How Social Media Can Boost Your Digital Ad Campaigns

November 25, 2024

In our last article, we talked about some of the hallmarks of successful digital ad campaigns. In that article, we mentioned that the best digital campaigns are distributed and integrated: they reach their audiences via several different channels (distributed), but all work together to help move users towards a specific conversion goal (integrated).

Your company’s social media presences should be a part of that distributed and integrated ad campaign. Even if there’s no money in the budget for additional advertising on your chosen social media platforms, there are plenty of ways to use unpaid content to support and strengthen your other digital marketing efforts.

This month, we’ll look at some ways that free social media can be used to boost a digital ad campaign and explore some options that you have for putting your social media to work.

Build Brand Engagement

Asking your digital ads to do everything, from building brand recognition to drive conversions, is asking a lot. Your ads will always be more effective if the people who see them already know about and are engaged with your brand. And when it comes to engaging with an audience, there’s no better place (other than face-to-face) than social media.

The great thing about social media is that its native dialect is “group conversation.” All social media interactions start by default as an open conversation that anyone can join in on. Communicating one-on-one requires a little more effort in social platforms, so there’s a baked-in sense of openness that is unusual for most communications platforms.

That openness, paired with social media’s inherently casual and conversational tone, means that social media is the perfect place to let people get to know the individuals behind the magic that is your business. And the absolute best way to get people to engage with your business is to introduce them to the folks who make it all happen.

People interact with businesses, but they connect with other people. Using your social media platforms to show off your team, highlight the value they bring to the customer, and let them shine as the talented individuals they are is a great way to boost engagement and increase ad effectiveness.

Establish Audience Trust

The open nature of social media has another benefit for companies looking to grow their business with digital advertising: more transparency. With increased transparency comes increased trust, and when your audience trusts you, it’s that much easier to pull the trigger on a purchase or other conversion.

Important to that sense of transparency is the way you respond to the feedback you get on your social pages. When someone posts a negative review or complaint (just so long as it’s a valid complaint and not just some random person griping that their new shoes didn’t magically grant them the ability to dunk on a 20’ rim), it’s important to respond openly and authentically. Users will actually take more away from seeing you respond politely, professionally, and appropriately to one complaint than they will to a hundred positive reviews.

(The guy with the non-magical shoes? Don’t even bother replying – all your reasonable audience members will read that and recognize that the commenter isn’t exactly living in reality.)

The more openness and transparency you display in your interactions, the more trust you’ll build with your customer base.

Gather Social Proof

Social proof is an important part of any marketing campaign. Testimonials, product reviews, customer satisfaction ratings, and other types of messages from your actual customers can go a long way towards demonstrating your value to your audience.

Your social media pages can be a gold mine of feedback that you can use as social proof in your digital ad campaigns. You can even incentivize feedback and actively solicit social proof for a specific campaign.

Imagine, for instance, that you’ve launched a new line of hiking boots (Ansel Pros), they’ve been on the market for a couple of months, and you want to put some of your customers’ initial reactions into your digital ads. Instead of waiting around for reviews, ask for them! Make posts on your social media platforms:

“Bought a pair of Ansel Pros? Let us know what you think – tag your review with #anselpros, and one lucky reviewer will get a coupon for 15% off their next pair!”

Now just sit back and watch your next ad’s content come to you.

Provide Consumer Education

Selling complex products means threading a very fine needle: you have to explain a lot of different value propositions, benefits, and features; you also have to write copy that is concise, easily-digested, and snappy. Doing both in the context of a digital ad campaign is a trick worthy of a world-class magician.

Fortunately, your ads don’t have to do all of the lifting. By offloading some of your consumer education to your social media platforms, your engaged audience can see information to help move them deeper into the funnel, directly in their feeds.

Consumer education can take almost any form:

Infographics
Explainer videos
Short text posts explaining one specific thing

Consumer education can also be interactive – social livestreams are a great way to conduct open Q&As with potential customers and build engagement while you educate your audience.

Integrated Digital Advertising Campaigns That Are Truly Integrated

The best digital ad campaigns work together with your social media strategy, traditional advertising, website, and more to create an unstoppable marketing mix. When you partner with a full-service marketing agency such as M&R, you can be confident that your digital ad campaigns are completely integrated into an overall marketing strategy that brings you closer to your business goals.

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