Is your paid social strategy letting you down? If your strategy is still a “throw it against the wall and see what sticks” strategy, it’s time to come up with a better approach that will lead to better results. 

Here are some ideas for helping you get more profitable results from social media.

• Use the right platform. All social platforms are not alike. Evaluate which platforms are most used by your audience and where they’re most likely to engage.
  • Define your target audience – job title, demographics, interests, behaviors, etc.
  • Map your preferred characteristics to where your audience is spending their time and engaging.
  • Make realistic budget decisions based on the paid tactics of each platform.
  • Test your campaigns on a small scale across 2-3 platforms and use the test results to hone your social platform decisions.
• Stop the scroll. You want ads that make users want to stop and learn more, not continue to scroll on by.
  • Videos and visuals grab the most attention. Use the most polished, professional videos possible.
  • Messaging should be concise, clear and specific. This is not the time to write a dissertation about your product or service.
  • Include a clear, focused CTA that says exactly what you want the user to do, whether it’s click, watch, learn more or sign up.
  • Run tests on a small scale to evaluate various visual formats and different messages. Test with a few variations and set a daily budget per variation. Run the test for 5-7 days and evaluate the performance data.
• Improve your audience data for better targeting. This includes:
  • Find a lookalike audience by uploading your top customers into the ad platforms to find similar users for you.
  • Include behavioral data such as site visits, video views, social engagement.
  • Pay attention to users who have already interacted with your social posts for retargeting.
  • Experiment with different audience segments.

In addition to refining your email messaging, it’s important to plan your budget and performance measurement.

It’s best to start small until you can define what’s working for you. Consider spending $500-$2,000 to test a small number of audiences, creatives and offers, then increase spend gradually. Give platforms some time to adjust after you make changes in budget or targeting. You don’t want to pull the plug too soon, but you also don’t want to send good money after bad.

Be sure to track the core social metrics:

• ROAS – return on ad spend.
• CPA – cost per acquisition.
• CTR – click-through rate.
• Conversion rates.