Ad Buying for Social Apps

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

Where to advertise

Remember, different social apps offer different advertising solutions. As a marketer, you need to know where to go to advertise on the different social apps.

• If you want to advertise on X you can set up an X Advertising account, from either a personal or business profile.
• To advertise on WeChat, you need to set up an account with WeChat advertising, and this process is subject to approval by WeChat, which coincides with China’s internet laws. 
• For Pinterest advertising, you must be using a Pinterest Business account. You can switch over to one of these easily.

Segmenting your audience

When developing your social app marketing campaign, you should consider how you can best segment your audience. This will enable you to deliver relevant content to carefully target the right audience segment.

Audience segmentation is valuable for a number of reasons.

First you can avail of enhanced audience metrics. This detailed data gives you specific information about how your ads are performing among different audience segments.

Second, when you segment your audience, you can give better focus on top-performing segments. Obviously, these will give the best return on investment. However, this doesn’t mean that you should neglect under-performing segments! You need to investigate why your ads are not engaging those audience segments and adjust your content accordingly, if your budget allows.

When you know who your top-performing segments are, you can design specific creative and landing pages for these segments. This enables you to further develop your connections with them and potentially convert them into customers and even brand advocates.

Social app advertising best practices

One of the primary objectives of any marketing campaign is to convert prospects and leads into customers. What best practices can you deploy in your social app marketing campaigns?

One best practice for social app adverts – and indeed all creative content, is to include clear calls to action (CTAs). You don’t want people to just admire your creative ads. You want them to take action! So tell the user what they should do when they click the ad by including buttons such as Buy Now, Shop Now, Download App, Learn More, and so on.

Second, every marketing campaign relies on good quality creative content. Make sure you use high-quality photos that showcase products clearly. This is particularly important during the Awareness and Consideration stage when customers are deciding which products they might buy.

As well as including high-quality photos, you should write ad text that is clear, understandable, and to the point. You only have a few seconds to grab a user’s attention on fast-moving social media. If your message is unclear or complex, the user will just scroll or swipe to the next piece of content.

Finally, while you want your ads to be creative and innovative, you need to ensure that all text, images, and videos adhere to on-brand messaging and color palette. No matter how varied your ads, your brand identity must remain consistent at all times.