Have you ever looked up a product or business online then seen ads for that product for days or weeks after?

Have you ever scrolled through a social media platform and have seen #sponsored or #ad? And though to yourself “How can I do that?”

This is the nature of paid advertising.

For many, the very idea of advertising on social media is incredibly overwhelming. So we’ve summarized the basics of paid advertising on three main social media platforms. 

Before you launch into paying for advertising online, there are a few things you need to develop first:

1) Formulate your goals and then establish your budget.

This step is an imperative step, unfortunately, it’s often overlooked. Before you are able to set up ad campaigns, you need to establish your budget. And you can’t set that budget until you’ve established what it is you would like to accomplish with each ad initiative. 

2) Define Your Target Audience

Your audience is who you are targeting your ads towards. It’s imperative to define who they are, so you can formulate the most advantageous way to engage them. Clarifying who your target audience is will also be beneficial in selecting the most successful platform. 

3) Shape Your Message

Once you understand who you are speaking to, you can shape your message to specifically pique their interest. For example, you would probably use a different tone and wording if your target audience were people are thinking about retirement, versus a new mom, or college kids. 

Now that we've established the basics, let's take a quick synopsis on how to implement paid advertising on three social media platforms. 

Advertising on Facebook

The first step is to create a Facebook Page for your business. Once that is up and running, you can begin creating Facebook Ads to reach different audiences depending on your business goals. 

One advantage of advertising on Facebook is the vast array targeting options at your disposal. Businesses are able to target audiences based on location, multiple demographics (age, gender, etc.), buying habits (both online and offline), even interests (activities, hobbies, etc.). 

Facebook also offers many different ways to advertise on its platform. Such as boosting the reach of individual posts or increasing conversions on your website.

One of the most interesting advertising tools on Facebook is the Custom Audience feature. This enables you to retarget people who have already visited your website with a customized ad when they log on to the social platform. 

advertising on LinkedIn

All that is required is a LinkedIn account and a credit card. 

You start by creating an ad that contains five basic elements: 

• Headline (up to 25 characters of text)

• Description (up to 75 characters of text)

• From: (your name or any company)

• Image: (50x50 pixel image)

• URL (website people visit once they click on your ad)

Next, set your daily budget and bid amounts, then voila, you're done!

The only thing to keep in mind is that your ad must be reviewed by a member of the LinkedIn customer support team before it can go live; which can take up to 24 hours.

advertising on Instagram

When advertising on Instagram, you can choose from several different campaign objectives. Instagram ads also have the same targeting options as Facebook ads (Location, demographics, interests, lookalike audiences, etc.) 

Instagram also offers you the option to target to Custom Audiences, i.e people who have previously engaged with your brand in some way. Such as visiting your website, sharing their email with you, or even engaging with your posts on Facebook.

Once you have implemented your ads take some time to understand the analytical tools at your disposal, and refer back to them on a consistent basis. They provide palpable feedback on what is working and what isn't. Which helps to construct the roadmap to ensure exceedingly successful campaigns in the future. 

Paid advertising can be confusing and tricky. When aptly implemented it is a lucrative and reliable source of sales. Our team at Healthy Dash of Social is able to implement these marketing tools to more successfully convert your warm leads to paying customers and clients.