Select where you want people to go when they click your ads. For Click-To-Messenger ads, select “Messenger.” For Promoted Messages and Home Screen Ads you can select either “Messenger” or “URL.”
3. Specify your audience. By default, ads will be shown to everyone. You can choose audiences you’ve already built or select a new audience based on Facebook’s segmentation factors.
4. Select the placement.
   For Click-To-Messenger Ads, select the “Home” placement.
   For Home Screen Ads, select the “Messenger” placement.
   For promoted messages, you can only choose “Sponsored Messages.”

Specify your budget and schedule.

1. Build your ads. You can specify your text and images for all messenger ads. You can also customize customer actions like providing suggested quick replies.
2. Run your ads!

And one last thing: consider using a Facebook chatbot to help you out. Message volume can get unmanageable fast. A chatbot can do a lot of work in dealing with common questions and issues.

That’s it for our 10-minute rundown of Facebook Messenger Ads.

So have a go at using Facebook Messenger Ads in your business. As always, measure, test and iterate. Then send us a message and let us know how these ads work for you!

The post Facebook Messenger Ads 101: basics and best practices appeared first on Strike Social.

It’s common to trust social media platforms with our data to run marketing campaigns and engage with audiences. However, this trust can sometimes be misplaced, leading to significant financial losses and compromised privacy. For instance, YouTube creator Brice Gump experienced this firsthand when his Facebook ad account was hacked, resulting in over $60,000 of unauthorized spending. Recovering the disabled accounts flagged by Facebook’s fraud protection system proved to be a lengthy process.

Such incidents highlight the importance of understanding how social media platforms safeguard your data and how you can contribute to protecting your privacy. By doing so, you can navigate digital advertising and leverage these mediums effectively without the anxiety of data breaches.

How Social Media Platforms Safeguard User Information

Advertising privacy regulations on social media platforms differ significantly from those for personal use. Factors such as stricter consent requirements, extensive data collection and usage, and greater accountability for data breaches or misuse make advertising on these platforms riskier for businesses. However, understanding how major platforms protect and secure your business data can help mitigate these risks. To keep your mind at ease, here’s how the different major platforms provide social media protection and privacy for your business’ data:

Meta (Facebook and Instagram)

Meta collects personal information like age and location for demographic targeting, but it primarily analyzes user behavior on the platform, including interactions such as likes, comments, and shares. Additionally, Meta records interests based on pages users engage with and ads they click on.

For businesses, there is a higher risk due to the requirement to disclose business information for verification. Advertisers must provide:

• Legal business name
• Address
• Phone number
• Website
• Supporting documents, such as:
  • Certificate/Articles of Incorporation
  • Business Registration or License Document [such as Company tax identification number (TIN), Business formation document, or Employer Identification Number obtained via IRS Form SS-4]
  • Government-issued Business Tax Documents
  • Business Bank Statement
  • Utility Bill (including Legal Business Name, Business Address, and Phone number)

Meta ensures the protection of this data by using multi-factor authentication during the verification process to restrict access to authorized individuals only. The data is transmitted through secure, encrypted channels to prevent unauthorized access when uploading legal documents. Under the GDPR, Meta must safeguard advertiser-provided data, such as customer lists, to find lookalikes for customer segments.

YouTube (and other Google advertising platforms)

YouTube and other Google platforms have strict policies around data collection and sharing. In addition to two-factor authentication, they provide detailed activity logs to detect unauthorized account access.

Concerning user protection on social media platforms, Google enhances security with its Google Safe Browsing feature. This tool safeguards users from malicious websites that may be linked to ads. The protection is highly essential because unverified sites or those lacking the necessary security measures, such as SSL certificates, can leave users vulnerable. Google Safe Browsing prevents users from accidentally clicking on deceptive websites that attempt to collect their personal information, especially in an era where links can easily disguise themselves as legitimate.

When businesses and brands advertise on YouTube and Google Search Partners, they have an additional layer of social media protection. This protection comes in the form of brand safety controls and exclusions. These controls allow advertisers to filter the content they want their ads placed with and exclude content they don’t want to be associated with. 

Given the prevalence of suggestive and explicit content, YouTube’s brand safety measures allow advertisers to exclude their ads from appearing with these types of content, ensuring that their ads don’t appear in harmful or unsuitable contexts. Additionally, advertisers can opt out of Kids’ content since brands only target consumers who can make purchases or shop from their devices.

Learn more about YouTube’s brand safety and suitability measures from these blogs:

Know more about YouTube brand suitability

Excluding YouTube Kids’ Channel on ad placements

Placement exclusion lists for YouTube ads

Align with the right topics by using topic exclusions

TikTok

One of the most prominent social media platforms, TikTok, has faced significant scrutiny regarding its approach to social media protection and data privacy. In April, the US Senate passed a bill that could potentially ban TikTok in the United States, amplifying concerns about the platform’s security and privacy practices. Despite these criticisms, TikTok has implemented various measures to address these concerns, recognizing its responsibility to ensure a safe and private environment for its users and advertisers.

What does the TikTok ban mean for US advertisers?

Due to the platform’s diverse content, TikTok has introduced an under-13 TikTok experience to ensure the social media privacy of younger users. This initiative includes limiting interactive features and implementing content suitability assessments to shield this demographic from harmful content. Consequently, this also prevents these younger users from being exposed to targeted advertisements, protecting advertisers from having their ads shown to an unrelated demographic lacking purchasing power.

Similar to YouTube, TikTok is a platform primarily for video advertising. TikTok has implemented its brand safety regulations, including the TikTok Inventory Filter in the Ads Manager. This filter allows you to assess the content level with which you want your ads associated, providing greater control over your advertising campaigns.

These measures by major platforms demonstrate a commitment to protecting user data and providing advertisers with tools to display ads in a secure and appropriate environment. Now that you know how these platforms protect your brand’s privacy and security on social media, you must understand the measures you can take to complete the full circle.

How Can You Protect Your Information When Using and Advertising on Social Media Platforms

While social media platforms are responsible for safeguarding user data, it’s equally important for individuals and businesses to take proactive steps to protect themselves. Protecting sensitive business information, ad campaign data, and financial details is essential to ensure uninterrupted operations.

Implementing simple yet effective security measures can significantly reduce the risk of data breaches, unauthorized access, and other social media privacy issues. Here’s how you can take charge of your business’s data protection on these social media platforms:

Prioritize Account Security

• Create strong, unique passwords for each social media account that incorporate a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. Avoid using easily guessable information like your company’s name, address, or publicly available information.

• Activate two-factor authentication (2FA) or multi-factor authentication (MFA) on your social media platform, if available. These add an extra layer of security by requiring a code from your phone or another device to log in, even if someone has your password. This ensures that any access, even by an authorized person, is monitored and properly recorded.
  
  See the availability of Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) across various social media platforms:

• As employees come and go, you must review and update access permissions to your social media ad accounts. Remove access for anyone who no longer needs it to minimize the risk of unauthorized access.

Proactive Monitoring and Detection

• Most social media platforms offer alerts of unusual login attempts, password changes, or other suspicious activity. Enable these alerts so that you stay informed and take immediate action if necessary.

• Regularly conduct audits of your ad accounts. Ensure that all settings are accurate and there are no unauthorized modifications. Scrutinize billing and campaign performance for any irregularities that might suggest fraudulent activities. For instance, Meta Ads Manager requires businesses to have a payment threshold to notify media buyers and advertisers once they reach the monthly budget or when the billing cycle ends before the set budget is exhausted. This financial security measure allows you to be notified and investigate if your budget is exhausted unexpectedly.

What’s the ideal Facebook ad costs?

Education and Training

• Invest in educating your employees about social media security risks and best practices. This includes recognizing phishing scams, creating strong passwords, and understanding your company’s data security policies.

Protecting your brand from identity theft – learn more here

• To further protect your business’s data on social media platforms, prioritize regular employee training sessions. These sessions should cover the latest security threats and the necessary steps to protect sensitive information.
  
  We know your media buyers already receive regular training on various ad platform updates, such as monthly webinars hosted by TikTok that address new features, improvements, and upcoming changes.
  
  Given the dynamic nature of social media advertising, it’s essential to have ongoing discussions and discourses focused on data privacy and security. These discussions should address how individuals can protect themselves on networking sites and how brands can mitigate security risks effectively.

Get In Touch with The Experts

Discover how our expert team can help you achieve your social media advertising goals.

Contact Us

Be the First Line of Defense for Your Brand’s Social Media Privacy

Whether you are a media buyer, brand manager, or advertiser, remember that we are all social media users first. By understanding how to protect your information on social media platforms, you can secure both your personal accounts and the brand advertisements you manage.

Educating your media buying teams about social media protection is vital in building client trust. Demonstrating that you value your clients’ social media accounts as much as your own establishes a foundation of reliability and professionalism, essential components of a successful media buying agency.

Contact us to learn more about how we maintain social media protection for our clients. Let us guide you through our personalized walkthrough and help you discover the Strike Social way.

Expand your expertise. Browse Strike Social’s blogs here:

Complete Guide to YouTube Advertising in 2025

Planning a Winning YouTube Christmas Advertising Strategy

Q3 2024 YouTube CPV Benchmark Report

The post How do social media platforms handle and protect user data? appeared first on Strike Social.

But moving from single or multi-channel marketing to omnichannel marketing can be challenging.

It’s not quite as simple as adding an app or widget to your sales funnel. And social media advertising alone won’t quite go the distance.

To successfully transition to an omnichannel model, you need to go one step further than adding a method of purchase or information channel.

Learn from the omnichannel customer experience strategy of these brands

Your omnichannel marketing needs to solve a problem that customers encounter during their buying journey.

The thing that makes this tricky is that the obstacles to buying are different for every business.

So, you’ll need to learn how your customers buy from you, then create a solution to one of the roadblocks they run into.

To give you an idea of what sort of buying problems omnichannel marketing can solve, here are omnichannel examples from businesses that have nailed the omnichannel approach.

Starbucks

Problem solved: long lines at the register

Every coffee shop has wait time woes. Especially during rush hour.

Starbucks created an app that enables customers to order and pay on their phone. Then they just stop by the shop and pick up their coffee.

Customers don’t even need their wallet, since the app accepts Google and Apple Pay. And they can complete the entire process on an Apple Watch, if they don’t even want to be bothered to use their phone.

Super easy, right?

Starbucks is a solid example of how to perfectly use an app.

A word of warning about apps: when you implement an app, getting people to download the app is a sales process in itself. So you need to be sure that the app is truly going to make the buying process easier.

A very common mistake is requiring new customers to download the app to make purchases.

Nobody likes creating an account and having to add another password to their already absurdly long list of passwords.

If a potential customer goes to your website and adds items to the cart, but is required to download an app and create an account to complete their purchase, you will most likely lose that sale. And all the other sales that run into this roadblock.

Ouch.

Making your app an optional download is a good litmus test for whether or not it helps your customers make purchases. If your app really makes buying easier, people will download it and use it without much persuasion.

Disney

Problem solved: logistics

One of the biggest hurdles to visiting Disneyland is getting there and getting around once you’re there.

Disney’s online trip planner, My Disney Experience, goes one step further than trip planning.

Customers can map out their entire trip on the My Disney Experience website. Once they get to the park, they can see the wait time for each attraction they planned to visit on their phone.

Then the Disney Magic Band works as a hotel room key, photo storage, food ordering tool and as a Fast Pass. This way customers can do everything they want using just two devices.

But this is a lot of technology, right? Not every business has the same budget to spend on building proprietary hardware.

The big takeaway here is that going places and moving products around are challenges for customers. The easier you make this, the more people will buy.

Solving the problem of logistics is especially vital if you sell large items, like furniture, or provide a product or service that people must receive in person. But making the logistics of purchasing easier will go a long way for any business.

Oasis

Problem solved: purchasing flexibility and inventory availability

For businesses that sell both online and through brick and mortar stores, purchasing flexibility and inventory accuracy are kind of a big deal.

This is what happens: the products that are available online are not the same as the products on the shelf at the nearest store.

This causes issues for customers who find an item out of stock or who want to browse online and purchase in-store.

Oasis solves this problem by giving their in-store employees instant access to online inventory and shopping carts via iPads.

The store associates can find product information, customer shopping carts, and place orders in real-time.

Also, this street runs two ways. If an item is out of stock online, the system will locate the item at an Oasis store. The store will ship the product directly once it’s ordered.

To address the issue of purchase flexibility, customers can make purchases on the website, through the Oasis app or directly from an in-store employee who can complete the checkout process on their iPad. So the customer never has to wait in line.

This system definitely solves the problems of product availability and wait times for the customer.

But the big problem that Oasis solved was actually an internal one: communication.

It’s impossible to provide a truly omnichannel experience if there’s a disconnect between the different parts of your company.

If the people on the ground at your brick and mortar stores don’t have access to the online portion of your sales funnel, your omnichannel experience suffers greatly.

Freely sharing information is almost mandatory for delivering an omnichannel customer experience. So start breaking down those silos!

There are other companies knocking it out of the park with their omnichannel efforts. But the reason their approaches work is the same: they solve a buying problem for their customers.

So start by sniffing out the hiccups in your purchase process, and build an omnichannel experience that eliminates them.

Then hit us up on social media, and let us know how delivering an omnichannel experience is improving your business!

The post 3 Omnichannel examples: brands that are delivering incredible omnichannel customer experiences appeared first on Strike Social.

But social media ads for real estate can be just as effective as they are for other industries.

To make it work, though, you’ve got to use social media in a real estate friendly way.

Social media advertising for real estate is unique in a few ways. So we put this post together to help you reach more homebuyers on social media.

Use social media messaging to connect with homebuyers

Customers can instantly connect with your business through social media messaging apps like Facebook Messenger and respond to your ads quickly and conveniently.

Sadly, a 2017 study found that the real estate industry only responds to 11 percent of its incoming messages.

There’s good news though: this means that you can easily differentiate yourself in the real estate industry by being responsive on social media. Since the real estate business involves building a relationship with clients, having a customer contact you through social media messaging should be considered a successful conversion from your advertising.

Any time a customer messages you, it’s an opportunity to create a great customer service experience. It’s also less demanding than a phone call.

If you start to get overwhelmed by messages, you can use chatbots to answer common questions about:

• Listings near certain zip codes.
• Characteristics and details about houses.
• Listings in certain price ranges.
• How to prepare a house for sale.
• The necessary documentation for buying a house.

Much better than an answering machine, right?

Starting conversations with customers on social media can be a huge win, so don’t miss out.

Focus on social media platforms with the most receptive users

One of the great things about social media is that there’s so much user demographic data for each platform. The real estate industry is aimed at a fairly well defined demographic. This makes it easy to choose the best places to show social media ads for real estate.

While the younger demographic may be good real estate customers in the future, many of them aren’t in the market right now.

So it’s best for real estate businesses to focus on the platforms with higher concentrations of users who are at the home buying stage. These are the top three platforms for reaching audiences of 25 years and older:

1. YouTube
2. Facebook
3. Instagram

Advertising on the other social platforms still works. However, if you’re just getting started with social media ads for real estate, it’s a good idea to start on these three networks.

Once you’ve got your social media advertising humming on the big three platforms, then extend into other channels.

Use social media videos to go beyond photographs

Obviously, photos are a big part of real estate advertising, both digital and in print. So keep posting pictures on social media.

However, video is one thing that gives the digital marketing space an edge over print media.

Recorded video tours of houses are great for posting to YouTube. Even after the property has sold, people can still watch video tours of houses you’ve listed to see the sort of properties you handle and get a feel for your style.

But on Facebook and Instagram, there’s another type of video that can work brilliantly for real estate businesses: live video.

Live videos are great for giving viewers a candid look at a new listing and showing your personality at the same time. Keep in mind that live videos make great promotions for new listings. But they’re best as a supplement to good photos and more traditional real estate listing posts.

Social media ads should have a video to supplement the photos. But videos that you use for an ad should be more scripted and designed as a formal tour of the house.

As a general rule, live videos are best for promoting a new listing, but a good professional video ad is best for the listing post itself.

Be sure to include a call to action in your live videos prompting viewers to check out the listing on your site or social media page. This way you’ll get the most out of video in your social media ads.

Be active on social media

Last but not least: use social media as a social outlet.

It’s so important to balance your promotional posts with entertaining and useful content.

Fortunately, people need tons of help with real estate! So it’s easy to be helpful with your social media posts. This will make your social media ads more effective, and get you the ROI that social media advertising is capable of.

So give these things a try! You’ll find that social media ads for real estate are much more effective than you may have heard.

The post 4 Ways to make more effective social media ads for real estate appeared first on Strike Social.

1. People are on social media during the holidays.
2. There’s a ton of noise for social media advertising to contend with, both online and in the real world.

Obviously, you want to use social media to get your brand out there during the holiday season. Gift giving is too strong a buying incentive to ignore.

But it’s important to do holiday advertising right. Otherwise, your hard earned marketing dollars won’t do much hard work for you.

We want to help you get your holiday advertising right. So here’s a quick set of tips and best practices for your holiday social media ads.

Use video

We’ve covered using video in social media a bit before, so this one will be brief.

• 50 percent of people search for a video of a product before they visit an online store.
• 92 percent of mobile video viewers share videos with others.

So, using video ads during the holidays is a must. In fact, using video for your social media ads all year is a good idea.

Focus on helpful content

The holidays come with their own basket of challenges and things to do. Cooking, traveling, staying with relatives, choosing gifts. The holidays can be overwhelming, and people need help.

To capitalize on this, avoid the hard sell. Focus on producing and sharing social media content that helps make the holidays easier.

Clearly, it’s best if you can help people with things that are at least loosely related to your business. But people will appreciate any help they can get.

If you’re stumped on what to help people with, here are some common holiday conundrums you can assist with:

1. Cooking. Many people are cooking for a large group for the first time. Or they might be cooking in an unfamiliar kitchen. Culinary help during the holidays is always appreciated.

2. Traveling. Anything you can do to make traveling to visit family easier will be a hit.

3. Gift giving. If you know a great way to subtly find out what people really want, please share it. Customer service departments around the world will thank you.

4. Fashion. Holiday fashion is important to a lot of people. But even simple things like how to tie a tie can be really helpful for the guys who are meeting new family members for the first time.

5. Winter/summer survival. In both hemispheres, Christmas hits during the most extreme time of the year. In the Northern Hemisphere, people are in the depths of winter. Down south, everyone is sweating as they wait for Santa. So, whether you help people warm up or cool down, you’re going to be popular with someone.

This list could go on, but you get the idea.

Providing helpful holiday content separates you from the din of advertisements shouting, “Buy this stuff!” and frames your brand as the sort of customer-focused business people like to buy from.

Get your timing right

Earlier we mentioned that people do use social media during the holidays. However, there are nuances to this.

People tend to buy and engage the most on social media in the days and weeks before the actual holidays.

Look at how people engaged with the New York Times on social media during the holidays:

Note the significant spikes in the weeks before Thanksgiving and in the days before Christmas. On the other hand, engagement is closer to the median—or even below it—on the holidays themselves.

This means that you’ll get the best results if you start your holiday social media campaigns sooner rather than later.

Then, cut back on your budget on Thanksgiving and Christmas Day.

It’s in good taste to leave people alone during family time. But it’ll also save you some money on ads, since people aren’t engaging so much on those days.

Utilize user generated content

A few years back, Starbucks gave people a chance to design a Starbucks holiday cup in their #redcupcontest campaign.

A #redcupcontest photo was shared every 14 seconds, and the contest received over 40,000 entries.

User generated content drives engagement with your brand better than almost any other sort of content. It gives people a fun way to have a conversation with your business and contribute to the fun.

The holidays are an especially ripe time for user generated content, because people are doing special things that they want to share. So offering people a platform for sharing their holiday experiences will always be a big hit.

If you’re not sure where to start with user generated content, start with a brand specific hashtag that people can use to share their content and focus on a universal challenge of the holidays. That way people will produce content that resonates with a very broad audience.

Still stuck? Here’s a starter topic: holiday travel.

People use social media to share their holiday travel experiences to such an extent that it actually affects travel plans and undermines travel industry advertising.

This means that you’ve got a huge bucket of potential user generated content in the travel arena.

Create a New Year’s social media campaign

This one gets overlooked a lot.

Thanks to events like Black Friday and the tradition of giving gifts, Thanksgiving and Christmas take the spotlight during the holidays.

But New Years is actually more universal than Thanksgiving and Christmas, since not everybody celebrates those holidays.

Almost everybody does something for New Years.

You can actually appeal to a wider audience with your New Year’s campaigns.

Not only that, but New Year’s deals are a great way to offload excess or old stock to make room for new supply, if you need to.

So there it is.

Social media advertising during the holidays is actually pretty straightforward.

We’re getting pretty late in the year. You’ll want to put these tips and tricks to use in your social media ads pretty quickly.

Once you’re all set and reaching out to your holiday audience, tag us on social media and let us know how your ads are working for you!

The post Holiday social media use: how to reach customers this holiday season appeared first on Strike Social.

Omnichannel marketing is designed to address the way modern buyers make purchases and give them a consistent experience from start to finish.

This is great for the customer. Therefore, this is great for business. But the benefits of omnichannel marketing are also internal.

4 Benefits of Using Omnichannel Marketing to Simplify Your Customer Buying Journey

So, what is omnichannel marketing, exactly? This is important to understand before you get into the meat and potatoes of things.

Omnichannel marketing is a sales approach that addresses the customer experience on each individual sales channel—desktop browser, mobile, retail, social media and any others you might use—and how customers transition between each sales channel as they complete purchases.

Ideally, a customer should be able to click on a Facebook ad on their phone, browse your website and add a few things to their cart, then come back and finish checking out on their laptop without any fuss from using their phone and their laptop to complete the purchase.

So you see how omnichannel marketing extends to your social media channels, direct marketing and physical advertising.

This is a pretty comprehensive approach. It takes some work to get it done. But here’s why you should do it, starting with how omnichannel marketing makes your life easier.

Integrate marketing analytics

With the old multichannel approach, marketing analytics from each channel were stored in silos. The data from each channel didn’t interact with or influence the actions of the other channels.

Omnichannel marketing brings all your sales channels together and combines your data streams so that you can easily get a strategic view of your marketing efforts, take a more holistic approach to marketing and foster a collaborative culture in your marketing department.

It also enables you to more precisely track customer behavior and see which channels buyers are interacting with before they actually make a purchase, so you can better allocate your marketing budget and reduce costs.

Streamline logistics and customer service

Since omnichannel communication improves your buyer behavior analysis, it also helps you identify the best way to meet customer needs and predict inventory requirements.

Say you’re getting a lot of conversions from Facebook ads that target a specific state or region, you can track that and proactively move inventory to your physical locations in that area to improve the experience for customers who order online and pick up in person.

Let’s take a quick look at these insights that underline the importance of efficient logistics and top-notch customer service:

• In 2022, the global customer experience management industry reached $11.34 billion. This reflects a widespread effort to enhance customer interactions across the board.
• 77% of customers worldwide are satisfied with the service they receive. This shows that, despite challenges, companies are doing well in meeting customer expectations.
• 70% of consumers are willing to spend more with businesses that consistently offer great experiences, highlighting a crucial link between customer satisfaction and business growth.
• Personalization is key: 90% of customers are likely to invest more in companies that prioritize tailored customer service.

Deliver a complete buying experience

People are more likely to complete their purchases if they can get all the information they need directly from the brand they’re buying from. When people need to leave your site to do research, there’s a chance that they never come back.

Omnichannel marketing helps you keep customers in contact with your business until they’ve converted.

Additionally, a lot of retail buyers research products online before they make a purchase. If you own a brick-and-mortar store, you can increase sales by providing online research materials so customers can get the information they need before they actually step into your shop.

They’ve been in contact with your brand since the beginning of their buyer’s journey. So they’re more likely to finish the purchase with you.

Get more sales

In the end, this is the only one that matters, right?

With omnichannel marketing, you can offer a nearly frictionless buying experience. People like things to be easy. Omnichannel marketing makes it easier and more convenient for customers to make purchases.

In the end, omnichannel marketing is a natural evolution of marketing, based on the way that customers buy.

So hit us up on social media and let us know how you use social media to round out your omnichannel marketing strategy.

The post The benefits of omnichannel marketing: creating a seamless experience appeared first on Strike Social.

Instagram Stories and Facebook Stories have replicated Snapchat’s method with even more success. Instagram Stories get over 400 million daily active users.

Content marketing, in general, plays a huge role in achieving success. Recent data shows that 71% of content marketers have seen content marketing grow in significance in the past year, where 40% of marketers have a well-documented content marketing strategy. Additionally, 78% of content marketers reported that their organizations plan to invest or continue investing in video, with 48% of marketers having a monthly budget of up to $5000 dedicated to content marketing.

There’s simply a good reason why these content types are so popular.

All three formats—Snapchat, Instagram Stories, Facebook Stories—are ephemeral content.

But what is ephemeral content, right? It sounds more menacing than it is.

Ephemeral content is content that disappears after a certain amount of time. It’s basically the opposite of evergreen content.

This might sound like a terrible idea. Why would you want to produce content that only engages users for 24 hours or less?

The first reason is that a whole lot of people engage with ephemeral content.

But let’s dig a little deeper than that.

Related: 3 Unknown Snapchat advertising facts you didn’t know already

Why is ephemeral content so popular?

There are powerful psychological factors that drive the popularity of ephemeral content.

We’re very familiar with them in the world of marketing:

1. Urgency.
2. Humanity.

Ephemeral content capitalizes on people’s fear of missing out. The fact that the content won’t be there tomorrow entices people to engage with the content ASAP. Ephemeral content gets all of its traffic from that spike that accompanies a content release.

The second thing is humanity. People like to buy things from people. Good ephemeral content is quickly produced and carries a very personal tone. The lack of polish makes it easier for people to identify with the content.

Ephemeral content should be created quickly and inexpensively — so it’s effective and efficient.

Since it’s so effective, here’s how to use ephemeral content on social media.

Be consistent

Since ephemeral content disappears after a certain amount of time, you’ll need to keep creating it. However, you need to get more granular with your consistency.

Create a plan for your ephemeral content messaging and stick to it. Abruptly changing the direction of your content can turn users off.

Also be consistent about what time you post your stories. People tend to be a bit habitual about their social media use, so being consistent with your posting schedule will keep them coming back.

Be authentic

The cool thing about social media stories is that they’re very informal. They’re a great way to show the human side of your business and give people a glimpse behind the curtain.

Let your customers know what the day-to-day life of your business looks like, what you’re excited about and even your challenges. It brings your business down to earth and lets customers know that they’re buying from people.

Share updates

Press releases and sharing updates on your blog are good. You should keep doing that.

But using stories to share updates and news, announce sales and promote events gives your audience a real-time account of what’s going on with your company and what you’re doing for them.

Your announcements will also get a lot more exposure since people can view them quickly and effortlessly.

Engage with your audience

One of the most powerful features of story posts is that you can add polls, which gives audiences a way to interact with the content and increases engagement.

Using the live feature on Instagram, you can also host question-and-answer sessions with your customers or post user-requested content. It creates a two-way conversation with your customers that can be a great source of information for you and let your customers know that you’re listening to them.

Walk the walk

If your business does charitable work or volunteers time, use your stories to show it.

Showing your good work in action feels a lot less self-congratulatory than announcing it after the fact. It’s also more believable because a real-time video is harder to fake than a social media blurb.

So be sure to pull your phone out and grab a quick snippet next time you’re doing good things.

Creating ephemeral stories is quick, easy, fun and can drive a lot of engagement with your brand and help customers trust your company.

If you’re still on the fence about using ephemeral content in your social media marketing, give it a try!

Then use a social media story to let us know how it works out for you.

The post Ephemeral content is here to stay. Here’s how to make it work for you appeared first on Strike Social.

On one hand, Snapchat has a huge user base that’s extremely active.

On the other hand, accessing that user base with ads has proven challenging.

The challenge comes from the unique way Snapchat users interact with the platform.

Unlike Facebook or Instagram, Snapchat content is ethereal. User content doesn’t stay on timelines or newsfeeds. So there’s no central location for user attention, and no real touchpoint to place ads on for consistent impressions.

To say the least, effectively marketing on Snapchat is tricky.

However, there are some Snapchat advertising facts that can shed some light on Snapchat advertising and present some insights that can help you create Snapchat ads that get results.

Here are some little-known facts that will help you solve the Snapchat advertising riddle.

1. Snapchat is a secondary advertising channel

I know you’re wondering just what this means.

It starts with Snapchat user demographics.

The majority of Snapchat’s user base is made up of young people.

Snapchat has been popular with millennials for quite some time. However, Snapchat is one of the most popular social networks among teenagers.

This means two things:

1. If your ideal customers are young people, Snapchat is a good place to advertise.
2. A large portion of Snapchat users won’t purchase things themselves.

This sounds counterintuitive. But consider how teenagers usually buy stuff…

They ask their parents.

So, measuring your return on ad spend from Snapchat advertising can create some deceiving numbers.

Since parents do the purchasing, the actual conversions may happen on other social media platforms or will come from Google or perhaps in-store.

In fact, it may even seem that your Snapchat ads aren’t getting any engagement at all, because the engagement is a conversation between the teenagers and their parents.

Getting results on Snapchat can be more about finding better ways to track Snapchat engagement or connecting conversions from other channels to Snapchat impressions.

Creating an ad that prompts users to screenshot the ad and show it to someone else or use it as a coupon when they check out could help you follow the trail that people take to get to the sale so you can find out how well your Snapchat campaigns are performing.

In the end, a huge part of the Snapchat advertising equation is finding a way to track where the user’s attention is in an app designed to hide user attention.

2. Snapchat ad creative is really tough to get right

Most social media platforms are built around communities. The app itself is designed to curate content from a lot of people into a central feed so users can interact with information from a lot of people very quickly.

Snapchat is designed for one-to-one communication. Even when someone sends a snap to multiple friends, it creates a separate conversation for each person.

Even Snap stories are presented individually.

This means that it’s incredibly challenging to create ads that fit into this environment. An ad is basically like some guy coming into a conversation and yelling something entirely unrelated.

Yikes.

It goes without saying that creating ads that add value to an environment of one-to-one conversations is rather tricky.

A great way to tackle this challenge is to focus on creating ads that feel and act like normal snaps. That way your ads feel like a slight diversion into a different conversation without being jarring.

This is effective because the conversation topics on Snapchat change regularly. Users are accustomed to that.

They’re not accustomed to people yelling, “BUY NOW!” while they’re trying to talk with their pals.

So creating Snapchat ads is a more involved process than creating ads for other channels. But it’s worth it when you get your Snapchat advertising right.

3. Snapchat is best for companies with large advertising budgets

Since Snapchat doesn’t drive the sort of direct conversions that other platforms can offer, Snapchat ads tend to function more like top-of-funnel content.

However, Snapchat needs to keep their boat afloat.

So you pay for Snapchat ads the same way you’d pay for other social media ads (or at least similarly).

This can result in a lot of ad spend that essentially generates leads rather than sales.

Now, this doesn’t mean that Snapchat advertising is unprofitable. It is.

But you’ll need to invest a bit more in Snapchat advertising to really get the return train going. You’ll also need capable analytics tools to track your return and make measurable improvements to your ads.

In short, you’ll really want to have your marketing ducks in a row before you get too deep into Snapchat advertising.

Snapchat advertising can be extremely profitable. But only if you take the right approach.

So take these Snapchat advertising facts to the drawing board or send this post to your marketing team to help get your Snapchat advertising right and start appealing to your Snapchat audience!

The post 3 Unknown Snapchat advertising facts that will improve your Snapchat ads appeared first on Strike Social.

Choosing the right ads boils down to looking at two things:

1. What you want people to do when they see your ads.
2. What sort of product you’re selling.

Getting this right is critical for getting the most from your social media advertising. Even the best social media ads won’t perform well if they’re wrong for your product or business.

The good news is that social media platform designers understand this. They’ve created ad formats for each marketing objective and for various product types.

We’re going to break down each ad type and what it’s best for, so you can more confidently decide which ads will help you start and scale your social media marketing.

Before we get too granular with the ads, here’s a quick bit about social media platforms to give you some context.

How to choose a social media platform

Each social media platform collects a ridiculous amount of data about their user base.

But you can simplify the decision by looking at the age demographics of each social media platform and focusing on the one that most closely matches the age demographics of your customer base.

Here’s a quick rundown of how the age demographics for each platform look:

• Facebook is a good platform for all age groups.
• Facebook and YouTube are the best options if you primarily sell to customers over 50.
• Instagram is best for businesses marketing to customers between 18 and 24 years old.
• Snapchat is the best for reaching teenagers.
• LinkedIn is the best platform for reaching professionals between 24 and 35.

You can get even more specific, but identifying your primary social media platform is a strategic decision, and you’ll be on the right track if you choose based on age. Of course, you can always advertise on multiple platforms.

With that, let’s talk about ad types.

The best social media ad types for e-commerce

Facebook and Instagram have the most variation when it comes to ad formats. So we’ll talk about those first.

Video ads: getting more site visits

Facebook offers two types of ads for driving site traffic: link ads and video ads.

Of the two, video ads get better results.

Of course, the cost of creating video ads can be higher than other formats, so your advertising budget may necessitate that you use link ads.

It’s cool if you need to start with link ads. But you should transition to video ads once your budget allows for it.

Carousel ads: getting more product purchases

There are three options for getting more sales: carousel ads, collection ads, dynamic ads.

Carousel ads are the best all-around ads for e-commerce businesses that have a wide selection of products to advertise. You can use carousel ads to showcase multiple products, highlight a featured product or even show how a product works.

Any e-commerce business can get good results with carousel ads.

Collection ads and dynamic ads have more specific purposes:

If the majority of your customers are on mobile, collection ads provide a very engaging mobile experience. However, they don’t work on desktop.

If you need ads to remarket to people who’ve already been to your site, dynamic ads automatically show products that users have already checked out on your website.

Lead ads: get more leads

Like app install ads, lead ads are the only ad type designed to get leads.

The call to action in a lead ad takes the user to a form that’s been pre-populated with information Facebook already knows about the customer.

Leads ads get you more leads by making the signup process easier. Prospects can sign up in a matter of clicks without having to manually enter any information.

In e-commerce, lead ads only really work if you use a lead magnet or tripwire as part of your sales funnel.

The best part about Facebook ads is that they also display on Instagram. You even create Instagram ads in the Facebook ads manager, even if you’re only running Instagram ads. So running Facebook ads is kind of like running ads on two platforms for the price of one.

Pinterest video ads: get more sales

Most Pinterest content is static. So video ads stand out in people’s Pinterest feeds.

They’re a great way to show your most popular products in action.

Pinterest ads aren’t as tailored to your business goals as the Facebook ad formats are. However, you’ve got a lot of creative freedom to create video ads that support your marketing objectives.

Pinterest video ads have the same drawback as Facebook video ads: it can be expensive to produce video content.

If you need ads with a lower production cost, Pinterest also offers promoted pins. Promoted pins are image ads, so you can get them up and running with a lot less work.

Just like Facebook, it’s great to start with promoted pins if you need to. However, look for ways to get some video ads going once your budget allows for it.

Finding an e-commerce ad that’s right for you

There you have it – these are the best ads for e-commerce businesses. They’ll reach the largest audience and do the best job of enticing customers to buy. YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter advertising can work for e-commerce companies. However, these platforms don’t have ad formats that support e-commerce as well as the Facebook and Pinterest ads.

So get some of these ads up and running. Then give us a shout on social media and let us know how they work for you!

The post Everything you need to know about building the best e-commerce ads appeared first on Strike Social.

However, influencer marketing can be tricky to get right. It depends heavily on authentic presentation and reaching the right audience.

There are a couple of things to understand before you get into the weeds of influencer marketing:

Influencer marketing is a long-term marketing method.

It takes time to find the best influencers for your business and develop relationships.

Typically, simply paying influencers to give your company a shoutout without any established relationship is ineffective because it comes across as ingenuine.That’s because paying influencers to put your logo at the beginning of their videos or tag you in posts is ingenuine.So prepare to play the long game in your influencer marketing strategy.

Be prepared to give a little value up front before you start getting returns on your influencer marketing.

Remember that the influencers are the ones with the audience you want to reach. They also have the reputation to appeal to that audience. So you’re going to have to offer some value to make it worth the influencer’s while to promote your business. We’ll cover this in more detail a little further on. The long timeline aside, influencer marketing can pay big dividends when you do it right.

It enhances your company’s credibility and provides social proof that your product is everything you claim.

To help you get these massive benefits from your influencer marketing, we’ve put together a checklist of steps to developing an effective influencer marketing strategy.

Let’s start with the basics, which will help you apply the steps in your own business.

What is influencer marketing?

The simple definition is that influencer marketing is working with influential people in your industry or market segment and using their credibility and reputation to promote your product or service.

However, there’s a nuance in influencer marketing that often gets overlooked:

An influencer marketing strategy is a strategy of marketing to influencers and acquiring them as customers so that they can advocate your business to their audience.

If you’re not familiar with account-based marketing, it’s a good thing to learn about as you work on your influencer marketing strategy. Focusing on an influencer as a market of one is a great way to gain their support for your brand.

Why use influencer marketing?

The digital age has transformed the way people buy things.

Banner ads that were once staples of online marketing are now averaging .04% click through rates.

People discover and learn about products in different ways than they used to, so some of the conventional advertising tactics have lost their footholds.

Fortunately, social media offers an amazing way to access the new channels that people use to research and buy products.

Influencer marketing gets your product and brand into the social media environment organically and presents your product or service as a recommendation from an expert. This is the strongest sort of social proof.

Psychologically, social proof is one of the most effective marketing tactics.

So, in short, influencer marketing works. That’s why it’s a good idea to use it.

Now that you know the ‘why’ of influencer marketing, let’s talk about the ‘how’ of building an influencer marketing strategy.

Here’s the promised checklist of steps.

1. Find the right influencers for your business

Often, businesses default to targeting influencers with the largest number of followers.

However, choosing which influencers you want to represent your brand is more about fit than reach.

There are three things to consider when you’re evaluating an influencer:

Credibility

This is arguably the most important characteristic to evaluate.

When an influencer recommends your brand, how respected is that recommendation?

The challenge here is that social media is a very personality-driven medium. There are a lot of influencers who have gathered huge audiences based on their great personalities.

However, a great personality doesn’t equal expertise.

Consider how an influencer fits into your industry as you evaluate their expertise. Here are a few examples of credible influencers.

Skilled users:
For instance, if you sell skis, a skilled user would be a professional skier. Keep in mind that the influencer doesn’t need to be a professional user of your product, as long as part of their online brand involves expertise as an end-user of your product or service.

Production experts:
Sticking with the skis example, a production expert in the ski industry would be a mechanical engineer who designs skis. These sorts of influencers can really enhance the perception of quality surrounding your brand.

Industry experts:
These influencers almost always use the products they advocate, but their brand as an influencer revolves around their overall industry knowledge.In the ski world, ski magazine editors, professional gear reviewers, and company owners are the industry experts.

These influencers are skiers. But they’re known for something that’s related to the sport of skiing, rather than for their skiing.

Owners and officers in companies that make complementary products or services can be great influencers to partner with.

So, determine the sort of expertise that works best for your brand and target influencers in those categories.

Reach

Credibility is important, but that credibility still needs an audience to be effective.

Something to know about reach is that a bigger audience isn’t always better. Influencers with larger audiences also have broader audiences.

So, even though an influencer may have hundreds of thousands of followers, your product may only appeal to a small percentage of them.

This is why micro influencers are often better options than major influencers. Micro influencers are those with smaller audiences—between 1000 and 25,000—that are often much more focused.

The reason working with micro influencers can be effective is because your product may appeal to their entire audience, rather than just a small slice.

When examining the reach of an influencer, also perform a qualitative assessment of their audience.

Spend a little time perusing the comments on their posts and checking which posts get the most shares to find out about how much of their audience is made up of your ideal customers.

Salesmanship

This is actually a rather major part of the influencer marketing equation.

Look at the way influencers present the products they endorse. Some are better than others. Some are good at presenting products, but maybe their style isn’t a good fit for your product.

This part is largely an evaluation of their personality. Partner with influencers that are good personalities for your business.

Strategically speaking, finding good influencers should be an ongoing process.

You want to have a list of potential influencers on deck so that you can start moving forward in partnering with them as your advertising budget opens up

Or, if you’re a marketing agency, you want to have influencer profiles prebuilt to expedite the process of establishing influencer marketing for new clients.

2. Build relationships with influencers

This is a sorely overlooked step in influencer marketing.

Many marketers approach influencers as packaged service providers, where they just send an email and say that they want to purchase X number of shoutouts and Y number of social media posts per month and be done with it.

There are a couple of issues with this approach:

• Even though you’re offering to help an influencer monetize their audience, there’s still a good chance that they might turn you down.
  
  Quality influencers only recommend products that they know well enough to confidently recommend to their followers. Recommending bad products hurts their reputation and could shrink their audience rather than grow it.

  Most often, an influencer will want to use your product or service for a while before they offer to promote it.

• Purchased advocacy is inauthentic. Social media thrives on authenticity.

  So inauthentic recommendations and content tend to get ignored by social media users.

  Even influencers with very good salesmanship will struggle to simply pick up a product and make their advocacy sound genuine.

The moral of the story is that you’ll need to build relationships with influencers. It’s also a good idea to offer to let them use your stuff for free as you reach out to them.

Here’s a basic framework for building relationships with influencers and eventually reaching out to them with a marketing offer.

 – Follow the influencers that you identified as good fits for your business on social media.

 – Engage with their content.

Comment on their posts and ask good questions. Share their content. Tag them in your own posts.
If you use products that they’re already advocating, share your experience with those products and services. You can even go one step further. Go out and buy something they promote and use it. Then let them know how you like it.

This is definitely optional, but it’s a great way to get attention quickly.

The end game here is to be enough of a presence on their feed that they’re at least a little familiar with you when you reach out to them directly.

 – Reach out to them directly and offer to let them use your product or service for free, in exchange for a review or feedback.

Asking them to document and share their experience with you is the safest way to go.If they give you unfavorable feedback, there’s no real damage to your reputation, and you avoid burning any bridges. You can always ask for feedback on other products that might be a good fit for that influencer.

On the other hand, if you ask for a public review, you may get a bad review.

Since credibility is a big deal for influencers, they’ll often be brutally honest in their review if you’re stuff isn’t up to snuff.

It might be a bit challenging to reach out to an influencer about another product or service if they’ve already stomped something you sent.

So only ask for a public review if you know your product or service can deliver and that the influencer is a good fit for your business.

 – Use their review or feedback of your product or service as a gauge for how interested they would be in partnering with you.

This will help you dodge any bullets in terms of influencers who don’t really like what you’re selling. If their feedback isn’t so great, you can simply thank them for their time and move on with minimal losses.

 – Make an offer.

This is where you actually approach them about paying them for access to their audience.
At this point, they should have your product in their hands, and will hopefully be using it, so they can be a really genuine advocate for your business, which is exactly what you want on social media.

Clearly, this is a long process. If you’re an agency looking to keep influencers in the wings for new accounts, you can put influencers in a holding pattern around step two in the process.

Just keep engaging with them on social media until you’ve got a product or service to offer to them for a test run.

If you keep your influencer relationships active, you should have no problem acquiring influencer marketing nearly on demand.

3. Negotiate an influencer marketing package

Another common stumbling block on the path to influencer marketing is establishing clear guidelines for the marketing collateral that you get from each influencer.

The more specific you can be, the better.

Consider these things as you build your influencer marketing agreement:

 – Number of social media posts that mention your brand per day/week/month.

 – Number of videos, stories, IGTV episodes, Facebook Live posts or other content types that mention your brand per day/week/month.

 – Where and when your brand will be placed in their content.

Will they mention it at the beginning of videos or at the end?

Maybe both?

Will they tag your company in their posts or use your brand specific hashtag?

 – Number of content pieces that focus specifically on your product or service.

Most commonly, these content pieces are reviews.

However, these can also be product updates, press releases and even behind the scenes content like office or factory tours.

 – Deliverables influencers need from you.

These can be things like logos, sound bites, scripts or anything else to correctly represent your brand that influencers can’t make themselves.

The purpose of going through all these things isn’t to micromanage influencers. The goal is to create an agreement with very clear conditions for success.

Having a very precise agreement makes things easier for you and for the influencer.

The influencer knows exactly what they need to do to satisfy the requirements.

And it’s easier for you to identify influencers who may not be holding up their end of the deal.

So be nice as you negotiate, but be specific. It’ll make your influencer marketing life much easier in the long run.

4. Optimize your content to make the most of your influencer marketing

Now that you’ve got your influencers on board and producing content, just sit back and watch the sales come in, right?

Not quite yet. There’s one more thing on the influencer marketing to-do list.

Influencers produce a lot of content that can be repurposed for other marketing channels.

Look for ways to:

 – Use influencer quotes or testimonials in marketing emails, landing pages and sales pages.

 – Create an influencer page on your website with short bios and links to your influencer content channels.

 – Create blogs and newsletters that feature your influencers and provide links to influencer content that focuses on your brand.

Now that you have access to influencer audiences, you have a vested interest in helping your influencers grow their audience. So send your influencers some publicity. It’ll come back to you in the form of enhanced ROI from your influencer marketing budget.

Also, put together some information materials about how you promote your influencers. Send this package out when you do influencer outreach. It’ll give them even more incentive to partner with your brand.

Here’s the most important takeaway from this entire article:

The best influencer marketing strategy is a continuous activity. Cold pitching influencers and buying shoutouts generally gets mediocre results.

Use your influencer marketing strategy to build a repeatable process.

This way you can create a continuous cycle of finding influencers and developing relationships with them that will enable you to snap up new partnerships as your budget allows or whenever you have a marketing client who needs influencer marketing.

The good news is that the most important part of influencer marketing—building relationships with influencers—is pretty much free. It just takes a little time.

So, if you’ve got any influencers in mind, don’t be shy!

Hop on and start a conversation!

The post Developing an influencer marketing strategy: 4 steps to success appeared first on Strike Social.

The value of Black Friday and Cyber Monday reliably increases every year. In 2017, Black Friday and Cyber Monday mounted a record $7.9 billion in sales, topping 2016 by 18 percent.

The average person spends $289.19 over Thanksgiving weekend.

It goes without saying that your Black Friday and Cyber Monday social media campaign is going to pay dividends, if you do it right.

Tips and Best Practices for Successful Black Friday and Cyber Monday Campaigns

Here’s some data about Black Friday and Cyber Monday, along with some tips and best practices, to help you nail your social media campaigns heading into the holiday season.

Dial in your mobile experience

In 2017, 40 percent of Black Friday transactions took place on mobile phones. That’s 11 percent more smartphone transactions than 2016.

Each year, smartphone use reaches a new landmark. There’s likely to be even more mobile shopping this year.

The challenge with mobile shoppers is that it’s very easy for users to turn their attention away from the purchase they’re making. If the buying experience is too difficult or unclear, people very quickly opt out.

So, while you’re probably already optimizing your social media advertising for mobile (aren’t you?), it’s important to check your landing pages, online storefront and checkout flow for mobile compatibility.

Update your social media profile

We’ve talked about supporting your social media advertising with an active social media profile before, and the advice holds up for social media advertising on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Here are three quick ways to make your social media profile do some work to support your paid ads:

• Create a custom profile picture and cover photo that promotes your Black Friday/Cyber Monday campaigns.
• Add a call to action button that takes visitors to your Black Friday landing page.
• Pin a post to the top of your profile that announces your best Black Friday/Cyber Monday discount.

This way your advertising and your social media business front deliver consistent messaging.

Let people know that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are over fast

Two of the most effective selling tactics in history are scarcity and urgency. There’s a lot of marketing and psychological research to back this up.

Fortunately, Black Friday and Cyber Monday have both of these built in.

You’re not making anything up if you say that your Black Friday deals end at midnight, and the sales numbers are so high that it’s completely reasonable to say that things might sell out.

The trick is reminding people of that urgency and scarcity as they’re shopping. There are two really effective ways to remind people of the time constraints and stock limitations:

• Add a live countdown timer to keep people aware of exactly how soon the sale will end.
• Add live stock counts to your product pages. This gives your product pages inherent scarcity.

These are fairly easy additions to your web pages. There are even some apps for platforms like Shopify that are designed to add things like timers to your pages.

Brand your campaign

The best way to beat your competitors is not to compete with them. Go where they’re not selling.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are marketing territory in themselves. If you’re using the normal lingo, the only way to get attention is by yelling, “Black Friday sale!” louder than everyone else, which may not even be possible.

So, keep the typical hashtags like #blackfriday and #cybermonday in your lineup, but add something to your campaign that nobody else is going to be using.

Creativity is the key here. A great example comes from Chubbies shorts. Last year they branded Cyber Monday as “Thighber Monday” to promote their holiday sales (and short shorts).

Talk about these commercial holidays in terms that only your brand would use, and avoid the marketing shouting match with your competitors.

Appeal to your most passionate customer segments

This one is a great job for your regular social media posts. Obviously, it works in your paid social ads too, but it’s a really great way to make your social media posts fun and engaging.

Amazon nailed this one last year when they posted a picture of a cat sitting in an empty Amazon box with the caption, “Remember that all Black Friday deals come with a free cat bed.” Appealing to people who love their cats and taking pictures of them. Brilliant.

People make buying decisions emotionally. So engage with your most passionate audience on social media to prime them for buying on Black Friday.

Use your blog

Companies are gradually starting their Black Friday and Cyber Monday advertising earlier and earlier each year. Last year, the ads started as early as October 1.

You can start your ads early if you’d like. But you can start preparing for Black Friday and Cyber Monday by creating helpful posts on your blog.

The cool thing about using your blog is that you can start adding content much earlier without annoying people with premature Black Friday ads.

Here are some examples of content that you can post almost any time that will support your social media campaigns:

• Buying guides for specific customer segments. These are practically evergreen content, if you do them right. Enthusiasts are always looking for the best products, even when there are no holidays in sight, so helping them find the best stuff never goes out of style.

Evo.com has an amazing collection of content like this. They have buying guides for skiers, mountain bikers, rock climbers, runners and plenty more. It adds value to their site, and they can leave the content up all year. All they have to do is update it just before Black Friday and Cyber Monday every year to refresh traffic to the blogs and get more conversions when they run their sales.

• Product reviews. The most analytical buyers—which can be the toughest to sell to—do their research before the sales start, so they can get the best product and the best deal when the sales roll around.

Start providing value to them during the research stage. You’ll get more customers and conversions when you start running discounts.

• Product use tutorials. These will bolster your social media campaigns and ease the strain on your customer service department. In order to make a buying decision, people need to know what the product is and what it does.

Articles that demonstrate how to use certain products help customers understand what a product does and envision how they might use it in their own lives. On the other end, people may need some help once they get their purchase out of the package. So having some tutorials ready can minimize customer service calls.

Your blog is a huge asset, so be sure to leverage it to get ready for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Get attention

Social media posting volume goes up during the holidays because people are doing stuff they want to share. Most of these posts are static. They’re either pictures or text.

Adding some movement to your ads can help them stand out on people’s timelines. Video ads and ads that flash a sequence of pictures break up people’s timelines and help stop the thumb.

But keep it reasonable. Some companies have resorted to rather crass methods to get attention, which can actually damage your brand.

Offer discounts

This one is a no-brainer, so I’ll get straight to the nuance of it:

Free shipping is one of the highest converting discounts. 108.5 million shoppers spent $3.34 billion online in 2016.

There’s obviously a huge number of sales that could be won by offering free shipping. So be sure to let people know that you’re offering free shipping through your social media channels, and include it in your ads.

There’s good news for brick-and-mortar businesses, too.

In 2016, 99.1 million Americans shopped in store. Thirty-five percent of retail shoppers checked prices on Amazon before buying. So, price matching is another effective discount. It’s definitely a great option for retail businesses who can’t offer free shipping.

For marketers, the holidays are truly a season. The best thing to do for your holiday social media campaigns is to start planning early. The sales season is a long few months. Start building your social media content and ads now, and determine which tactics will be best for your business.

Once you’ve got your campaigns dialed, stop by the Strike Social LinkedIn page and let us know what you’re doing with your Black Friday and Cyber Monday ads!

The post How to crush it with your Black Friday social media campaigns appeared first on Strike Social.

However, advertising on Instagram is a bit of a different show than advertising on other mediums and social networks.

So it’s pretty common for businesses to find that their Instagram ads are not delivering.

The good news is that it’s not because Instagram is wrong for your business. You can fix your Instagram ads and get the return you’re looking for.

Here’s why your Instagram ads might not be delivering and how to fix it.

Why your Instagram ads are not delivering

The first thing to check when you’re working to improve your Instagram ads is to make sure they’re actually getting to your audience.

If you have your ads up, but your ad spend shows zero or there are no impressions, it’s likely that your ads aren’t being delivered.

The most common issues are problems with audience selection and targeting.

Check your ad dashboards and ensure that you’ve got the right audience selected. Also, check to make sure that Instagram is set as the preferred ad channel.

This will cure the majority of Instagram ad deliverability issues.

Once your ads are getting impressions and your budget is being utilized, it’s time to make your ads effective.

Here are the biggest Instagram advertising mistakes.

1. Treating Instagram like any other marketing channel

This is the number one issue with Instagram ads.

It’s not like TV or radio where people are accustomed to getting advertising mixed with the content. Blatant advertising on Instagram irritates users.

Here are the basics of creating Instagram ads that aren’t invasive in people’s Instagram feeds:

• Creativity. Instagram is a platform for sharing stories, pictures and videos. Stock images or overt ads signal to users, “This is an ad. Ignore it.” Then they scroll right by.

Build your ads to look like Instagram posts with entertaining, amusing or inspirational content.

• Visual focus. Instagram is a visual platform. Too much text is boring for Instagram users. Keep the text in your Instagram ads minimal and your captions concise.
• Subtlety. Branding and logos are fine as long as they’re not blatant. Keep your branding and logos small so they’re not in people’s faces.
• Video. This one is super simple: use videos. Instagram videos get excellent engagement, so you don’t want to miss out on the opportunity.

What to do: look at your Instagram feed and create a suite of ads that mirrors your feed in terms of post types and visual construction.

2. Using ads that lack story

Instagram is all about stories. Static ads with a static image and a call to action that says, “BUY THIS!” have no story.

Ads that tell a story deliver the content that users come to Instagram for: stories (they’re called “Instagram Stories” for a reason, right?).

If your ads tell a story, they’ll feel natural in the Instagram environment and people will thank you with engagement (and sales).

What to do: create ads around answering a question your target customers have.

3. Focusing on conversions too much

Focusing on conversions in your analytics is a good thing.

Focusing on conversions when you build your Instagram ads can hurt your conversions.

We get it. Conversions are the point of advertising.

But you don’t want your Instagram audience to detect your hunt for conversions. You’ll actually get more conversions if you focus on delivering value—amusement, inspiration, entertainment—when you build your ads.

What to do: always include a call to action and a way for prospects to take the next step in the buying process, but be gentle with your ask.

4. Neglecting your community

Here are two of the most effective tactics for Instagram advertising:

• User generated content.
• Influencer marketing.

These methods get results because it shows that your brand is willing to participate in the Instagram community. It also gives people easy ways to engage with your brand and promote themselves.

User generated content and influencer marketing makes your brand a member of the Instagram community rather than a necessary interruption.

What to do: create a brand hashtag that your followers can use to show when they’re posting pictures of your product or brand. Repost these pictures on your feed to give publicity to your customers.

5. Posting ads without offers

Even when you follow Instagram advertising best practices, Instagram still tattles on you and tells users that your ads are ads.

So, reward users for stopping at your ad.

Include discounts to people who click through on your ads. Create exclusivity by offering that discount only on Instagram.

Be careful here, though.

Create multiple ads. Rotate through ads with offers and ads without offers.

Otherwise, you run the risk of training users to ignore your offers. If the offers only show up occasionally, you’ll get more conversions from them.

What to do: add a discount offer to one-quarter of your ads and run them one-quarter of the time.

If you correct these issues in your Instagram advertising, you’ll find that your Instagram ads will start delivering.

So give your Instagram ads a good audit. It’ll do your bottom line some good.

Once you’ve got your ads improved, come back and leave a comment to let us know how much it improved your ROI!

The post Instagram ads not delivering results? 5 Reasons why and what to do about them appeared first on Strike Social.

Click through rate tells you what percentage of people who saw your ads actually clicked on them. The math for determining your click through rate is pretty simple.

Just divide the number of clicks by the number of impressions. Then multiply the answer by 100.

It looks like this:

^Source

This is a good equation to keep in your back pocket when you’re running any sort of PPC campaign.

However, for the purpose of establishing objectives, it’s important to know how high the bar is set when it comes to performance.

Naturally, we want to know whether our numbers look good or bad.

To help you evaluate how well your ads are doing, we’ve collected data to shed some light on where the benchmark is and some tips for reaching that benchmark.

What is a good click through rate?

There are some nuances in unpacking what a good click through rate is.

Your click through rate depends on a few factors:

• Industry.
• Marketing channel.
• Type of ad.

Here’s how the numbers shake out for each of these factors:

• Average click through rate on the Google search network across all industries: 1.91%

^Source

• Average click through rate on the Google display network across all industries: .35%
  

^Source

• Average click through rate across social media platforms: .93%

^Source

• Average click through rate across Facebook ad types: 1.152%

^Source

There’s some variance here, but if you’re achieving a click through rate of two percent or higher, you’re doing pretty well. However, even if you’re meeting this click through rate benchmark, it’s best to keep testing and improving your ads.

Who knows, you might completely blow away that average click through rate.

Here are some tips and best practices to help you achieve—or maybe even beat—the average click through rate.

How to improve your click through rate

There are a few things you can do that will reliably help you get at least acceptable click through rates.

The good news is that they’re all relatively simple!

1. Use keywords in your ad copy

Obviously, this one starts with keyword research.

But, if it’s possible without being too awkward, using the keywords that people use to search for your product or service in your ads signals that you’ve got what they’re looking for.

As long as the copy sounds natural, you can use the same tactic in your social media ads. You’ll get clicks from the people who’ve looked for what you’ve got but haven’t purchased yet.

2. Focus on ad formats that give the best return

As you saw earlier, Facebook video ads get the best click through rate compared to other ads.

In other advertising mediums, there will be a clear winner when it comes to the best type of ad to use. Sometimes, you won’t be able to use that winning ad type.

But, whenever you can, you should skew your ads toward the most effective formats. If there’s no data to follow here, try your hand at collecting your own!

Run the same number of each ad type for a while. Once you’ve got enough data to identify the best format, stick with that one and focus on refining it to perfection.

3. Use structured data

Have you ever searched Google and found that there’s a specific result that’s displayed before the organic search results?

These pages use structured data to speak directly to Google’s algorithms.

Implementing structured data in your landing pages and websites will improve your Google ad rankings for links to those websites.

This can increase your click through rate by way of increasing your impressions. However, if your ads need work, it could decrease your click through rate.

Either way, structured data will improve your click through rates or give you more data for improving your ads (and therefore, your click through rate).

4. Always include a call to action

For Google ads, email and more traditional ad channels, this usually isn’t a problem.

However, social media ads work best when they’re not pushy.

With this in mind, sometimes people think that maybe leaving the call to action out will make their social media ads less invasive on people’s feeds.

This is a bit too extreme, though.

Keep your call to action.

But make it subtle.

You want to give prospects a way to take the next buying step. Just don’t force it on them.

5. Test your headlines

In any ad, your headline is arguably the most important part. Especially in very short ad formats.

If you only tested one part of your ads, your headline would be the best thing to test and iterate. Fortunately, running A/B tests with headlines is pretty simple.

Run two versions of an ad, each with a different headline.

After you’ve collected some data, just stop running the ad with a lower click through rate.

The cool thing about A/B testing like this is that you can continually improve your ads by writing new ones and testing them against your existing ads.

If you do this, it’s possible that you eventually completely crush the average click through rate.

Achieving really impressive click through rates isn’t something that you can do over night. But if you follow these tips and stick with the process, you’ll soon be getting rock star click through rates and smiling all the way to the bank.

If you’re feeling good about your click through rates after reading this, great!

If you’re ready to start working on them, feel free to bookmark this page and come back whenever you want to compare your click through rates to the benchmark.

The post What is a good click through rate? What it is and how to get there appeared first on Strike Social.

This is no problem on platforms where the majority of users view the content on their desktops. On a desktop, horizontal video looks best.

On mobile, though, vertical video looks best the vast majority of the time. And social media is viewed on mobile a vast majority of the time.

Quick math tells us that using vertical video in your social media marketing strategy is the best way to go.

I’m going to flip the script here and give you some fast how-to tips upfront, so you can take advantage of the vertical video trend immediately.

Tips for creating vertical social media videos

1. Use your phone

A DSLR or professional camera is great for creating product videos and structured marketing media.

But social media is a place for personality driven, personal videos. People want to see people doing cool stuff or sharing experiences.

Creating videos on your phone organically creates a video that fits into the social media space and presents your brand as a member of the community.

A good video editing app like Spark Camera is just about all you need to create high-quality videos from your phone that will fit right in on IGTV, Facebook or Snapchat.

There are two aspect ratios for social media videos: 9:16 and 4:5.

9:16 is what you see when a video takes up your entire phone screen.

4:5 is the aspect ratio used for videos that are more square and typically play on your Facebook or Instagram feed while you’re scrolling.

An additional benefit of using your phone is that it automatically shoots in the correct aspect ratio for most social media platforms, so you won’t need to adjust it during editing.

2. Talk to the camera

The biggest reasons people go to social media are entertainment and amusement. So talk to the camera (which is actually talking to the audience) to inject some of your personality into your social media videos and put the focus on reaching out to your viewers.

Also, keep the content of your videos light. The occasional serious post is fine. But you don’t want your brand to feel like a downer all the time.

Also, since you’re using your phone, be sure to hold it close enough to get good sound quality.

3. Keep it short

Instagram set a maximum run time of 60 minutes for IGTV videos (!).

But there’s a very slim chance that anybody will watch a 60-minute video on Instagram.

Stick with videos of one to three minutes and always open with a strong hook that communicates the benefit of watching the video to the end to increase viewing time and engagement.

4. Shoot vertical videos vertically

I know this sounds like a captain obvious statement.

But you can shoot videos horizontally and then crop them in post production to create a vertical video.

This may be tempting. Especially if you already have a bunch of horizontal video. Why not just repurpose it, right?

The reason is that cropped horizontal videos don’t look that great. Typically the frame is just a bit off or part of your subject gets cropped out. It’s just really hard to create a video that looks polished and purposeful this way.

It might be a bit more work. But you’ll get a lot better social media video engagement if you take the time to shoot new videos vertically.

However, for platforms like YouTube where the majority are still watching horizontally, stick with horizontal videos.

That’s how you create good vertical videos in a nutshell.

But if you’re still not convinced that you should follow the vertical video trend, here are some tidbits that might help you get on board.

Why you should be following the vertical video trend

1. Three out of five online videos are watched on mobile.

Yes. Over half of the videos on the internet are watched on mobile devices.

And mobile devices are designed for vertical videos.

2. People hold their phones vertically 94% of the time.

Even though our field of vision is horizontal, people still hold their phones vertically almost all the time.

So, vertical videos work for how people most often use their phones.

3. People use social media on mobile 70% of the time.

Optimizing for mobile is more important than ever. Mobile apps account for 70 percent of the time spent on social media.

Part of optimizing for mobile is embracing vertical video.

4. Most social media platforms support video.

Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn and other social networks now support video natively within their mobile app. Even YouTube now supports vertical video on mobile by displaying the creative without side black bars.

And social media platforms are actively expanding their video capabilities.

Vertical video looks best on most platforms. So it’s no surprise that vertical video is performing well on social media.

Snapchat ads with vertical videos get nine times more views than those with horizontal videos.

93 percent of Twitter videos are viewed on mobile.

Social media companies have embraced vertical video. So have social media users.

The vertical video trend is real.

5. New markets are exclusively mobile

This is a big picture thing, but the number of smartphone users worldwide is expected to reach 2.87 billion by 2020.

Not only that, but rapidly expanding markets like Africa and Asia have large swaths of mobile-only internet access.

If you want to know how marketing will look in five years, 10 years or even 20 years, the future looks increasingly mobile, especially in the rapidly globalizing economy.

Working with vertical video is a quick, easy way to help prepare for that advancement.

It looks like vertical video will be around for a while. Our bet is that it’s a safe trend to follow. So use this article to jumpstart your vertical video production. Then come back and let us know how it’s working for you!

The post The vertical video trend is real. Here are 5 reasons why you should follow it appeared first on Strike Social.

But changes to the algorithms and new features can make expanding and maintaining your organic reach tricky.

However, all the algorithms and features are designed to make Instagram users happy. If you focus on finding out what your audience wants and delivering content they find valuable, you’ll work with the algorithms and features instead of fighting them.

And your organic reach will expand.

Here are five ways to deliver valuable content and grow your organic reach on Instagram.

1. Post at the best time for engagement

The best place to start is with the practice that’s the least subjective. There’s tons of data about when to post, so it’s easy to see if you’re on track.

The first bit of data to consider is what time zone most of your users are in. For the U.S., most of the population is in the central and eastern time zones. So posting at optimal times in these time zones is a good default. But the idea is to tailor your post times to the time zones where you have the most customers.

The second data point to consider is when engagement on Instagram is highest. Here it is:

Engagement on Instagram spikes between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m.

Instagram engagement is consistent throughout the week, so the time of day is more important than which day you post on. So, post on Instagram between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. for the best engagement. Something else to note is that engagement tends to dip between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m., so stick to posting in the morning.

2. Post user-generated content

User-generated content is a great way to engage with your audience and post content that’s non-invasive in the Instagram environment.

A great way to get lots of user-generated content is to create a brand hashtag. Include the hashtag and a quick call to action in your posts that ask your followers to take a picture using your product or service or of the results they’ve gotten.

This gets you lots of authentic content, gives your audience an easy way to interact with your business and builds social credibility for your brand and your product.

3. Use Stories to create transparency

People like personable brands that they can identify with.

Instagram Stories are a great way to let people get a more personal look at your business.

Instagram Stories only stay up for twenty-four hours, so they’re a great channel for posting off-the-cuff content and showing the more casual side of your business.

Here are two ideas that make great Instagram stories:

1. Behind the scenes stories. Let people see how your stuff is made or what life in the office looks like!
2. Team features. Introduce your audience to the people who actually make your product or business possible!

Feel free to get creative with Instagram Stories, though. People open Instagram for fun and entertainment. Your Instagram Stories are a great way to deliver just that!

4. Create unique content for Instagram

If you’re running social media advertisements, you’re probably using multiple social media platforms. Your audience also uses multiple platforms.

If your Instagram posts are the same as posts on other platforms, people are going to start tuning out your posts. This really hurts your organic reach on Instagram. Keep things fresh by creating content exclusively for Instagram. It may happen that you have a picture or video that you’d like to share across multiple platforms because it’s really good or maybe you have a limited content pool.

If you do reuse visual content, always write a separate caption for Instagram, so there’s something new for people to check out if they’ve already seen the picture or video.

5. Talk to your audience

Creating posts that encourage your audience to engage is important.

But people may get tired of sharing or commenting on your posts if they never hear from you. Responding to Instagram comments or giving shout outs for using your hashtag gets you more engagement and entices people to give you more user-generated content.

It also humanizes your brand.

People like to buy things from people, so if you talk to your Instagram followers, they’re more likely to become customers.

In the end, people go to Instagram for cool content, not advertising.

Expanding your organic reach on Instagram is all about participating in the community. If your company is a member of the Instagram community, your paid Instagram ads will be even more effective and your bottom line will reward you for it.

The post 5 Simple ways to improve your organic reach on Instagram appeared first on Strike Social.

Even though Reddit gets over 1.6 billion unique visitors per month, it’s still kind of the wild west when it comes to social networks. This scares a lot of marketers off.

But advertising on Reddit can get you impressive results if you do it right. Here’s a quick guide to effectively advertise on Reddit.

5 steps to start advertising on Reddit

1. Find your niche

One of the greatest things about Reddit is the potential for ad targeting. There are subreddits for everything.

Subreddits are threads on Reddit, and Reddit users make subreddits for very specific topics. Subreddit names are typically preceded with “r/”. For example, the subreddit for advertising would be written like this: r/advertising

Start with a broad Reddit search for your industry, then check the related subreddits for the specific subsets of your industry that are most applicable or profitable for your business.

As you know, targeted advertising is more effective than general advertising. So, these specific subreddits are where you want to run your ads.

Make a list of cool subreddits, focusing on the ones that have the most active users. This list will come in handy when you start setting up your ads.

2. Set up an advertising account

Using a personal Reddit account for advertising is a bad idea. Reddit doesn’t have a whole lot of rules, so it’s best to avoid mixing your personal and professional Reddit life.

When you create your business account, give it a name that makes it easy to identify as a business account. Redditors don’t mind seeing ads from businesses. But they’re abjectly averse to seeing ads posted by businesses pretending to be people.

Be transparent when you name your account. Redditors will appreciate it.

3. Create your ads

Reddit is set up like a forum. When you purchase an ad on Reddit, you’re essentially paying to be shown as the first post in that forum. This means that you should write your ads like forum posts, so they’re not invasive to the Reddit experience.

Since subreddit topics can be so specific, it’s also best to write tailored ads for each subreddit so your ad delivers what people expect to find in that subreddit.

4. Set up your campaigns

Reddit’s advertising interface is pretty streamlined and easy to use.

Here are the two biggest parts of setting up your Reddit ad campaigns:

1. Audience.
2. Mobile or desktop selection.

First, audience…

You can select groups of subreddits based on predefined categories. But the best way to target your audience is to use your list of subreddits from earlier and manually select those subreddits for your ad campaigns.

Next, mobile or desktop…

The most important thing here is to avoid sending mobile traffic to a landing page that’s not mobile friendly.

If you have landing pages for both mobile and desktop, awesome! If you only have a page for one or the other, be sure to specify which one you have when you set up your ad campaigns.

5. Optimize your ads

One great thing about advertising on Reddit is that it’s super easy to test and iterate your ads.

The best way to optimize your ads is with split testing. To do this, create two versions of a single ad. Run both ads for a set period of time. Whichever ad performs better is the winner. Keep running that ad.

If you want to really perfect your ads, you can write an improved version of the winning ad and run a split test with the improved version and the original. If you do this with all your ad campaigns a few times, you’ll start seeing the benefits of the huge Reddit user base that makes advertising on Reddit so attractive.

There you have it.

Advertising on Reddit is actually really simple. And if you do it right, it can be just as safe and effective as the more tightly managed social media platforms.

So give Reddit a try or send this guide to some friends so they can find out how effective advertising on Reddit is for you!

Hero image source

The post Advertise on Reddit in 5 easy steps appeared first on Strike Social.

And Twitter has over 328 million active users.

So including it in your social media marketing makes sense. But once your ads are going, you get hit with a wave of analytics data. It can be tricky to sort through all the metrics and figure out how to use them. To help you navigate the sea of analytics data and optimize your Twitter campaigns, we’ve put together a quick collection of the most important metrics to track.

Before we start with specific metrics, here’s a quick primer on Twitter metrics in general…

Twitter metrics generally fall into two categories:

1. Overview metrics. These metrics help you determine the overall success of your Twitter campaigns or the potential for your Twitter advertising.
2. Tactical metrics. These metrics help you improve your Twitter ads and your strategy. If you’re using these metrics properly, your overview metrics should also improve.

Now, let’s get into the best Twitter metrics to track and how they can improve your social media advertising.

1. Impressions

Impressions is an overview metric. Any time your tweets appear in a person’s stream, that counts as an impression. The tricky thing about impressions is that just because your tweet showed up in someone’s stream, doesn’t mean they actually read it.

So impressions can be deceiving. Impressions tell you how many people your tweets could reach if 100 percent of your audience read them.

A better impressions metric shows that there’s more potential for your Twitter advertising. But it won’t tell you how well your tweets are working. It’s best to use this metric for perspective on your other metrics.

2. Engagement

Engagement is also an overview metric. All these actions count as engagements:

• Likes
• Shares
• Comments
• Video views
• Clicks
• Retweets
• Detail expands

All these are good for gauging whether or not people like what your brand is saying. However, comments and retweets carry a bit more weight. These engagements indicate that your audience finds value in your brand content.

3. Audience demographics

Audience demographics are tactical Twitter metrics. Audience is a particularly useful metric because it works in two ways:

1. It tells you what kind of content will interest your audience.
2. It tells you if you’re attracting the right audience for your business.

Twitter audience demographics metrics include:

• Interests
• Language
• Gender
• Location

This information will help you determine the best content for your future posts. Additionally, it’s valuable to compare your audience demographics to your ideal or most valuable customer segments to determine if you’re reaching the right people.

If you match your content to your audience, you should see a lift in your engagement metrics.

4. Video completion rate

Video completion rate is a tactical metric that’s hugely useful for improving your Twitter content and ads. Video completion rate simply tells you if your audience is watching your videos or skipping them.

This helps you adjust the overall content of your video ads. Your video completion rate will be low if your video content isn’t relevant to your audience’s interests.

But it’s also useful for optimizing the beginning of your videos. Typically, if your video ads open with good hooks, your video completion rate should go up.

5. Results

Results is another tactical metric. The results metric measures how many users are taking actions that align with your campaign objectives.

Analysing your results tells you how well your calls to action are working, how relevant your ads are to your audience’s interests and if your ads match your objectives.

However, if your results metric is low, the first thing to look at is your call to action.

The issue is usually one of two things:

1. 1. Your call to action simply needs to be revised.
   2. Your call to action may not match the content of your Twitter ads.

If your calls to action are really good, but your results still aren’t great, you may need to go back to your audience demographics and work on matching your content to your audience’s interests.

6. Cost per result

This is actually another overview metric. But it’s a bit more telling than impressions and engagement.

Cost per result shows you how effective your Twitter marketing budget is. Cost per result only gives you insight into your paid Twitter ads, since your organic reach is free.

However, cost per result is a great metric for evaluating the quality of your paid Twitter ads. If your cost per result is a bit too high, it’s a sign that you may need to go back to your tactical metrics and refine the details of your ads.

A good place to start with this process is your results metric. If you can get more results per ad, your cost per result should come down.

The best way to utilize Twitter metrics is to take a cyclical approach. The cycle looks like this:

• Decide which overview metric you’d like to improve.
• Use your tactical metrics to make one adjustment to your ads.
• Reevaluate your overview metrics to see if the change was effective.
• Choose another overview metric to improve,

You can repeat this cycle endlessly to continually improve your Twitter metrics and in turn get more sales. So bookmark this post, and come back anytime you need a refresher!

The post The 6 top Twitter metrics and how to use them appeared first on Strike Social.

YouTube is the second most trafficked site in the world. So it’s good that you’re here to get started with YouTube ads!

Let’s get you set up with a quick checklist to run through before you start putting your YouTube ads out there for everyone to see. This checklist assumes that you already have a YouTube advertising account, or a Google Adwords account that you can use to create ads.

Once you’re ready to create ads, here’s what you need to know before you upload.

1. Establish YouTube advertising goals

This step is two-fold:

• You need broad goals for all of your YouTube advertising that fit into your overall marketing strategy. That way you can create YouTube ads that complement and support your other social media advertising and maximize your paid social budget.
• You need very specific goals for each advertisement. These are what you’ll use to determine the specifics of your ads like where clicking on the ad takes viewers and which type of YouTube ad will work best.

This first step is by far the most important. All your decisions, later on, will be much easier if you have clearly defined goals.

2. Select your audience

This is almost as important as setting goals.

It’s essential that you know who you want to see your ads. YouTube allows you to specify things like the region, country and city where your ads will be shown. You can also define audiences by interest, life events or keywords. You’ll be able to make the most of YouTube ad targeting and get the most bang for your buck if you have a specific audience in mind.

If you have a single ideal customer, this will be easy for you. If you have multiple customer segments to address, don’t worry! You can create multiple campaigns with separate targeting parameters.

3. Identify your metrics for success

Once you start running YouTube ads, it’s a great idea to optimize them. However, you’ll have a lot of metrics available to you. It’s easy to get overwhelmed.

To help cut through the noise, just remember a couple things:

• Your most relevant metrics will depend on your marketing objectives.
• The metrics you use are not set in stone.

Before you put your ads up, choose one or two metrics that will indicate whether or not your ads have achieved the objectives you set for them.

For example, if your objective is to double your YouTube channel subscribers in the next six months, your best metrics for success would be the conversion rate and the number of subscribers on your YouTube channel.

With these two metrics, you can track whether or not you’re getting more subscribers and if your videos are responsible for additional subscribers.

4. Establish a methodical approach for improving your YouTube ads

One of the most confusing things about social media marketing metrics is that most of them actually aren’t good for measuring overall success.

Most social media marketing metrics are best for improving the individual aspects of your ads. With a complete array of metrics, you can measure how effective each part of your YouTube ads are.

You can use metrics to find out how well your call to action or the opening of your video is working.

So, what’s the best way to go about using these metrics to improve your YouTube ads?

Focus on improving one thing at a time. Before you put your ads up, make a plan for improving them. For example, decide in advance that you’re going to focus on optimizing your call to action first since you can change that without reshooting the video.

Before you publish your ads, set up your analytics tools to track and show data about clicks and conversions. That way you’ll be able to cut through all the data on your dashboard and start optimizing your ad campaigns right out of the gate.

So that’s it.

At the beginning of this article, you were promised a checklist. Here it is, as agreed:

• Establish your YouTube advertising goals.
• Select your audience.
• Identify your metrics for success.
• Create a plan for improvement.

If you do these four things before you start advertising on YouTube, you’ll get the most from your YouTube advertising budget.

The post The 4 step checklist for getting started with advertising on YouTube appeared first on Strike Social.

By now, most of us have realized the huge potential of social media advertising. There are 3.03 billion people thumbing through social media feeds everyday.

Social media is a goldmine of potential customers.

But there’s a catch: social media advertising doesn’t work the same as other advertising.

Your social media ad strategy should fit into your overall marketing strategy. But the techniques that work in traditional advertising mediums generate abysmal results from social media.

If you’re trying to access the massive marketing potential of social media, but it’s not quite paying off for you, here are three ways to empower your social media ads and get the return you’re looking for:

3 Strategic Fixes to Transform Your Social Media Ad Campaigns

1. Support your ads with your social media presence.

One of the biggest social media marketing mistakes is using paid social ads in isolation. Before you start paying for ads on any social media platform, it’s critical that your business is active on the platform first. This goes for all of them.

Here’s why:

If you use Facebook or Instagram, you may be familiar with scam accounts—accounts that send a friend request, but if you look at their profile, the account has two pictures and has been active since yesterday.

If you don’t have an active social media account, showing social media ads can actually give your brand a scammy feel. If a user takes interest in your ad and checks out your profile, only to find that you’ve got two pictures and haven’t posted anything in a year, it’s very unlikely that you’ll to get a sale from that person.

But wait, there’s more.

Algorithms are everywhere these days. Every social media platform uses them. For the most part, they’re good. However, algorithms need information to work properly. Creating social media content that users can engage with gives the algorithms more information for ad targeting.

A strong social media presence helps computers show your ads to the most relevant audience. Also, some social media platforms, like Instagram, grant extra functionality to accounts with a large number of followers.

Good social media engagement also has its own benefits: 93 percent of Twitter users plan to make a purchase from a brand they follow.

Avoid being just an advertiser on social media. Be a contributor.

How to use social media posts to fix your social media ad strategy:

• Post content that’s entertaining, valuable and builds your brand persona without overtly selling.
• Include a call to action in your posts. But not one intended to sell. Encourage people to comment (this one’s the easiest), share or tag you in posts, or use survey posts to increase engagement with your brand.
• Give people free publicity. Occasionally tag people or other brands in your posts or share something they’ve posted. It costs you nothing, and they might tag you back and help expand your reach.

2. Create ads specifically for your social media ad strategy.

Since social media is a different advertising medium than any other platform, it stands to reason that your paid social ads should be different than ads for other platforms. Adding a picture to your Google search network ads and tossing them on Facebook will get disappointing results.

The reason for this is that people go to social media for different reasons than they go to Google. When people want to buy stuff, they ask Google where they can find it or search Amazon. When they want to relax and see videos of dogs reacting to magic tricks, they hop on Facebook or Instagram.

Even professional networking tools like LinkedIn aren’t all business.

If you’re familiar with the “See, Think, Do, Care” content marketing framework, social media users are in the “See” and “Think” stage of the customer journey.

Social media users aren’t in buy mode when they’re scrolling through their feeds.

Ads that look and feel like ads are invasive to the social media environment, and people react negatively to them, similar to the way people channel surf to avoid TV and radio commercials.

It’s even easier to skip ads on social media.

Ads that stop the thumb are those that add value to a person’s social media feed without trying to sell them anything. People look to social media for amusement, surprise and delight. Create ads that deliver things people want, and they’ll pay attention.

How to create ads that fix your social media ad strategy:

• Offer value. Try starting your ad with, “Did you know…” to leverage your expertise and add value to your social media community.
• Appeal to the key emotions of social media. These are the top three emotions connected with viral content: amusement, interest, surprise.
• Take your own pictures. Social media is a mishmash of user-generated content. Professional stock photos seem strange in that environment.

3. Keep your social media ad strategy connected to the rest of your marketing.

Just because social media requires a different approach, doesn’t mean the overall attitude of your ads should be different on social media.

As a customer moves through your marketing funnel, the experience should be congruent. Yes, social media is a more relaxed atmosphere, but your social media brand persona should be the same as your email brand persona.

If your brand has a quiet, professional attitude, go easy on the whimsical emojis in your social media ads. Being consistent in your marketing does a couple things for you:

• It ensures that you’re speaking to the right audience.
• It builds the authenticity and trustworthiness of your brand.

If your social media attitude is fast and loose, but your website and emails are suit and tie, people will sense that your posing or fishing for attention. It’s not a good look. At worst, this could feel deceitful.

Don’t work for the social media platform. Make the platform work for you.

How to use consistency to fix your social media ad strategy:

• Use your other marketing materials as a style guide for the tone and feel of your social media ads.
• Understand the demographics of each social media platform. Focus your social media advertising efforts toward the platforms with the most receptive audience.
• Pay attention to your metrics. If your social media ads are generating a ton of leads, but then customer interest plummets once they’ve clicked through on an ad, chances are they didn’t get what they expected.

Social media is an emerging advertising medium with huge potential. But it’s critical that your advertising strategy is designed for social media. One size does not fit all when it comes to digital marketing.

Take some time to craft a purpose-built social media ad strategy, and you’ll get your slice of the social media pie.

The post 3 Powerful ways to fix your social media ad strategy appeared first on Strike Social.

But back-to-school season is shorter than it might seem, so you need to get going on your back-to-school marketing efforts soon.

Tips for Creating Standout Back-to-School Social Media Campaigns

Here are five ways to ensure that your back-to-school social media campaign is a success:

1. Start early

Yes, many back-to-school shoppers procrastinate actually buying back-to-school supplies until the last possible minute. But the process of shopping for the right stuff starts much sooner.

That means that the early summer months are the right time to publish content that builds your brand awareness, so that you’re on people’s minds at crunch time.

Also, early season discounts will pick up sales from the early birds.

Take Target’s tweet here for instance. It’s the very beginning of July and they’ve already started promoting school supplies located in their $1 section (Bullseyes Playground) to teachers and students.

Once the first day of school gets near, free shipping will help close more deals since people are pressed to get things before school starts.

Your abandoned cart emails are a great place to offer free shipping (if you’re not sending abandoned cart emails, back-to-school season is the perfect time to start), and nab the back-to-school shoppers who didn’t quite finish their purchase during summer shopping.

2. Create campaigns for kids and parents

In the school supplies marketplace, children are the influencers and parents are the buyers.

The trick to making this work for you is meeting each group where they engage the most. Content that’s designed to create awareness of your products and brands will be especially effective on Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. These platforms have large concentrations of younger users.

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Discounts and offers will be most effective on platforms like Pinterest and LinkedIn, where there are more parents and college students who buy their own school supplies.

Avoid inundating buyers with discounts and offers, though. Post helpful things like back-to-school checklists, tips for managing the kids’ free time during summer and school preparation guides so parents don’t start ignoring your posts.

Use the parent-child relationship to your benefit. Include a call to action in your brand awareness content to encourage kids to share your posts with their parents. Then, coordinate your engagement content with your discounts so that parents get offers through Pinterest for the same things their kids saw on Facebook.

It’s influencer marketing with the best influencers.

3. Use video

Since kids and teens have a huge influence over the back-to-school buying behavior of their parents, content that appeals to them will pay dividends.

Children and teenagers spend the most time watching tv, movies and video, so ads that feature video will appeal to the younger demographic the most.

The younger generation prefers video entertainment over social media. Since ads for young users are brand awareness building, focus on delivering entertainment in your social media ads to get the most attention from these young influencers.

This campaign from 2017 takes our second and third points into account: it uses a simple video while also catering to both parents and kids.

4. Create a brand specific hashtag

A brand specific hashtag gives your posts more shareability and raises brand awareness. It’s especially effective since hashtags live on the platforms that the young influencers use the most.

When you’re brainstorming for a good hashtag, focus on creating a hashtag that helps people promote themselves and gives you a free mention (rather than the other way around). This helps you access customers who aren’t brand loyalists with your brand hashtag.

5. Create a bonus program

A great way to expand your reach is to offer a discount for tagging your company in a post or sharing your content.

If you have a brick and mortar location, you can offer incentives for people who post pictures of themselves in your store or of your product and tag your business (or include your hashtag) in the post.

This rewards customer loyalty and helps you get valuable repeat purchases.

Back-to-school season can generate amazing revenue. Use these tips to make the most of the school year!

The post How to build amazing back-to-school social media campaigns appeared first on Strike Social.