Social Media Advertising: How to Get the Maximum Results With a Small Budget

Social media marketing is not free.

Although you can create as many accounts as you want and publish tons of posts free of charge, it will only get you so far in the attempt to win over the target audience. But if you want to make it to the top of the business, you have to invest some money in social media marketing – advertising in particular.

The numbers are staggering as social ad spending is forecast to increase by 20% to $43 billion in 2020. It’s a huge investment, but we guess you cannot afford to spend a small fortune on social media advertising.

The big question you are probably asking right now is: How to get the maximum results with a small budget? The answer lies in four strategies, so keep reading to learn how to squeeze water from a social media stone.

1. Pick the Best Platform

The social media universe is crowded and you certainly can’t and don’t want to activate on dozens of platforms simultaneously. What you can do is assess the importance of each network and focus on the one that matters the most to you and your target audience.

Jake Gardner, a social media marketer at UK dissertation, explains the peculiarities of popular platforms:

• Facebook: With more than two billion users, it is still the most important social network, especially in terms of advertising. It attracts users of all generations, but people in their 30s and 40s show the highest engagement levels.
• Instagram: This network is perfect for product-oriented companies. According to the survey, 89% of users have bought something they first discovered on Instagram.
• TikTok: The rising star in the social media sky, TikTok is ideal for companies targeting younger generations.
• LinkedIn: B2B organizations are mostly interested in LinkedIn because it gathers well-off business professionals, CEOs, executives, and decision-makers of all sorts.
• Twitter: This platform is suitable for brands targeting high-income middle-aged individuals.

There are many other social networks to consider, so we suggest picking the one that suits the needs of your current campaign and the overall branding strategy of the business.

2. Choose the Right Advertising Objective

Social media networks give you all sorts of options and advertising objectives, so it’s necessary to pick the right goal in order to maximize the effect of your campaign. It may seem overwhelming at first, but it won’t take long before you get used to set up the most suitable campaign parameters.

Take Facebook for example as it gives you three key solutions with multiple subcategories:

• Awareness: This advertising objective is suitable for new products or startups looking to earn the attention of potential customers. Its subcategories are Reach and Brand Awareness.
• Consideration: If you want to encourage people to learn more about the company, opt for the consideration goals. It’s a broad concept, so Facebook allows you to choose from multiple subdivisions such as Traffic, Engagement, App Installs, Video Views, Lead Generation, and Messages.
• Conversions: This advertising objective is straightforward as it inspires Facebook users to become full-time customers. Within it, you can choose a more focused goal like Store Traffic, Conversions, or Catalog Sales.

3. Use Ultra-Precise Targeting

The third tip on our list is probably the most significant for social media advertisers who want to get the most of their campaigns. The purpose of targeting is to eliminate irrelevant users from your audience and concentrate on verified leads who are likely to become your customers.

Once again, let’s turn to Facebook Ads for additional explanations. The platform enables you to target users ultra-precisely using three specification methods:

• Core audience: You’ll be surprised to learn how deep you can go in filtering Facebook users based on demographic features, personal interests, online behavior, relationship status, and many more.
• Custom audience: It is also possible to connect with people who already made some sort of contact with your business via the Facebook, website, or mobile app.
• Lookalike audience: This is a simple targeting method, but it works well if you only want to reach Facebook users who look exactly like your existing customers.

4. Create Content That Works for Your Audience

The last suggestion is a bit too obvious, but lots of marketers don’t think about the importance of content format before publishing social media ads.

What is your audience’s favorite type of content?

You must answer the question correctly before taking any action because the wrong decision will lead to substantial budget waste. Let’s say that your average follower loves watching videos. In that case, running a text-based advertising campaign probably can’t help you to win over consumers and achieve business goals.

Be careful with your content decisions and focus on formats that really work for your audience.

The Bottom Line

No one wants to waste money on social media marketing, but sometimes you just have to advertise the brand in order to differentiate. The only thing that matters is to keep your investment to the bare minimum while getting the most of your budget.

In this post, we analyzed four ways you could maximize the impact of social media advertising on a shoestring budget. Are you ready to give it a try?