When you think about advertisements right now, where do you think that you see the most of them? For me, it’s probably a tie between while playing mobile game ads, while watching YouTube, or while browsing Facebook. Honestly, the latter is where they are most widespread…and that got me thinking about my own small business. Could I use social media to advertise for it?
I got my answer pretty quickly: yes, of course I can do that. Honestly, though, there’s something way more important to ask: is it worth the money? You have to consider the fact that even if you go with the pay-per-click stuff, it’s still going to make your wallet take a hit. If you’re not getting conversions from it, what’s the point?
After all, at the end of the day, the result we want from clicks is to get conversions. If you’re not familiar with the term, you can look at resources like this one. Honestly, though, the main thing to know is that a “conversion” in e-commerce is just when a visitor to your site does what you want them to. That could be buying something or signing up for a newsletter or even something else entirely – it’s pretty much up to you on what you want that result to be.
Online marketing might be tricky to get the hang of, but there are certain strategies that we can use to sort of “get ahead” of the algorithm. Not tricking it, per say, but using key words and phrases can make your videos get highlighted over your competitors in some cases. If you want to know how that works, though, stick around!
Ad Prioritization on Facebook and other Social Media Platforms
Before you go and get a bunch of ads to run on any social media site, it’s a good idea to understand what you’re buying. If the goal is to get those clicks and then conversions, then you’ll have to figure out who your target audience is going to be. I know that can be sorta tricky, but once you’ve got it sorted, you’ll be getting more bang for your buck.
On the other hand, though, if you’re trying to advertise to Gen X, Facebook or Twitter might be the way to go. Either way, it seems like video content is getting a lot of clicks compared to the traditional, old-school pop-up ads. We all know the ones that I’m talking about – remember how when you’d open your email a few years ago and there were so many moving pictures surrounding your inbox it was hard to even concentrate?
Turns out, those were so annoying that they weren’t even very effective. Talk about money flushed down the drain, right? Those ones are still around, but we see them a lot less. A lot of sites even offer “premium” plans to get rid of them, and I know I’m not the only one who’s willing to fork up a couple of bucks to do so.
Anyway, that’s why a lot of brands have changed their attention to videos instead. While you’re scrolling through your Facebook feed, you’ll see a lot of them. Still, though, most people don’t click on them…right? You’re not wrong about that, but there are ways to draw viewer attention pretty fast.
Capturing Your Audience
When you’re making video content for marketing campaigns, sometimes it’s kinda hard to know what to include. Obviously, you’re going to want to include key details about your brand and the product that you’re selling, but how can you do that in a way that isn’t too cheesy or annoying? That’s a question that a ton of businesses have been grappling with.
One way that seems to be working is to use scripts and edit them to suit your own goals and values. As you can see here, https://hyros.com/blog/facebook-ad-script/, there are plenty that are available once you know where to look. Most of the time, you can just plug in the info that you want to get across to your audience and go from there using these sorts of tools.
How does it work, though? Well, if you’re familiar with social media platforms and you’ve seen the ads there before, you may already know that (even if you don’t realize it yet). With scripted advertisements, there are a few goals that they’re trying to get done. So, when you use the templates like the one above, you already will know what kinds of goals are involved.
One of the big ones is that you want viewers to stay until the video ends. No one wants a bad watch time average, especially if you’re trying to really sell the product at the end of the video. So, having something that people immediately scroll away from it probably isn’t great.
How do businesses even know if that’s happening, though? That’s something I was confused about for awhile myself, but apparently the answer is that they use ad tracking services. For anyone who doesn’t know what those are, basically it’s a program that is able to track the views, watch time, clicks, and even conversions that come from any marketing campaign that you’re running. 
What some folks have done is run some comparisons on videos that they made all on their own vs some that they used scripts in. They’re just trying to see if there is a real difference in the engagement between them, and honestly, I was pretty shocked by the results.
Those vids that used the script-based marketing actually performed a lot better with the tracking sites. People watched them to the end way more often and ended up clicking to find the products in them too. In fact, they ended up making purchases more as well – which means that the whole process just went about better than they did without using a structured script. Those buzzwords really make a big difference.
Why is this so Important?
The more we go into the 21st century, the more we need to realize that the internet is here to stay. With that comes the fact that we have to adjust our marketing strategies, since it’s not like commercials on the TV are netting in the same profits that they used to. Something has to fill that gap.
Online advertising is probably what’s going to fill it – and I would argue that it kinda already has done that. When we’re navigating digital spaces, it’s hard to go for five minutes without seeing another advert or banner or heading that’s trying to sell us stuff. The fact that it’s so common now is just one sign that it’s working, though.
Organizations that are using these models are making a ton of money compared to any competitors who are sticking to just billboards or commercials or stuff like that. Consumers are online right now – that’s just kind of a fact of life that we have to adapt to as businesses. Why not use the tools at our disposal to capitalize on it, right?
If you’re not using an ad tracker yet, you might want to start to do so. I know it can seem really annoying to have to pay for something like that, but there are plenty that come at reasonable prices – some even have free trials, if you aren’t totally sold on this whole thing just yet. Check out the data that they provide and see where you can improve your ads.
Scripts might be able to help out with stuff like that if you’re not sure why your messaging hasn’t been super effective so far. Don’t panic if the ad trackers show that you’ve got super minimal engagement or like, no clicks. You can always change things up to improve your adverts.
Sure, it can be kind of annoying to have to do that, but thankfully we have a ton of resources at our fingertips that can help us to make our materials better. For the most part, as long as you’re using key words that appeal to your target audience (and know who that target audience is, obviously), then you should be able to get a bunch of clicks and hopefully sales, too. Use tools like the ones I’ve talked about as diagnostics of sorts – they can help you to figure out what’s going wrong along the way.
