Social media marketing services for small businesses help companies flourish. Discover some of the most effective tools in our guide. Whether you are a newbie or a seasoned veteran, you will find what you need here. So, how to use social media for small businesses?

What are Social Media Marketing Services?

The strategy tool most used by businesses is social media. Professional services allow brands to leverage platforms like Instagram to reach a broader and more multifaceted audience. Social media marketing services for small businesses let them establish recognition, attract and retain customers, and achieve other goals. Companies reach their prospects where they spend their time online and drive sales. 

Generic advertising does not work anymore. Social media is a space for engaging and targeted ads that get users talking about products and services. Forget unsolicited DMs from companies trying to showcase their products. Effective campaigns are complex, focused on relevance and trust-building. 

You cannot expect remarkable results without giving a lot of thought to your goals or methods. Professionals help businesses avoid the typical pitfalls and maximize output. Social media marketing services include:

• the choice of the right channels — sites and apps that drive traffic and demand in your niche,
• data-driven strategy planning based on the goals, channels, and target audience of your brand,
• account/profile setup if the company has not used social media before, 
• creation and publishing of content and ads,
• campaign management,
• monitoring and analysis of the results,
• education and consulting, 
• and more! 

The Value of Social Media Marketing Services for Small Businesses

In many small organizations, marketers have to be the jacks of all trades. They are tasked with graphic design, press releases, and anything remotely connected to communications. With so much on their plates, they are often unable to devote time to all relevant channels. Some employees are not even sure how to use social media for small businesses. When it falls off their to-do list, this is a big mistake.

These networks have become so important that no company can afford to ignore them. Social media allows businesses to boost sales and the bottom line. Positive interaction between brands and users prompts purchases — 90% of consumers are more likely to buy from a brand they follow online. 

Social media marketing for small businesses allows them to forge and reinforce relationships with customers through targeted engagement, build trust, drive awareness and sales. It is also a place where news of poor customer experience spreads like wildfire. This is particularly dangerous when the business does not have a social media presence, so it is oblivious to the damage until it is too late. Negative media content can disrupt trust in a brand quickly. So, how can you harness the power of social media in businesses? 

Small Business Pain Points

Social media marketing for small businesses requires thorough planning and marketing expertise. Here are some of the most common challenges in any industry and digital marketing services that resolve them. 

• We are not able to get new customers

Social media connects you with people who do not know about your brand and can benefit from your products or services. For example, entrepreneurs can use Biteable to create video pitches. Engaging, entertaining, and informing the audience helps them build credibility and drive sales.

Make sure your ads are shown to the right users. They can be targeted based on interests, behaviors, and other demographic data. The Aitarget Video Ad is a social media tool for businesses that lets you showcase goods to the audience that needs them. 

• We are not able to keep existing customers

Offering great products at low prices may not suffice to turn customers into brand advocates. You need to keep track of conversations about your company and fix any issues quickly. Mention can monitor references to your brand, products, or competitors in real-time.

Aitarget will help you present exclusive offers and loyalty programs through well-designed ads. Retargeting is also crucial, as it lets businesses reach 98% of non-returning users and potentially turn them into customers. Our QMODERATION social media marketing service lets you take care of the comment section, so users will feel heard. 

• Our website sucks

Social media ads can drive traffic, but what if the potential customers do not like what they see? Poor design and navigation are detrimental to the user experience. Free tools like Responsive Design Checker let companies check the responsiveness of their sites on different screens. Did you know that 47% of consumers expect a site to load in 2 seconds or less?  The Aitarget experts will suggest the best ways to optimize your platform, so leads turn into paying customers.

• Nobody knows who we are

Boosting brand awareness is the number one goal for 80% of businesses that advertise on social networks. As people learn about your brand and mention it to friends and followers, you will get more referrals. This is the new word-of-mouth. The Buzzsumo research tool shows how your content is doing and who is spreading the word. Marketing services for small businesses provided by Aitarget help them create memorable ads that spark conversations. 

• The competitors’ advertising is way better than ours

Users are inundated with ads, so you have 3 seconds or less to capture their attention. Boring design and generic messages will get you nowhere. The Aitarget social media marketing service ensures the ads stand out, and you can customize successful designer videos to your brand quickly. 

Success also requires consistency. Marketers should follow a schedule based on the best time for their audience. Automated services like Hootsuite Scheduler let companies plan hundreds of posts based on the best time for the audience. Bulk posting is a great time-saver.

• We don’t show up for anything relevant to our business when people search in Google, Bing, or other search engines

Website content must be optimized via different SEO methods, such as keywords for the niche. Handy tools like the Yoast plugin boost the performance of WordPress platforms. Meanwhile, the Drupal SEO Checklist suggests the necessary changes for sites built on this CMS.

Sharing the right links across social platforms increases brand exposure. The look of the URLs also matters, which makes link generators like Rebrandly popular. The Aitarget team will provide a review of your site and pinpoint areas of improvement to help you climb to the top. 

• Sales are down 30% from last year

The lead-to-close rate on social media is twice as high as for outbound marketing.  The Aitarget team will provide a comprehensive review of your campaigns, including ad delivery and optimization methods. We will help you make the most of social media in businesses by advertising on Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat simultaneously. Using Google Analytics, you can see how much traffic comes to your site from each of the networks and measure social ROI.

• There’s some new competition in town, and they look like they really know what they are doing

Any company can gain an edge with an effective strategy. Aitarget will help you outshine and outsmart your rivals. For example, aside from creating memorable and engaging content, you could target users whose interests include your competitors. The Ubersuggest tool lets businesses reverse engineer their rivals’ SEO, content marketing, and SMM marketing.

Setting Social Media Advertising Goals for Small Business

Without clear goals, you cannot determine if your tactics are working. Setting the objectives is crucial, but it is also challenging. Here are three ways to identify relevant targets for marketing services for small businesses.

Based on Your Funnel

This is the path your potential customers travel through. What is their first impression? What can you do to lead them all the way to the purchasing stage? Overemphasis on sales is the reason why 45% of users unfollow brands on social media. Your content must drive brand awareness, generate demand, and drive conversion. Digital marketing services for small businesses drive engagement, so you can get positive mentions and inspire customer evangelism. 

Based on Peer Analysis

Many other marketers are facing the same challenges as you. Look at your counterparts and their goals. According to Sprout, most professionals focus on increasing brand awareness, boosting community engagement, and attracting web traffic. These objectives are probably aligned with your own! 

By industry

Educational institutions may use social media to recruit new students or increase event attendance. Software providers are interested in leads, loyalty, and competitor analysis. Retailers want to drive sales and expand reach. Healthcare providers can attract more patients, build trust and relationships in the local community. Look at your industry to figure out what goals to pursue.

Time to Start Selling Globally With Aitarget Social Media Marketing Ads Tools

Aitarget is a marketing partner for Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. We help brands create engaging and transferable ads across digital platforms. Our social media marketing services for small businesses help them reach a global audience using:

• The Aitarget eCommerce is a social media tool for businesses that generates powerful video ads for Facebook on the basis of product catalogs. It is packed with eye-catching templates that bring proven results. Just pick the colors, fonts, and effects, and your video will be ready in 45 seconds! 
• The Aitarget Automation small business tool lets you launch ads on Facebook and Instagram quickly. Using versatile settings, you can automate and copy your campaigns to save time and effort. The tool gathers stats, facilitates A/B tests, and supports automation strategies of different complexity. It allows easy scaling and ensures you stay within budget.
• The Aitarget Video Tool creates personalized video ads based on your design, catalog, and audience splitting. Target users by country, demographics, or interests. Update and format videos for different platforms methods, such as Instagram stories, Facebook news feeds, or YouTube.

The First Step for Selecting the Right Social Media Tool

Before choosing social media services for small businesses, collect data on your audience. Its technological preferences will define tailored methods that work for it. For example, Facebook is used by 2.7 billion users, most of whom are between the ages of 25 and 34. It is also used by boomers who have more money to spend.

Many social media platforms have built-in insights. For example, the analytics option on Twitter allows you to get a breakdown of your audiences. You can understand where these users are based, whether they are mostly male or female, there are lifestyle preferences, buyer styles, and more. Make no mistake — the first step for selecting the right social media tools is always studying your audience. 

Aitarget Automated Ad Tool Helps Small Businesses to Achieve Social Media Goals 

With Aitarget, enterprises forge ahead in the digital space through video creatives, management, automation, and scaling of campaigns. We are passionate about social media technologies and help companies of any size reach and engage customers on the biggest and fastest-growing platforms. Our social media services for small businesses help them streamline, automate and manage promotional efforts across this vibrant digital space. 

Our digital marketing services for small businesses help companies make the most of social media tools, as our automation and tracking solutions reduce the workload. You can monitor your spending and performance in one place, and make changes to campaigns at any time. Smart automation by Aitarget allows you to copy ads and UTM tags from one ad set to another. Make your brand stand out on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube! 

Another component of online marketing services for small businesses is expert support, which helps clients optimize their catalogs. Aitarget will turn your product feed into Dynamic Ads that will catch the eye and drive conversions across social media. We assist clients at every stage and monitor the results with them. Customizable metrics let us adapt the insights from web and mobile traffic to your needs. As our tools integrate data from 200+ CRM and offline conversion sources, you can build a robust retail channel quickly. With Aitarget, you will:

Increase Brand Awareness

This is the top priority for small business marketing services. Through ads, you will get the word out. Aitarget will help you choose the right platforms for your audience. Outstanding ads are not just viewed — they are also shared, which means even more people learn about your brand. 

Users repost values-driven content that affects them emotionally. This is impossible without targeting. Aitarget lets you target users by country, demography, or interests to hit the bull’s eye. We provide all prerequisites for an awareness boost: the right platforms, the right strategies, and the right formats. 

Increase Community Engagement

Brands that overlook this aspect set themselves up for failure. After all, social media is all about being social. Users are not impressed by overly promotional content. Online marketing services for small businesses are not a one-way street: aside from showcasing your products, you should also bring value to the audience. Answer questions and manage feedback in real-time using our moderation tool. 

Target your ads, so what the user sees resonates with their interests or buying patterns. Aitarget will help you create ads focused on value, rather than features. Such content gets the users talking, so your ads will be shared and discussed.

Increase Website Clicks

With social media marketing services for small businesses from Aitarget, you can create attractive and relevant ads with a clear call to action. Automated campaigns will drive traffic, as they will resonate with your target audience. Did you know that adding a CTA on Facebook can boost the click-through rate by 285%? 

We will also analyze your website’s Facebook Pixel to help you boost conversions, optimize ads, and adjust targeting and retargeting. As more users will click on your ads, you will get more leads and customers. This helps to boost the bottom line in any industry, which is why the information strategy tool most used by businesses is social media.

We can help solve many problems that you’re facing with Instagram advertising by helping to: 

• Create videos and overlays from product feeds (suitable for E-Commerce, Travel, Auto, Trading, and other verticals); 
• Incorporate data from third-party sources into dynamically updated Instagram creatives;
• Test different creative designs and messages to find out what works best; 
• Implement rules-based automation strategies. 

We are a Facebook and Instagram marketing partner. Our team consists of dozens of experts who have poured over 75,000 hours into developing our unique suite of tools. We have collaborated on notable projects for brands such as LG, Adidas, and L’Oreal. 

But today is not all about us. It’s all about what we can do for you. You’ll be getting a full introduction to Aitarget’s tools for advertising on Instagram: 

Overview of Instagram Ads tools

The heart of any Instagram campaign is the message you want to convey. Now, Instagram presents you with various engaging formats to pass your message. Let’s take a look at what they are and the opportunities that exist. 

Photo Ads

With single image ads, it’s all about capturing the viewer’s attention and connecting with them on a personal level. So, the biggest challenge marketers face is creating visually appealing and personalized creatives. 

If you have a few products to promote, it may be less challenging to pull this off. But what happens if you have dozens, hundreds, or thousands of products to show off to your potential audience? 

How we can help with photo Instagram ads

We have an effective solution for brands with many items to promote. You can use your existing brand assets, including images from your product feed, to create data-infused overlays. The overlays can incorporate information such as pricing, labels, and discounts.

Rather than manually creating visuals for every item, you start with one smart template that contains variable inputs. Our tool can dynamically update and re-upload your creatives as the information changes. 

Don’t worry if your product feed is not optimized for overlays. We can help customize and prepare the product catalog to function as a data source for dynamic ads. 

Carousel Ads for Instagram Stories

We have been big fans of Instagram stories carousels since Facebook introduced the format for advertisers in 2018. It has consistently delivered excellent results in previous ad campaigns.

For instance, in a brand awareness campaign by FBS, using a 3-card carousel in Instagram stories resulted in CPA dropping and conversions doubling. MegaFon similarly saw their CTR results tripling and their CPC reducing. 

Why is it effective? The carousel format for Instagram stories works because of its powerful storytelling capabilities. For instance, the first and second image or video can introduce the brand, present the problem, and build up excitement. The third card can offer the solution: the advertiser’s product + CTA. 

How we can help with Instagram stories carousel 

We empower you to create more meaningful feed-based videos by using first-party and third-party data to incorporate a bit of storytelling. For instance, you may start your ad campaign for winter accessories by first showing the latest weather data for a particular city. 

You can then have a video showing the most popular winter accessories from your product set. Your third slide may be a call to action with your latest discount. 

With weather data constantly changing, Aitarget can keep generating updated creatives. The creatives can be highly personalized for different audiences in different cities. Instagram even expanded the number of cards for carousels from 3 to 10. The possibilities are now limitless. 

Additional ad formats

Aitarget’s creative Instagram advertising solutions are applicable for other formats such as collection ads, shopping ads, reels ads, single video ads, and IGTV ads (*not available for all regions). For instance, you can personalize your shopping ad by incorporating a map that shows users your nearest store based on their location. You can create single videos from product images and info. 

How to advertise on Instagram

You start advertising on Instagram by selecting your objective. There are three main campaign objectives: increasing awareness, generating leads, installs, or visitors, or driving conversions. 

The second key aspect of campaign setup is specifying your budget and schedule. Facebook’s algorithms can help in optimizing the delivery of Instagram ads based on your budget. 

Audience targeting is usually the third step in setting up Instagram ads. You can now create custom audiences by gathering information about your website visitors. Facebook offers the Dynamic Creative tool to help you test different ad variations such as the CTAs, text, or images to find out what’s performing best.

The fourth step is choosing the ad placement. Facebook can help out here with automatic placements based on where the ad may perform best. Because Facebook owns Instagram, ads may be shown on the two platforms and Messenger. 

The last part of advertising on Instagram involves creating the actual ads. Ads are typically structured as single images or videos, carousel, or collections. You can track conversions by installing Facebook Pixel on your website, and this offers additional insights into actions people take once they click on your links. 

The role of Aitarget is to build on and enhance the capabilities of Facebook’s algorithms and tools, not to replace them. 

Engage, Measure, Optimize Your Instagram Ads with Aitarget Solutions

The tools we offer and how they can help you to engage, measure, and optimize your Instagram ad: 

Engagement tools: E-Commerce Tool & Video Tool

Our e-commerce tool is the go-to solution for creating promotional videos or overlays based on assets in your product catalog. 

You’ll not be working from scratch. We have a collection of templates following proven design strategies. You’ll have access to different colors, fonts, and effects. 

We don’t just leave you here. You can develop several creative variations, and our AI algorithm can facilitate testing to see what works best with different target audiences. Say goodbye to boring static product ads and guesswork. 

 Aitarget video tool expands the capabilities of the e-commerce tool. It allows for the enhanced personalization of videos. Your videos can now target audiences based on their interests, demographics, language, country, etc., with less effort. 

Generate videos for hundreds of products while incorporating third-party data. They will be tailored for different placement options, not only for Instagram but for other platforms such as Snapchat or Youtube. You retain complete control over the final result. If you imagine it, you can do it. 

Measurement & monitoring tools: Dashboard & QModeration

Connect Aitarget to your ads manager and receive metrics about your omnichannel campaigns on one simple dashboard. It supports notifications, allowing you to track changes on automated campaigns. It also generates automatic and curated reports. Our solution can integrate with about 200 CRMs for custom reporting. 

Our moderation tool makes it easier to manage comments from multiple ads, watch for reactions, and delete unwanted posts., 

Optimization tools: Creative improvement 

Do you often have to guess what colors or fonts will work best with your creative ads? Do you waste a lot of time implementing design changes after tests? Well, that changes today. You can have various creative variations tested under the hood without much involvement on your part. Our closed-loop solution can even upgrade your creatives to boost their efficiency. 

You will not be left alone to figure out the platform. Our smart and capable team is always on hand to help define your campaign objectives and tailor solutions to help you resolve your biggest pain points. You get custom pricing for our e-commerce tool, depending on the number of product SKUs you need to promote. 

Boost Your Marketing with Instagram Advertising Automation

Make Instagram advertising less of a chore with our automation solution. 

It is targeted at campaign management and allows you to automate tasks such as analytics & reporting, bid management, performance tracking, split testing, or duplication of ad sets. 

Why automate your campaign management? You can save a lot of time and effort spent checking and responding to changes. All you need to do is set up custom rules and responses in our tool kit. Automation will be essential if you want to scale your ad campaigns without hiring media buyers to manage them. For instance, we helped TwoDots, a gaming studio, scale its campaigns in new geographic regions while minimizing the need for new hires. 

Many brands also create playbooks to cut the poor performers early and scale the best-performing ad sets. Automation can help optimize your bidding and budget spent following ROAS-based rules and other complex strategies. 

The Facebook ads manager natively supports automation. Why use an external third-party solution such as AItarget? One key function that’s not available in Facebook’s ruleset toolkit is the ability to set up an Announcement rotation. 

This testing strategy is applied when testing many creatives one after another to minimize competition between similar creative ads in the Facebook ads auction. For instance, if you have 100 videos to test, you set up automatic rules that specify the sequence of running the ads. You can specify that an ad set should be turned off after achieving a certain number of impressions. After the testing phase, you can use metrics such as the CTR to determine the efficiency of each ad set and continue showing the best-performing ads. 

We pulled off this automation strategy during a campaign for OBI, one of the largest players in the European DIY market. Using our e-commerce tool, the team generated about 100 videos from selected product categories, following a branded ad template. Videos were automatically loaded to the ads manager for testing. The campaign lasted for two weeks. It would otherwise be time-consuming to execute, owing to the number of creatives tested. 

Our team can also work with you to uncover inefficiencies that automation may address if you’re new to campaign automation.

Marketing in the post-covid world can be tricky, as humanity has never been in this situation before, and the circumstances are changing quickly. Successful campaigns abandon salesy language, focusing on thoughtful analysis of the needs, perceptions, and expectations of the audience.

Even before the pandemic, consumer expectations were on the rise. Today, companies are not competing with one another — they are competing with the last best experience their customer has had. Generation Z has grown up with technology, and the shift to hyper-personalization was already noticeable in 2020. The preferences of the new generation have changed social advertising, and they continue to affect it. 

The outbreak accelerated digital transformation and sent consumer expectations skyrocketing. Today, users want anticipatory personalization throughout their customer journey. Meanwhile, tolerance for engaging with social media ads in such markets as the UK and France has grown substantially. Discover post-pandemic tips that will help your brand shine in 2021. 

Customers Must Be at the Heart of Your Customer Journey

The lockdown experience proves the old axiom — brands must target consumers based on their circumstances and perceptions. This requires a laser focus. Companies should conduct research country by country, ZIP code by ZIP code, to tailor their communications and services. Marketing requires the knowledge of both the segment and sentiment.

One of the key marketing tips to employ is that messages must be relevant both geographically and personally. They should speak to each customer’s situation and values. Targeting an age or gender on social media is not enough. Brands succeed if they create a deep human connection within commercial messages. This requires cross-field research into attitudes and psychographics. According to The EY Future Consumer Index, five distinct cohorts have formed since the start of the pandemic: 

• Almost a third (32%) of consumers are focused on affordability, so they prefer functionality over brands. 
• A quarter (25%) prioritize health and safety, so they opt for products they can trust.
• 16% of customers want to minimize their carbon footprint, so they buy from the brands they view as sustainable. 
• 15% are focused on the benefits for the community, so they purchase from companies with a reputation for honesty and transparency. 
• 12% of consumers live in the moment, so they are most open to novel products and experiences.

Based on segmentation and customer profiles, companies can make the most of their marketing spend. They can drive deeper insights for their creative promotional approaches. While coronavirus has changed social advertising, the old adage ‘Know Thy Customer’ is still relevant.

Transforming Consumer Behavior Insights Into Effective Ads

The above-mentioned insights can inform the entire customer journey. For example, Facebook offers a wide variety of targeting options. You can reach customers with a specific gender, location, interests, marital status, occupation, etc. Target parents with toddlers, new-vehicle buyers, people who donate to world relief organizations, expats, farmers, etc. The sheer number of options for social media is staggering. 

Such granular targeting ensures your ads are shown to people who can see value in your products or services. In addition, they are relatively affordable, even for small businesses. Use the digital space to show how your company has changed due to the pandemic, offer exclusive discounts or promotions related to COVID-19.

Everybody knows that visuals are more appealing than plain text, but video ads are particularly effective. They are 1,200% more successful in terms of engagement than text and images combined. Aitarget E-Commerce creates video ads in 45 seconds using only your product feed and customizable templates.

Lately, the CPM (cost per thousand impressions) has also declined, which means it is a great time to invest in Facebook ads. The platform will also let you reach users who have viewed your offerings in the past but left without making a purchase. Retargeting is a great strategy for post-pandemic times.

As so many consumers are focused on affordability, exclusive discounts and freebies attract new customers and get the old ones to come back. As companies are reopening, exclusive promotions help them regain their audience. This works for different industries, from restaurants to travel.

Change Your Ads to the New Reality by Fusing the COVID-19 as the Context

COVID-19 is one of the most widely read-about subjects. The words ‘COVID-19’ or ‘coronavirus’ now appear in content describing the effects of the pandemic on our lifestyles, habits, and behavior. Such content is highly relevant, as it helps consumers make the right decisions in the new normal. Companies cannot ignore this contextual change — instead, they can leverage it, which is one of the vital marketing tips to employ.

The pandemic has disrupted economies around the globe, but it has also brought new opportunities disguised as threats. They have changed social advertising. Marketers should not rule out uncomfortable topics — they can drive brand awareness and sales by helping users cope with the aftermath.

For example, consider advanced contextual targeting. Using semantic analysis, Google matches ads to specific pages based on keywords. Brands have been able to unlock new opportunities with messaging concerning the global changes during lockdown (for example, articles like Coronavirus: 6 Nutrition, Vitamins & Supplements Tips to Strengthen Your Immunity). 

Ads appearing in such content boost engagement and ROAS for the campaign. Consumers are more interested in news than ever, so coronavirus lets brands reach a wider audience and create ads that attract attention. AI helps them detect new trends and behaviors to maximize the results. The focus on keeping consumers healthy and advertising in the credible sources of news pays off.

Create New Market Opportunities Based on Changing Needs

Marketing practices are ever-changing to keep up with fleeting consumer preferences. Advertising strategies must be aligned with the needs of the target audience. Demographics are quickly changing, and personalization is now at the forefront, which is also reflected in the post-pandemic tips.

Brands have to respond to customer needs quickly. Over half of executives understand that trust-building is a priority for a campaign. At the same time, market data shows that many companies are struggling to engage their audience. 

Companies of different sizes tackle these challenges differently. Major brands focus on product innovation to meet evolving demands. Small businesses emphasize competitive pricing. Open innovation, when customer opinion is integrated into product development, helps companies learn what their customers want, establish a connection, and reinforce trust. 

This is the antithesis of the conventional vertical integration, where products are developed internally based on internal R&D and distributed by the firm. In this concept, ideas come from the outside, while underutilized technologies are transferred to other processes. Open innovation is all about inflows and outflows of knowledge. 

As consumers’ priorities and preferences change over time, businesses must adapt their marketing mix to suit the evolving needs. For example, environmentally conscious individuals are attracted to brands that announce a shift to sustainable packaging. During an economic downturn, customers spend less, so businesses must focus on lower prices and greater convenience. 

Use Your Brand Assets to Increase Effectiveness 

Brand assets are the distinguishing characteristics of a company — i.e., the tangible and intangible things that make it stand out from the crowd. This is one of the top marketing tips to employ. Assets provide marketers with the resources that facilitate finding leads and closing deals. If the team cannot leverage these elements during a campaign, its potential is limited. 

The category includes a variety of elements from the tagline and USP to the logo, visuals, packaging, and ads. According to the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute of Marketing Science, all of these things contribute to the brand identity if they are both unique and well-known.

First, the element must be automatically associated with your brand in the minds of the users. For example, consider the Nike “swoosh” symbol or the McDonald’s golden arches. An asset cannot be confused with your competitor’s identity. 

Secondly, the elements must be recognizable as a representation of the brand. They must reinforce the core values of your company and convey the benefits of using your products or services to the audience.

Not sure what your assets are? List your existing and previously used brand elements, along with any suggestions for the future. Survey your target audience to see how many customers associate a specific element with your brand, and how quickly they make this association. 

This will reveal the prominence of each component. Based on this research, you can create the Distinctive Asset Grid developed by Research Professor Jenni Romaniuk. You will see which elements should be avoided or tested, which of them can replace your brand name in ads, and which require further development. 

Genuine Generosity is Highly Effective

Generosity improves the brand image, making companies more attractive for consumers. According to Forbes, volunteer grant programs are used by such giants as Apple and Google. Many businesses offer paid time off for employees who volunteer at nonprofits, which boosts morale and loyalty. Meanwhile, engagement in sponsorships and product donations boosts sales. 

Such opportunities are plentiful. Businesses can support educational institutions, community organizations, and special events. When consumers see a brand’s logo displayed on the stadium or bulletin, this creates an instant association between the business and generosity. Participation in charitable auctions shows that your company has a heart. 

Generosity is increasingly reflected in marketing, and the benefits are two-fold. On the one hand, millions of dollars are raised for charity. On the other hand, brands see a rise in sales. Cause-related marketing, when a brand partners up with a charity to tackle social or environmental issues, builds business value. The collaboration of for-profit and nonprofit entities is powerful. 

The year 2020 was pivotal, as it exposed multiple social injustices and highlighted the role of brands in fighting the issues that governments failed to resolve. Americans gave a record $471 billion to charity. Some of the most efficient marketing campaigns were based on social causes, such as Black on Depop or Real Change by Persil. 

Soon after the outbreak, brands got to work helping consumers adapt to the changes. Many of them launched ads with phrases like “we’re here for you”, “times like these” and “togetherness”. Ads showing how your company helps can drive bigger long-term equity gains in comparison with ads that offer hope or encourage good behavior.

Your Brand Should Stand Behind Great Values

Our list of post-pandemic tips would not be complete without generosity. Stressing the benefits of your products or services is not enough to make them memorable. In fact, the vast majority of consumers (80%!) forget branded content in just three days. To leave a lasting impression on the audience, your content must resonate with their own values.

Brand awareness is hard to quantify, so here is a simple test. Are you sure that your brand’s messages, visuals, and strategies communicate its core values in a consistent manner? Do you even have a clear-cut set of values? If not, most of the users you have reached have already forgotten about your company’s existence.

Core values are the beliefs the brand stands for. They are a compass guiding decision-making and the entire brand story. Values are constant reminders of what truly matters for your business and the people it serves, and they help executives make the right decisions in turbulent times. Any choices a company makes must be aligned with its overarching vision.

Brand values determine customer perception and choices, as consumers tend to support companies whose values they share. According to Harvard professor Gerald Zaltman, 95% of buying choices are triggered by the unconscious, where values operate. The same works for employees, as values are crucial for engagement. 

Today, when consumer trust is lower than ever, values are critical for maintaining authenticity, as they let you connect to the audience on a deeper level. Finally, the right values will help you grow a brand you are passionate about and proud of.

Aitarget explains how to utilise a new feature – Business Assets Groups – to join a variety of brand assets together and simultaneously assign them

If you’re managing ads for a large advertiser or advertising agency, then you’re likely to have dozens of assets in your Business Manager. From pages and advertising accounts for each brand, to their pixels, Instagram profiles, apps, catalogues, events, and more.

The new Business Assets Group feature is located in the Account section of the Business Settings in your Facebook Business Manager.

Here’s how to use it.

1. Start by creating a new group and deciding how you want your assets to be organised. Choose from the list the structure that suits your business best.

2. Name the asset group (Brand, Client, Region, other relevant name).

3. Collect in the business asset group all the resources you want to manage simultaneously.

4. Set the permission or skip this step to complete it at any later time.

5. Congratulations, you’re all done!

We are excited to announce that Aitarget have earned the Facebook Marketing Partner badge for Creative Platform, which complements the badge for Advertising Technology that we received in 2016. Facebook offers many promotional opportunities, and Facebook Marketing Partners expand them even further. Let’s find out when and why it is worth cooperating with Facebook Marketing Partners.

In short, Facebook Marketing Partners are technology companies and agencies. Facebook Marketing Partners supplement Facebook’s advertising tools and make crafting and fine-tuning campaigns easier and more efficient. The areas cover interactions between business and Facebook and vary from campaign and community management to organizing a sales system.

If you need to solve any of the following tasks, working with a partner will make it faster and more convenient:

1. Campaign management (automation at different levels)
2. Community and Pages management
3. Creative solutions (everything connected with creation and improvement of visual content for advertising and social networks)
4. Feeds for Dynamic Ads creation/adjustment
5. Lead generation
6. Analytics (especially for mobile apps)
7. Management of messengers and chat rooms with clients
8. Integration of online and offline conversion
9. Sales through Facebook
10. Advanced pixel management
11. Launch of Collaborative ads (product ad format that partners retailers and brands that sell through them)

How to Сhoose a Partner

Facebook has built a directory where you can conveniently search for a partner with sought-after features. Being a Facebook Marketing Partner for Creative and Advertising Technology ourselves, we recommend considering the following when making your choice:

• Badge

The directory includes both badged and non-badged partners (the hallmark is the blue icon).

The difference is that the technologies and expertise of badged partners have been tested for quality and reliability by Facebook.

• Qualification

Badged partners’ profiles indicate the type of solution that they were badged for.

Here are the solutions you’ll see most frequently.

Advertising Technology

Advertising Technology was the first established certification category and marked the beginning of Facebook Partners. It still has the strongest requirements: a partner must present a successful product based on Facebook API. The key benefit of such products is that they allow them to create ever-green Facebook campaigns that constantly and automatically improve themselves.

Who to contact: Aitarget, Kepler, Kenshoo, Merkle, Marin Software, Sprinklr, and many others

Creative

Building and testing creatives are the only things that advertising platforms have not yet learned how to fully automate, unlike how it is for bidding and targeting. Facebook tools are constantly getting smarter, and they already know who to show ads to, when, and at what price – better than a marketing specialist can.

But what to show? This question is increasingly complicated, as there are now dozens of placements and formats, each requiring particular specifications. This coupled with the need to constantly change and update creatives because of burnout, leads to brands and companies lacking resources needed to keep up when creating effective creatives. This is what Facebook creative partners help to cope with: there’s a 10 times difference between the performance of an inefficient creative and that of an engaging one.

You can build on-brand and product videos in a matter of seconds, launch individually templated ads enriched with any data, and set up personalization that appeals to your audience’s interests/behavior (or even implement third-party data like weather or pollution). Some creative partners collaborate with bloggers to set up measurable conversion promotions.

Who to contact: Aitarget, Canva, Captiv8, Chute, Influential, Insense, Loomly, Magisto, Sprinklr, Ripl, and others

What’s the result of collaborating with a Partner?

It all depends on the category and service capabilities of the company. For example, our creative platform takes up smart crafting, producing ready-to-launch creatives for all kinds of placements and formats at each funnel stage, from brand awareness to conversion.

It is good at:

• Making videos based on any source data, including product feeds and corporate identity. This makes it so you don’t have to attract developers or designers.
• Creating personalized videos for your audience depending on their interests/life events/product use conditions, even if it is the weather, geography, or any other 3rd-party data. This allows you to treat your customers individually.
• Building brand and product videos in just 45 seconds in branded templates enriched with additional data (prices and special offers, ratings, and reviews from the website). This lets users select products while still watching the ad.
• Making feed-based creatives better, supplementing them with all kinds of data. This allows you to highlight the best angles of your products.
• Automatically testing and selecting the most conversion-packed creatives and targeting to achieve business results quicker.

Here are some examples of how we can extend the default Facebook functionality available to everyone.

Philips was able to explain why a climate complex is necessary for every home by demonstrating the real level of pollution in every city

Philips’ air purifier sales grew 6.6 times. The premium model became a bestseller in the brand’s online store. In comparison with the average value, Cost per ThruPlay decreased by 52%, CPC by 15%, while the View-through rate increased by one point. Polluted cities with a low BAQI value had the lowest CPC.

Askona, Russia’s largest anatomic mattress and sleep product manufacturer, added product reviews to its Facebook dynamic ads.

The number of purchases increased by 19%, and the percentage of visits that resulted in a purchase increased by 2.3 times. Income generated by ads with overlays increased by 19% with equal promotion costs.

Summary of Facebook Marketing Partners for Advertisers

1. Facebook Marketing Partners are technology companies and agencies.
2. Partners are necessary for those who want to extend the built-in functionality of Facebook, get more convenient access to support, and use higher-level advertising.
3. While choosing a partner, you should be focused on business tasks and goals.
4. To understand the status of a partner, pay attention to what they have been badged for.

Today, about 12.5 million ads crafted through our platform are displayed on social media every second. Yours could be among them, so contact us at info@aitarget.com or request a demo and we will discuss tailoring our solutions for your tasks today.

Facebook algorithms are constantly changing and getting smarter. And because of Machine Learning, approaches to acquisition have also had to change.

This article was first published on medium.com

1. Testing multiple segments

Before: Specificity worked best

Determining the best combinations of ad settings used to require lots of tests.

A standard campaign would feature dozens of ad sets that focused on specific audience demographics (e.g., age, gender, etc.), interests, and behaviors and required testing of different placements. All to find which brings better and cheaper results.

After: Everything is done through Machine Learning

Today, Facebook’s optimization algorithms are able to deliver impressions at the right time, and placement to the right people within your target audience. With larger audiences, advertisers see greater results and cost efficiency when compared to the painstaking manual segmentation practice. There are several reasons for that:

1. Segmentation by ad set doesn’t allow for proper testing. Users consume content across multiple platforms and placements, show various interests and behaviors, and tend to appear in more than one targeting group, causing overlaps.

Testing different settings, landing pages, products, or messages shouldn’t be done by creating multiple ad sets. Below are features designed for this purpose in the Experiments section.

2. Optimization algorithms learn to deliver the best results within each ad set and use data that is unavailable to advertisers.For example, a user may frequently browse Instagram Stories but only act on ads in the Feed. This means that the Feed impression would more likely lead to a conversion.

Segmentation restricts delivery optimization and limits possibilities for impactful outcomes at lower costs. A group of narrow, segmented audiences now deliver more costly results when compared to the same targetings consolidated into one ad set.

2. Running copies

At times, ad sets with a reused targeting perform worse than expected.

Before: Duplicating as a tactic

Simultaneously running copies of the same ad set used to be a popular tactic to fight under-delivery. It was believed that each copy would reach a different audience cluster within the targeting, thereby raising your chance of getting a result.

Now: Quality over quantity

Before each of your ads can reach users, it goes through an auction (we are not considering other buying methods in this article), where it competes for impressions against other ads aimed at the same audience. By default, this would mean that your ad competes against your own ads, not just those of other advertisers. And having multiple ad sets with multiple ads would just inflate the auction and drive up costs.

In reality, however, that is not the case. These days, Facebook uses deduplication when dealing with ads from the same advertiser targeted at the same or overlapping audiences. It means that only one of your ads enters the auction at a time.

In general, ads with the best performance history enter the auction most often, minimizing the chances of your other ads (for the same audience) being delivered.

Facebook aims to maintain efficiency for advertisers and quality of experience and relevance to users. Therefore, Facebook doesn’t show ads from the same advertiser more than once in 2-6 hours.

That means if you have many ads directed at overlapping or identical audiences, most of them will likely show very slow or even no delivery.

3. Detailed targeting

Before: Lack of other options

Elaborately detailed targeting used to be not just the best but the only way of getting your ads as close as possible to your potential buyers. Today, however, manual settings often lose to the capabilities of Facebook’s algorithms when looking for prospective customers.

Now: Intelligent tools

Broad audiences and Lookalikes have consistently shown better results when compared to detailed targeting in Direct Response campaigns. In recent studies, detailed targeting has proven to produce results at a 50% greater cost than Lookalike audiences in small businesses, and be twice more expensive than broad audiences in large advertisers.

 

 

When is detailed targeting still efficient?

1. If you run a non-dynamic direct response campaign (conversions, lead generation, app install objectives):

• Use detailed targeting only when paired with the Targeting expansion option.
• Try Lookalikes. But never add detailed targeting on top of Lookalikes within an ad set.

Using both Detailed targeting with Expansion and Lookalike as two ad sets within one campaign is the best option. Don’t forget to exclude Lookalikes from your Detailed targeting ad set to avoid auction overlap. Depending on your business, product, Lookalike source, and scale, you may find using only one to be more effective.

2. Upper funnel campaigns (reach, brand awareness, video views objectives) don’t require the targeting expansion option. Selecting a specific audience with a set of interests and behaviors, especially with a personalized message, remains an effective means of establishing brand equity.

3. When running Dynamic Ads with the Catalog Sales objective, whether for remarketing or acquisition, don’t use detailed targeting.

The built-in broad option allows you to reach people who’ve shown interest in your products (or similar items) with greater purchase intent than any other setting (Lookalikes are no exception since they are built on similarity and not actual intent).

 

It may be hard to accept that some practices that have worked for years can no longer provide the best outcomes. Allowing Facebook more freedom to optimize with a broader audience selection isn’t what many advertisers are used to. But as algorithms evolve, our ways of working with them need to adapt as well to keep delivering great results at lower costs.

Advertising is vital to keeping any business afloat during uneasy times such as these. And with the increased online usage during self-isolation and many platforms reporting lower CPMs, it has become more attainable.

This article was first published on medium.com
However, the effect your ads have on business outcomes relies heavily on what happens outside the advertising process. Even a flawless ad campaign cannot result in a sales lift if users have a negative impression or experience after the click.

While your business needs to be flexible to adapt to rapidly changing conditions, some problems cannot be avoided. So don’t forget to inform your customers about changes in your business operations. Letting them know exactly what to expect after placing an order will not only greatly improve their experience but also have a positive effect on your business.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a retailer struggling to adjust after suddenly being transformed into an online service, an e-commerce platform dealing with delivery delays, or even if you’re a business that has been unaffected by the current conditions. The best you can do for your customers is to inform them.

Here is a collection of notifications from brands that have reported about their working conditions. Have a look and see if you can’t follow their lead.

Instagram

E-mail notifications

Website home page

App notifications