Five ways to improve your social media adverts.

On average, one in four posts in your social media newsfeed is a paid-for advert (also known as social media ppc).

With organic reach and engagement declining, we've put together five tips you need to remember to supercharge your social media advertising.

1. Get SMART with your objectives.

Setting a SMART objective for your social media advert is pretty simple to do, but skipping this step will likely lead to you not getting the results you need. Put simply, think of it as:

"What do you want to specifically achieve and by when?"

You should avoid making general objectives like "I want to reach as many people as possible" or "I want to raise awareness". Instead, think about what you specifically want to achieve.

Do you want to increase sales for a specific product on your website? Great, you're getting the hang of it. Now go one step further and work out how much you want to increase your sales by.

Setting a SMART objective will help you to focus on what really matters for your business. You'll also be able to properly evaluate the effectiveness of your advert once the campaign is over.

2. Define your audience.

When you're looking to run a social media advertising campaign, data is key. Without in-depth insight into who your existing customers are, it will be very difficult to target the right audience.

Rather than setting your audience to 'as many people as possible', have a look at what data you already have. Where do your existing customers live? What are their interests? What kind of industries do they work in? All of these segments help you to drill down and target the right people.

If you want to cast your net a little wider you could also set up a lookalike audience. This will show your social media adverts to people who have very similar demographics to your target audience.

3. Test and optimise your adverts.

From testing the length of your copy or video, to the design of the post graphics - it's always worth A/B testing your ads to see what gets you the best results. Without testing, you could spend time defining your objectives and targeting the right people, but your actual advert doesn't land with your audience. Here's a few ways you can optimise your social media adverts:

• Create your graphics and videos for the three key sizes: Horizontal (9:16), Square (1:1) and Landscape (2:1) - and use them all.
• Make use of your ad sets. In Facebook Ad manager, you have five primary texts to play with. Use all five fields and make each one slightly different. Facebook will optimise the best performing combination for you.
• If you're using a video, get your key message in the first 3-5 seconds. Also don't forget - most people watch videos on social media without sound, so make sure you include captions.

4. Stay on top of your ads.

You've defined your objectives, targeted the right people and have optimised your advert - brilliant. Within 24-48 hours of your advert going live, you'll start to get real data on how your ad is performing. Remember to:

• Keep on top of your engagements. If people are leaving comments or questions, respond promptly. Aim for comments over likes and shares.
• Make sure you follow up on new leads as soon as possible to stay front of mind.
• Keep track of how your social media adverts are performing based on your objective. If you're not getting the results you expected, go back and look at your objectives, audience and testing.

5. Evaluate your results

Once your adverts have ended, take the time to thoroughly review them.

If you set attainable and measurable goals, you should have met your main objective. But if you didn't quite get the results you wanted, what could you do differently next time?

Paid-for social media advertising isn't an instant fix and it can take a few campaigns of learning and refining before you start to get the results your business needs.

Social media adverts with GEL Studios. How can we help?

If you're looking for social media adverts, support with your social media marketing, or need help with your ad management - then we can help. We're excited to be launching a brand new social media adverts service, where we can help you with advertising across all social media platforms.

If you're looking for social media post design, then our graphic design service can help with that too.

When it comes to social media, we can help tell your story.