Social media ads play an indelible part in digital marketing strategy. Where else would you get more than 3 billion users? Even while doing the right thing, sometimes daily activities can feel chaotic. This can be said of social media ads. The industry is changing so fast .With the influx of so many businesses into the industry, keeping abreast with the accompanying changes is not easy. As a marketer, you must ensure that your social media strategy is up to date with all the changes associated with them.
At times, it seems as though all the big companies have it all figured out and you are lagging. You may start wondering what the hell you are doing wrong. Far from it. Everyone is struggling with the challenges of adopting the usage of social media ads. Here is a list of challenges that hopefully will enable you to know where you are going wrong and make the necessary detour.
1. Cutting through the Noise
Early on, you could spark social engagement about your product. Just with an unpaid ad, you could even generate leads. You could get comments about the product, recommendations, and even ways of improving your products. Today, we have lost such a platform. There are so many brands, all competing for attention on social media.
Think about the last time you were on youtube. Before getting your search results, an ad appears for 5 seconds and you must view it, at least for those 5 seconds. Moreover, in some cases, your results can only appear after some compulsory ads. How many of these ads have you genuinely viewed? If you are focused on the content you are searching for like me, you probably haven’t attentively locked at them.
So how can the ads dissect all these noises in the social media platforms? What is its effect? Now with the noise, standing out becomes a farfetched dream, whether you use paid or organic placement to put your content out there. Sometimes, it’s not the fault of the audience that they are not engaging with your company’s product. Would you watch your company’s ads if you were just a random audience?
2. Maintaining originality
Social media management is time-consuming. It requires personal commitment and dedication. Originality is very important when it comes to marketing but how do you strike the balance when you buy Facebook likes? Remember your audience wants short, simple, and captivating content. Have you realized that as your business grows, social media management becomes a full-time job? As such, one of the daunting problems facing entrepreneurs is staying original while being creative at the same time.
Most ads are filtered; no touch of originality. Now think about it, do you love fake people? How would your friendship turn if you realize that your friend has been pretending all the while to keep you around? While it doesn’t hurt to apply some filters on your ads once in a while, authenticity is very important. Do you show you’re behind the scenes once in a while? People are looking for those whom they can trust to buy from. They want to know the real name behind the brand. It becomes a challenge for brands to decipher the level of maintaining authenticity.
3. Getting people to share
Have you run a successful social media ad campaign before? Did you use it for more than six consecutive months? How were the results over that period? While using social media ads, maintaining high leads or even conversion rates is not easy. It all boils down to why people get into social platforms. At its core, we get to social media platforms to be entertained and to get valuable content, especially from our peers. What happens when a company runs one ad for more than two months? Do we get entertained anymore? We get bored and this is reflected in the company’s sales results. They experience reduced leads and low traffic on their sites.
The secret to social media ads is changing tact. But how exactly will you do this? Up to when will you change your tact because let’s face it, there is only finite tact you can use. Though relevant and valuable, without change of tact, your results will decline. This remains a mystery to be solved in the future .
4. Creating high-quality visuals
This is yet another story in itself. The second most important factor for social media ads is quality visuals. But guess, like any important thing, it takes time and skills to build, to master it. With visuals, you are assured of increased chances of sharing them. Even so, the marketers are faced with tough decisions to make. Do you use original images or go for high-quality materials? For stock photos, do you go for Unsplash, Pixabay, or pixels? The next dilemma is optimizing images for the images. How do you achieve this without the required skillset? Does every social media platform have the required size of the image? Are you oblivious of this? How do you design all these? Getting results from social media ads takes lots of hard work, commitments, and dedication. Don’t be fooled around by the videos. You will be shocked to learn the story behind all those results.
5. Expanding your reach
Have you wondered why some marketers are successful while others are not? Early on, people valued engineering departments more than marketing. They thought all there was for a company to succeed was magnificent products. Far from it, they were. Creating and publishing social media content is not enough. That is just a tidbit of what you are required to do. Without promotion, the chances of the ad doing you more harm than good are higher. But how do you promote your content? How do you partner with other brands and influencers yet you are all competing for the same audience? This presents yet another big challenge to marketers. They give their all in creating the ads only this time not to generate results. How unfortunate.
You are not alone in the struggle for harnessing the power of social media ads. Like your fellow influencers, you may fall into pitfalls. No you will fall into pitfalls. You’ve got to familiarize yourself with these challenges just so you know how to approach them in case they come.
Read more: How to Build Your Social Media Presence
