Successful social media advertising is not about luck but consistency and strategy.
Best Practices for Social Media Advertising
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
Can you guess how many people use social media today? Over 5.4 billion. Statista’s research confirms this. Facebook leads the market with about 3 billion monthly active users. YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok follow, having between 1.5 and 2.5 billion active users each. Social media, however, isn’t just where people connect. Over the years, it’s become a hub where people discover, shop, and make decisions every day. Social media’s large, engaged audience offers huge potential to boost your brand’s reach and revenue. However, simply establishing a presence isn’t enough. You need to run targeted ads to effectively reach your ideal customers. Below are the best practices to help your ads stand out as well as drive results through social media advertising.
#1 Craft Eye-Catching Visuals
Your social media advertising creative has one main job: interrupt the endless scrolling. The era of quiet, simple minimalism is fading away quickly.
To grab your target audience’s attention, you need to be visually bold. Use energetic color palettes, vibrant gradients, and contrasting color blocks in your social media ad. This deliberate visual chaos can help cut through the digital noise.
Motion is another secret weapon in this battle for attention. Use movement whenever you can to break the pattern. You could use GIFs or just simple animations. Even animating a button or a key piece of text in a static ad can make it stand out in a busy feed.
Short-form video is now the preferred way consumers learn about new products, thanks to TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts. Not surprisingly, 33% of marketers doubled down on short-form video content in 2023.
Social media users rarely commit more than 30 seconds to a video. As curisdigital.com notes, limiting your video content to 45 seconds or less is a good idea because that significantly maximizes the video’s impact. Try using humor or focusing on solving a clear customer challenge quickly.
#2 Feature Real Humans in Your Ad Creatives
Consumers are tired of overly polished, staged advertisements. Your most powerful asset is authenticity, which means featuring real customers. This, known as user-generated content, is considered highly reliable because it showcases real-life experiences with your products. This practice provides crucial credibility with new audiences.
Real images boost audience engagement significantly, leading to higher interaction rates in social media advertising campaigns. Glossier is an excellent example. It has built much of its reputation by reposting real customer photos, leveraging hashtags like #GlossierPink and #glossier, and highlighting real users instead of only professional models.
User-generated content (UGC) adds value across the entire buyer’s journey. At the awareness stage, relatable UGC, like content showing a product in a user’s normal life, humanizes your brand. At the conversion stage, testimonial UGC and reviews provide the hard proof needed to overcome final hesitations.
Customer reviews are forms of UGC. You could turn them into social media advertising creatives. Take direct quotes from testimonials and use them as overlay text on simple visuals. Or, you could reshare photos and videos of customers using your products on social media platforms.
#3 Retarget to Re-Engage Potential Customers
The majority of people do not purchase on their first interaction with a brand. To re-engage them, retargeting is the perfect mechanism. It allows you to serve ads specifically to individuals who have already demonstrated interest in your brand. This process works via a pixel that you install on your site. This pixel tracks how site visitors interact with your pages.
Research shows that retargeting visitors increases their likelihood of conversion by 70% compared to non-retargeted visitors. Retargeting is effective because it focuses your budget only on warm leads. Your ad follows these visitors onto social platforms like Facebook or Instagram.
Define your ideal customer profile before you run ads. Knowing their demographics and pain points helps you personalize every single campaign you run. You can gather data from known sources, like your customer list, to build these custom audience segments.
Move beyond generic retargeting. Instead, segment your audience based on their specific intent and past behavior.
People who abandoned their shopping carts need a different message than those who only viewed a product page. This targeted relevance boosts engagement as well as conversion rates.
Takeaways to Power Your Next Campaign
Successful social media advertising is not about luck but consistency and strategy.
When you focus on building trust, showing authenticity, and delivering real value consistently, people naturally want to engage with your brand.
While platforms and trends change, the core of great social advertising remains the same. That is, understand your audience, speak their language, and show up consistently with honesty and creativity.
Social media Ads that inspire emotion and spark connection drive natural conversions because people invest in brands that make them feel seen, heard, and understood.
Additionally, to stay updated with the latest developments in STEM research, visit ENTECH Online. Basically, this is our digital magazine for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Further, at ENTECH Online, you’ll find a wealth of information.
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Paul Lazarus is a freelance content writer and violinist by profession. He holds a master’s degree in psychology and writes content for a diverse range of businesses, including those in real estate, legal, healthcare, crypto, and other industries. His ability to quickly adapt to different voices and industries makes him a reliable partner for brands looking to connect with their audiences in an authentic way. In addition to writing, Paul has trained individuals in counseling skills, helping them develop empathy, communication techniques, and strategies for mental well-being. One area especially close to Paul’s heart is writing content on self-improvement and personal development. Drawing from his background in psychology and his own interest in growth, he enjoys crafting pieces and scripts that encourage people to unlock their innate potential. YouTube videos written by Paul helped stimulate one creator to go from 0 to 30,000 subscribers in just 27 videos. When he’s not writing or counselling, Paul can often be found with his violin, exploring music as another form of expression and balance in his life. With over 13 years of experience as a Western Classical violinist, he was the second violinist in David Fogel’s International ‘Symphonina’ Orchestra in 2023. Today, he continues to focus on constant growth as a musician and is currently working on Sonata No. 2 by J.S. Bach. Paul has created original music for clients, bringing the same creativity and discipline he applies to his writing into his musical projects. He also teaches violin online and offline at his home studio in Vellore and uses an eclectic approach inspired by Galamian and Simon Fischer in conjunction with the Suzuki repertoire. As a writer, he is open to working with brands looking for a human touch with their content requirements. As a violinist, he is open to tutoring or composing for anyone with a passion for music.
