8 ways to enhance paid social advertising

1: Define precise campaigns objectives. Whether it’s promoting a new business opening or driving sales, define a clear goal for your paid advertising campaign. Otherwise, efforts can too easily wander and fall flat.

2: Know the ground rules. Familiarize yourself with a given advertising platform, its options and its pertinent details. For instance, are costs associated with clicks or impressions? What’s the campaign’s run time? When will charges occur?

3: Pay for the “right” play. Particularly for beginners, use the cost-per-click model rather than the cost-per-impression option. This way, you only pay when people engage with an ad.

4: Identify the target. Avoid default targeting, and instead specify audience, which can be based on geolocation, gender, age, income, parental status, marital status and interests. Then, craft content – video as well as text and imagery – as precisely as possible.

5: Consider the customer. Much too often, business owners push what makes them excited with nary a concern for what the customer cares about or how the business can address an existing customer need.

6: Don’t yo-yo. Social media advertising can be “very temperamental” with factors like weather or national news impacting results. Even so, it’s important operators commit to an overall strategy, including timeline and budget, and resist the temptation to change campaigns in a willy-nilly fashion.

7: Measure constantly and adjust accordingly. Timely data is one of digital advertising’s premier advantages, so use it. Dig into the numbers to see if certain copy, images, promotions, descriptions or targeting parameters are resonating more than others. Then, pivot accordingly.

8: Defer to the pros. If no one in the business is willing to do the research to master paid social media ads, then hire an outside expert.

Chicago-based writer Daniel P. Smith has covered business issues and best practices for a variety of trade publications, newspapers, and magazines.