4 Steps to Create a Successful Paid Social Campaign

With the holiday season upon us, eCommerce spend is set to hit new records. With people online shopping now more than ever, reaching out through social should be on the agenda for your brand.

If you’re looking to refine your approach to paid social ads this season, here are 4 simple tips to create a winning campaign.

Step 1: Define Your Goals

The first step to any winning campaign is defining your campaign goals, KPIs, parameters, plan and strategy. The easiest way to to do this is by creating a checklist with a variety of questions, such as:

What is your campaign objective?
Why does this matter? What’s your ultimate business goal?
How will you measure success?
What is your budget?
Who is your target audience?
How far through the funnel are they?
What is your ideal audience reach?
Which platforms best reach your target audience?

Step 2: Design Ads

When creating your ads, you should be guided by your audience data, social style guide and social listening tools. You should also craft multiple versions of the same ad to avoid creative fatigue. Best practices include designing 3-5 creative options for your ad visuals and writing multiple captions for each. Asking questions in the copy is also a good way to help boost engagement on the ad.

It’s also important to incorporate different types of ad formats to test what performs best. This includes carousels, stories, video, ect. When doing this it’s important to make sure your creative is within specs and renders properly across all ad formats.

Lastly, make sure your ad creative and copy are both on-brand and compliment whatever organic content you’re posting at the same time. Also ask for feedback to identify which creative assets are your best.

Step 3: Build Ad Sets

To get started on this step, build target audiences and upload your creative assets to your chosen social platforms.

When building your target audiences you want to create multiple segments such as prospective, lookalike, retargeting, ABM, etc. Here are a few tips for building multiple segments:

To build an audience of prospective customers, use platform offerings.
For lookalike audiences, utilize your company’s first part data.
Create retargeting audiences from your site tracking pixels.
Use platform target parameters to suppress and exclude those you don’t want to reach.

Once you’ve completed these steps be sure to take advantage of custom tracking links to collect data and measure your success. You want to be granular but don’t go too narrow with your targeting.

You should also be sure to install tracking links and that your conversion tracking pixels are placed correctly on your site. Utilize custom tracking links to collect your data and ultimately measure your success.

Lastly, bid strategically. Implement automated rules and cost/bid caps to avoid high ad costs. Since there are so many brands running ads during the holiday season, it can be easy for costs to get high.

Step 4: Launch Campaign

Once you’ve launched your campaign, A/B testing is essential. Learn what resonates better with your audiences and monitor your progress frequently. We recommend running ads for about 1-2 weeks before making any changes.

Continue to go back and review your goals and KPIs when measuring your success. If there are ads you notice aren’t performing as well, pause them and don’t be afraid to increase spend on the ones that are.

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