GETTING STARTED WITH DIGITAL ADVERTISING

What is digital advertising and why do you need it? Those are the exact questions this blog will answer for you today.

Data indicated that 64% of people say they’ve been influenced to buy something by watching a video online. 52% of buying decisions can be traced back to Facebook. People spend enough time online, it could be considered their second job.

Many organizations are using organic marketing, or through search engine optimization and inbound content, but the internet is a crowded space. It takes time and diligence to build authority on the right keywords. 

If you’re like many companies right now, your cash flow and business development pipeline is beginning to be affected now. Digital advertising can be a way to jump-start and boost organic marketing.

But what is digital advertising? How can it help you grow your business? Let’s break it down a bit.

START WITH YOUR CAMPAIGN GOALS

Just like when you plan a face to face event or any other marketing or sales campaign, you need to establish your main goals and KPIs. This should really be the foundation for everything you do going forward: why am I doing this, what do I want to achieve, and how am I measuring success? Be as specific as you can be!

Why aren’t we starting with what platforms you should be using? Because it won’t matter what platform you use, if you don’t know why you’re doing the campaign in the first place.

Example Goals:

• “I need to drive 500 virtual event registrations for my upcoming user conference in the next six weeks.”
• “Blog traffic is down and I need to get 5,000 net new visitors to our blog page by end-of-year so that we’ll be able to showcase the new case study we created for our business development team.”
• “Software sales have been stagnant because our demos have been less frequent over the last few months. We need to acquire new leads and we need to drive an additional $250k in sales in Q2.”

SET A BUDGET

This isn’t the fun part, but it’s important to be realistic. If you only have a $5,000 testing budget, it’s going to impact the steps further down this list as you’ll need to pare down the number of audiences or channels in your marketing plan. You can use your KPIs to help determine budget.

Example:

Acme needs to gain 500 new leads, but each sign-up can’t cost the company more than $90 to see a positive return.

This tells us:

Goal: 500 new sign-ups

Target CPA: $90

We know from our Facebook industry averages that we can expect around a .78% conversion rate, and we expect a CPC (cost per click, more on this in a bit) of around $0.62 on Facebook for this audience. From there, we determine that in order to reach 500 sign-ups, we need a project spend of $39,744. With this budget, we could expect to see a CPA (cost per acquisition) of $79.49.

Now you know:

Goal: 500 new Sign-Ups

Target CPA: $90

Projected Budget: $39,744

Projected CPA: $79.49

CHOOSE HOW YOU WANT TO TRACK YOUR BUDGET

Most platforms give the option of either Lifetime or Daily Budgets. Daily budgets allow for more precise control of spend, however, you may lose out on volume should there be a time or day for the engine to spend more at a cheaper cost to achieve your goal.

Rule of thumb: If you want to ensure you spend for a set duration and at a set amount, choose daily budgeting. If you have a bit more flexibility in your budget and are comfortable with some days spending more and some days spending less, you’ll get more bang for your buck with the Lifetime option.

💡 Pro Tip: Some platforms, like LinkedIn, will spend up to 20% over your Daily Budget. If you have a strict budget to keep to, you should provide a cap lower than your intended target.

DETERMINE WHO YOUR AUDIENCE IS

Who are you looking to target to achieve these goals? Do you have different audiences for different goals? Here’s a high-level audience breakdown to get you started:

• Retargeting: Available on all the major platforms. This is marketing to an audience already familiar with your brand through pixel segmentation, uploading a customer or email list, or people who have otherwise engaged with you through an app or ad.
• Lookalike Audiences: Available on Facebook and somewhat on LinkedIn, this is an audience built to mimic the demographics from a seed audience you provide. This could be your most valuable customers, email non-responders, or a list of event attendees.
• Persona Audiences: This is where you create net-new audience targeting using targeting data provided by the engine. This varies from engine to engine.

WHICH DIGITAL ADVERTISING PLATFORMS ARE BEST FOR YOUR ORGANIZATION?

Digital advertising platforms, or channels, as we call em in the marketing world are usually determined by looking at your goals and audience, and aligning to the platform that makes the most sense for your needs.

It is more expensive to advertise on certain platforms, like LinkedIn over Facebook. However, you should always ask:

• Where does my business have a strong presence?
• Organically, which platforms are working best for our organization?
• Who is my target audience and where are they spending their time?
• What are my goals?

Just like creating quality content over quantity content for your inbound marketing, you should carefully assess which channels are right for your brand and what content to put on each channel.

Here are the most common digital advertising channels brands share content on:

Google Advertising

Facebook-Instagram

Twitter

LinkedIn

Pinterest

GOOGLE ADVERTISING

Google Ads is Google’s advertising platform and the largest ad platform on the internet. If you want to raise brand awareness and drive traffic, paid media ads through Google should be a strong component of your marketing budget.

Google Ads allows your business to skip the period of waiting for your website to move up in the organic search rankings. Although organic search is important, it takes time to organically show up at the top for your most important keywords.

Google’s advertising doesn’t just reside on the Google search engine—it encompasses millions of websites which, according to WordStream, cover 90 percent of the global internet. Google can place your ads across its display network, which includes those millions of websites as well as Google properties such as YouTube and Gmail.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT GOOGLE ADS TO GET STARTED

Campaigns: In every Google Ads account, you can set up campaigns including search, display, remarketing, shopping, and video. These house ad groups, ads, and keywords.

Ad Groups: Ad groups are ways to categorize the most important topics within a single campaign. It is essential to know the most important types of keywords you want to target, and then create an ad group for each. The ad groups will contain the ads specific to that keyword category.

Ads: Ads are the bread and butter of Google Ads (go figure). In each ad, you write your messaging in the form of two headlines, a description, and a URL (your web address).

Keywords: There is only so much information we can put into ads, but in the keywords section, we can add multiple single keywords, phrases, and even long tail keywords. Once they are in the system and the ads are running, your ads will show up when those keywords are searched. Because user behavior tends to be unpredictable, it will be important to test your ads often.

Whatever your time commitment, budget, or goal, paid media, can be an effective arm of any marketing mix. Nifty Method can help you quickly assess which channels are best for you. Contact us today to get started.

HOW DO YOU KNOW IF GOOGLE ADS HAVE ROI?

Clicks: Once your ads are shown either in the search results on Google.com or throughout the Google Display Network, those who see them and are enticed by their content will click on them and be taken to your website.

Impressions: This number shows how often your ad is shown to potential visitors. Impressions are the total sum of times the ads are displayed for each search.

CTR: CTR stands for click-through rate. CTR relies on the two previous key performance indicators—clicks and impressions. The click-through rate is the number of times an ad is clicked on compared to the number of times it is displayed. In essence, it is clicks divided by impressions.

CPC: CPC stands for cost per click which is the average price an advertiser spends for each click they receive. When working in the Google Ads platform, you can review the data at a granular level, down to the CPC by keyword. The cost per click often heavily relates to the positioning of an ad.

GOOGLE ADS SECRET FEATURES THAT YOU DON’T KNOW ABOUT BUT SHOULD

Ad Extensions: With the inclusion of extended text ads, you can now have a greater presence of your text ads on Google Search. However, many advertisers don’t use this additional element to its max. Ad extensions include site links, callouts, structured snippets, reviews, and price.

These are available to you at no additional cost and can greatly increase your traffic. They are add-ons to your search ads on Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). The increased real estate causes your text ads to stand out, which means more brand exposure and the ultimate payoff: increased traffic.

Search Terms Report: As you work through the platform, you will see data start to come in with the KPIs outlined above, showing results for your keywords. However, when people search, they may not use only the keywords you put into your campaign. This is where the search terms report comes into play. It will give you a list of terms and the associated data for searches performed that brought up your ads. You will have the opportunity to add these new keyword phrases and continue monitoring them.

Bid Adjustments: There are a number of spots that allow the advertiser to adjust bids based on performance. Those areas include devices, schedule, geography, and audiences. If you see that results are stronger for desktop than mobile, for example, you will be able to increase the cost per click (CPC) so your ads have a better chance of exposure for those searching for your service on a desktop computer.

RLSAs: RLSAs are a little-known element of Google Ads. They are re-marketing lists for search ads. This means an advertiser can retarget your search ads toward those who have already visited certain pages of your website. The repetition is imperative because the more often someone sees a message, the better chance that person has of becoming a prospect.

TOP TOOLS FOR GOOGLE ADS 

With the size of Google Ads and the number of advertisers on such a large network, there are many tools on the market to help enhance the experience. Here are some important tools you can begin using as an advertiser:

Keyword Planner

The first tool is the Google Keyword Planner. It allows you to enter your website and keywords in order to see other terms that are related from a searcher’s perspective. You will also be able to see the possible competition levels and budgets needed to compete on those keywords. Because the Keyword Planner is in Google Ads itself, you can choose the keywords you like from your instance of the tool and automatically put them in your campaigns.

Google Analytics

Yet another Google property, Google Analytics easily integrates with Google Ads. You will definitely want to connect your Analytics property to Google Ads in order to gain a much broader look at campaign results. By importing site metrics into Google Ads, you can see details such as bounce rate, time on site, and so forth, at the keyword level. You will also be able to see Google Ads data in the Analytics platform.

SEMrush

This is a third-party platform but it is quite helpful when looking at the competitive landscape. SEMrush allows you to see such information as a competitor’s average paid search spend, their search exposure, keywords tracked, and the overall health of their paid search campaigns.

HubSpot

HubSpot is one of our favorites and is a highly useful tool for tracking leads. It can give a business owner amazing insights into many areas of lead nurturing and inbound marketing, from when the lead first enters through their entire journey of engagement with your business. HubSpot works with Google Ads, enabling you to see the leads that come in via paid search campaigns, which campaigns they come from, and the steps they take after acquisition.

Digital advertising is an incredibly powerful tool in today’s digital landscape. In order to enjoy the full benefits of the number one ad platform and to put your brand message in front of people searching for your product or service, it is important to continue learning and gaining as many insights as possible.

Whether you have campaigns running that aren’t performing to the level you want or you haven’t yet started with Google Ads, Nifty Method can help. Contact us today to set up a consultation.

FACEBOOK-INSTAGRAM

The two most common Facebook-Instagram digital advertising varieties are creating an ad through Facebook Ads Manager or boosting a post. We’ll first walk through the high-level options in Ads Manager then dive into boosting a post.

Facebook offers a variety of paid ad options and placements, but all ads can be broken down into three elements:

• Campaigns - The campaign houses all of your assets.
• Ad sets - If you're targeting separate audiences with different characteristics, you'll need to create an individual ad set for each.
• Ads - Your actual ads live within your ad sets. Each ad set can hold a variety of ads that vary in color, copy, images, etc.

GETTING STARTED CREATING AN AD THROUGH FACEBOOK'S ADS MANAGER

You create a paid ad on Facebook using Facebook's Ads Manager. Once you log into this page, you'll see a performance dashboard where all of your campaigns, ad sets, and ads will be listed including the results they've driven for your Facebook page. Unless you've already created an ad for your Facebook page, this dashboard will be empty.

To create a new campaign, ad set, or ad through the Facebook Ad Manager, tab over to the type of ad you want to create and click the green "Create" button to far left of these ad types, as shown below. You can see from this screenshot that we're currently set to create a new campaign.

FIRST, CHOOSE AN OBJECTIVE

Facebook's Ads Manager, like many social media advertising networks, is designed with your campaign objective in mind. Before getting started, Ads Manager will prompt you to choose an objective for your campaign:

There are 11 different objectives to choose from. The list includes everything from general brand awareness, to getting installs of your app, to increasing traffic to your online store.

By choosing one of these objectives, you're giving Facebook a better idea of what you'd like to do so they can present you with the best-suited ad options. As shown in the screenshot above, Facebook's ad options include:

• Brand awareness
• Reach
• Website traffic
• Engagement
• App installs
• Video views
• Lead generation
• Messages
• Conversions
• Catalog sales
• Store traffic

Let's say, for sake of this blog post, you want to raise brand awareness. When you select this option, Facebook will prompt you to enter the URL you're looking to promote. If you're using marketing automation software, be sure to create a unique tracking URL with UTM parameters for this to ensure that you'll be able to keep track of traffic and conversions from this ad. For HubSpot customers, this can be done using the Tracking URL Builder.

Once selected, Facebook will then display the ad option that makes the most sense in terms of achieving this objective.

NEXT, CHOOSE YOUR AUDIENCE

Your next step is to configure your target audience -- you can do this for each ad set that belongs to the same campaign. If you're just starting out with paid advertising on Facebook, it's likely that you'll have to experiment with several different targeting options until you reach an audience that fits just right.

To help you narrow your focus, Facebook's targeting criteria are accompanied by an audience definition gauge. This tool -- located to the right of the audience targeting fields -- takes all of your selected properties into consideration in order to come up with a potential reach number.

If you're wavering between choosing a specific audience over a broad one, consider your objective. If you're looking to drive traffic, you'll probably want to focus on the type of people you know will be interested in your offering. However, if you're looking to build brand awareness or promote a widely appealing offer, feel free to focus on a more general audience.

Audience creation page in the Facebook Ad Manager

Facebook's built-in targeting is vast, including options such as:

• Location
• Age
• Gender
• Languages
• Relationship
• Education
• Work
• Financial
• Home
• Ethnic Affinity
• Generation
• Parents
• Politics (U.S. only)
• Life Events
• Interests
• Behaviors
• Connections

You also have the option to select a Custom Audience -- this allows you to target people on Facebook who are in your company's contact database, visited a page on your website that has a tracking pixel, or use your app or game. To learn more about how to set up a Custom Audience on Facebook, check out these instructions.

Once you find a group that responds well to your ads, Facebook allows you to save these audiences to be used again later -- so you may not need to dive into this step once you've been running Facebook ads for a while.

HOW TO SET YOUR BUDGET

Again, similar to Google Advertising, Facebook allows you to set either a daily budget or a lifetime budget. Here's how they differ from each other:

• Daily budget. If you want your ad set to run continuously throughout the day, this is the option you'll want to go for. Using a daily budget means that Facebook will pace your spending per day. Keep in mind that the minimum daily budget for an ad set is $1.00 USD and must be at least 2X your CPC.
• Lifetime budget. If you're looking to run your ad for a specified length of time, select lifetime budget. This means Facebook will pace your spend over the time period you set for the ad to run.

To further specify your budgeting, turn to the advanced options -- this option is linked at the bottom of the screenshot shown above. This section allows you to specify a few things:

Schedule how long you want your digital advertising campaign to run

Choose whether or not your want your campaign to run immediately and continuously or if you want to customize the start and end dates. You can also set parameters so that your ads only run during specific hours and days of the week.

OPTIMIZATION AND PRICING

Choose whether or not you want to bid for your objective, clicks, or impressions. (This will alter how your ad is displayed and paid for.) By doing so, you'll pay for your ad to be shown to people within your target audience that are more likely to complete your desired action, but Facebook will control what your maximum bid is.

If you don't want Facebook to set optimal bids for you, you'll want to opt for manual bidding. This option awards you full control over how much you're willing to pay per action completed. However, Facebook will provide a suggested bid based on other advertisers' behavior to give you a sense of what you should bid for.

CHOOSE YOUR DELIVERY TYPE

Delivery type falls under two categories: standard and accelerated. Standard delivery will show your ads throughout the day, while accelerated delivery helps you reach an audience quickly for time-sensitive ads (Note: this option requires manual bid pricing).

CREATE YOUR AD

What do you want your ad to look like? It all depends on your original goal.

If you're looking to increase the number of clicks to your website, Facebook's Ad Manager will suggest the Clicks to Website ad options. Makes sense, right?

This ad option is broken down into two formats: Links and Carousels. Essentially, this means that you can either display a single image ad (Links) or a multi-image ad (Carousel) with three to five scrolling images at no additional cost.

Once you decide between the two, you'll need to upload your creative assets. It's important to note that for each type of ad, Facebook requires users to adhere to certain design criteria.

For single image ads, Facebook asks that users adhere to the following design recommendations:

• Text: 125 characters
• Ad Headline: 25 characters
• Image ratio: 1.91:1
• Image resolution (including CTA): 1080 x 1080 pixels

For multi-image ads -- also known as Carousel Ads -- Facebook provides the following design recommendations:

• Recommended image size: 1080 x 1080 pixels
• Image ratio: 1:1
• Text: 125 characters
• Headline: 40 characters
• Link description: 20 characters

💡 Pro tip: Your image can’t have more than 20% text. This is a common reason your ad will not be approved.

CREATING A BOOSTED POST

If you selected "boost your posts," you'd be presented with different ad options like the Page Post Engagement: Photo ad. This ad has a unique set of design recommendations. To explore all of the ad options and their design specifics, refer to this resource.

Once you select an ad type, the Ads Manager will prompt you to identify how you'd like to display your ad. The options they provide are as follows: Desktop News Feed, Mobile News Feed, and Desktop Right Column.

Be aware if your ad isn't associated with a Facebook page, you'll only be able to run Desktop Right Column ads.

How to report on your Facebook ads' performance

Once your ads are running, you'll want to keep an eye on how they're doing. To see their results, you'll want to look in two places: the Facebook Ad Manager and your marketing software.

WHAT MAKES UP FACEBOOK'S AD MANAGER

Facebook's Ad Manager is a sophisticated and somewhat complex dashboard which provides users with an overview of all their campaigns.

Upfront, the dashboard highlights an estimate of how much you're spending each day. The dashboard is organized by columns, which makes it easy to filter through your ads so you can create a custom view of your results. Key numbers like reach, frequency, and cost are readily available, making reporting on performance a no brainer.

ACCORDING TO FACEBOOK, HERE ARE SOME OF THE KEY METRICS TO LOOK FOR (AND THEIR DEFINITIONS):

Performance

Can be customized further to include metrics like results, reach, frequency and impressions

Engagement

Can be customized further to include metrics like Page likes, Page engagement and post engagement

Videos

Can be customized further to include metrics like video views and avg. % of video viewed

Website

Can be customized further to include metrics like website actions (all), checkouts, payment details, purchases and adds to cart

Apps

Can be further customized to include metrics like app installs, app engagement, credit spends, mobile app actions and cost per app engagement

Events

Can be further customized to include metrics like event responses and cost per event response

Clicks

Can be further customized to include metrics like clicks, unique clicks, CTR (click-through rate) and CPC (cost per click)

Settings

Can be further customized to include metrics like start date, end date, ad set name, ad ID, delivery, bid and objective

FACEBOOK ADVERTISING AND YOUR MARKETING SOFTWARE

While there are certainly a lot of details to keep straight when planning a paid Facebook ad, it's important that you don't lose sight of the big picture. Reporting on clicks and conversions from Facebook is important, however, if you're using URLs with specific UTM codes, you have an opportunity to measure your ads' full-funnel effectiveness using your marketing software.

Tracking URLs will help your marketing software keep track of how many leads, or better yet, how many customers you've gained from your advertising efforts. This information is useful in determining the ROI of this source, and can also be used to inform your overall Facebook marketing strategy.

If you're a HubSpot or Pardot customer using the ads tool, this process is already taken care of for you. You can also create unique tracking codes for your Facebook campaign by navigating to the Tracking URL Builder on the Reports Home page.

All you'll need to do is plug in the URL, attach a campaign, and choose the source you want the URL to be attributed to in your Sources Report. Once your ad launches and you start getting traffic and conversions on your website, you'll be able to easily track how many visits, contacts, and customers you're generating.

TWITTER ADVERTISING

Twitter is a great marketing channel for driving traffic and generating leads. In fact, 63% of Twitter users follow small businesses -- it's no wonder that companies can see actual growth from this platform. Advertising on Twitter enables you to promote individual tweets or entire campaigns dedicated to specific objectives.

Businesses can choose between eight different objectives -- including app installs, video views, and website conversions -- and set audience targeting criteria for each ad campaign they create. To expand your reach and grow your follower list on Twitter, consider supplementing your organic efforts with the paid promotional opportunities Twitter has built right into the platform. Using Twitter Ads is an easy way to get your tweets in front of the audiences that don't yet follow you, which is particularly useful for generating new leads for your business.

And you don't necessarily have to spend a fortune on it, either -- Twitter ads can be effective even on a relatively small budget.

HOW TO ADVERTISE ON TWITTER

CHOOSE BETWEEN "PROMOTE MODE" AND "TWITTER ADS."

The first decision you need to make when setting up your Twitter ads is whether you'd like to promote individual tweets or run an entire ad campaign for a specific purpose.

Promoted Tweets vs. Twitter Ads

Promoted tweets will allow your tweets to appear in the Twitter streams or Twitter search results of specific users. Running Twitter Ads is a more holistic campaign, using multiple groups of tweets to accomplish a single goal for your brand. Depending on your objective, Twitter Ads can display your username in places other than a user's newsfeed, such as the "Who to Follow" section to the right of their Twitter homepage.

How do you choose?

If you're simply looking to get more eyeballs on a webpage, promoted tweets might be just the thing you need. In this option, you pay a flat monthly fee for as long as you're promoting a tweet. It's perfect for gaining focused exposure on (and generating leads from) a particular aspect of your business.

If you're looking to grow your follower base and/or build up your audience, Twitter Ads offer a bit more firepower. In the steps below, you'll learn how to harness it.

SELECT YOUR TWITTER AD'S OBJECTIVE

Promoted tweets are fairly easy to set up, and you can learn about this process in the section at the bottom of this blog post. To launch a Twitter Ad campaign, however, your next step is determining your objective. You have eight objectives to choose from, and you can see an elaboration of each objective once you select one on the Twitter Ads page linked in Step 1 of this article.

• App installs
• Followers
• Tweet engagements
• Promoted video views
• Website clicks or conversions
• App re-engagements
• In-stream video views (pre-roll)
• Awareness
• Promoted Accounts

Ad campaigns focused on followers, the second objective listed above, are also known as "Promoted Accounts." This type of campaign allows you to promote your profile, rather than a series of tweets, in your target audience's newsfeeds and on the profile pages of the other accounts they care about.

FILL IN THE DETAILS YOUR AD CAMPAIGN

Once you choose an objective, you'll be taken to a page where you can name your campaign, a start and end date for your campaign, and your campaign's total budget. Depending on the objective you chose in Step 2, you might have other details to fill in that are unique to your ad. If your objective is app installs, for example, this step will require you to connect your app to Twitter, and then select this app from the dropdown shown below.

When determining how much money you want to invest in a Twitter Ads campaign, you'll set a daily budget and an optional total budget. Throughout the day, your daily budget will pay Twitter your set amount at the specific cadence you can set yourself.

The cadence of your promoted content can be set to "Standard (recommended)," which shows ads to your target audience at intervals Twitter deems most efficient; or "Accelerated," which shows your ads as much as possible throughout the day. Accelerated ads cater to ad campaigns you want to perform well in a short amount of time.

CREATE AN AD GROUP WITHIN YOUR CAMPAIGN

Next, you'll create an ad group for your campaign -- there should be at least one pre-created on the lefthand side of your Twitter Ads page. To create more than one ad group, select "Copy ad group" to the righthand side of your current ad group and you'll see new ones appear in your ad campaign's framework, as shown above.

Ad groups are individual ads that consist of their own budgets, audiences, and start and end times -- but operate under the umbrella of your larger campaign.

For example, if you have a two-week Twitter Ads campaign with the objective of website clicks and a budget of $100, you can also create one or more ad groups that run for just a couple of days each, promote separate webpages on your website, and target different types of Twitter users. You'll see how to set these parameters in the next few steps.

In the "Details" tab, shown above, enter an ad group name, a start and end time, a budget for the ad group, and a bid type. Bid types allow you to "bid" on a promoted ad placement. Ad placements will cost different amounts depending on your audience and where the ad appears on Twitter, and you can set your ad group to bid for placement in one of three ways:

• Automatic bid: This type of bid permits Twitter to charge you the most cost-effective amount every time your audience engages with your ad content. The cost Twitter charges you is based on your ad group's budget and audience parameters.
• Maximum bid: This type of bid gives you full control over how much money you're willing to pay every time your audience engages with your ad content.
• Target bid: This type of bid allows you to specify how much money from your ad group's budget you'd like Twitter to bill you every time your audience engages with your ad content. The price you're billed will reflect the daily average cost of each ad placement within your audience.

SELECT YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE FOR EACH AD GROUP

Beneath the "Details" tab of your ad group, select "Targeting." This is where you'll set the parameters of your target audience.

It's important to customize your audience to be a good fit for your company and your message. That way, you're only paying for engagement from folks who might have some interest in downloading your content or learning more about your product or service. A more targeted audience is more likely to help you generate qualified leads

How to Create and Select an Audience

To select an audience for each ad group you create, you'll customize the following criteria:

• Gender: If your product or service caters primarily to either males or females, you should take advantage of the gender targeting option.
• Age: Setting an age range is helpful for advertisements that are promoting a product or event that has either a particular age restriction or scope of interest.
• Location: You'll want to target by location if you run a local business, or if you sell primarily to specific regions (whether that's your city or North America).
• Language: This criterion might need to be used in tandem with the location filter, described above, if an ad is targeting a region of the world that speaks a language other than English.
• Device: This is a great targeting option if your product or service caters more specifically to people on the go, or if your website visitors are most likely to convert on your offer when they're in the office.
• Audience features: These include keywords, movies & shows, conversation topics, events, and related interests.

You can also select which devices you'd like your promoted tweets to be displayed on -- any combination of desktop and the various mobile devices.

Targeting Audience by Keywords

Targeting by "keywords" -- an option included in the "Audience features" field, listed above -- allows you to reach people that search, tweet about, or engage with specific keywords. For example, if I'm promoting Nifty Method's ebook, Best Practices for Crisis Communications, I might filter my audience by keywords I consider relevant to this advertisement.

This audience targeting criterion is helpful if you want to know exactly how many Twitter users are currently using a keyword. This data can help you decide between topics that seem similar but have different levels of popularity you wouldn't know about otherwise.

Targeting by Interests and Followers

Targeting by interests and followers allows you to create a list of Twitter usernames and then target users whose interests are similar to the interests of those users' followers.

A great use of this type of targeting is when compiling a small list of the top influencers in your industry. For example, to promote Nifty Method’s Best Practices for Crisis Communications ebook, I'll want to target an audience of users interested in crisis communications. Targeting by interests and followers allows me to say, "show these tweets to people who are like so-and-so's followers." As a result, I've created a large audience that's still tailored to the topic of my content.

With this targeting option, you can also add a list of interest categories. So, for example, I could say, "show these tweets to people interested in marketing, social media, or lead generation." Again, this creates a broad audience focused on the topic of the content or products you're promoting.

SELECT THE GRAPHICS YOU'D LIKE TO RUN WITH EACH AD GROUP

Your last task in creating a Twitter Ads campaign is to choose the creatives you want to run with each ad group belonging to your campaign. "Creatives" are simply the tweets you want to promote, and you can select them from the list of tweets that appear under each ad group's Creatives tab. Select the "Creatives" tab beneath the Targeting tab to get started.

This is the fun part. You can either select from existing tweets in your account or create new ones.

To compose a new tweet, click the blue quill icon to the far right of your Creatives screen. When crafting a new tweet, you can check the "Promoted-only" button if you'd only like to promote it through your Twitter Ads campaign, and not have the tweet appear organically on your followers' newsfeeds. See what this option looks like below.

In addition to promoting your tweets on your audiences' timelines, you can also choose to have your tweets appear in users' profiles and the detail pages of specific twitter conversations. The benefit of this type of targeting is that it helps you define a more qualified audience, since these people are actively looking for or engaging with those specific keywords that are relevant to your offer. You can select this option on the righthand side of your Creatives tab, as shown below.

REVIEW AND LAUNCH YOUR CAMPAIGN.

Finally, select the "Review your campaign" button, as shown above, to look over your campaign details. If everything looks correct, hit "Launch campaign" at the top-righthand corner of your screen to run the campaign.

HOW TO PROMOTE A TWEET

Promoting tweets allows you to show critical pieces of content to a wide audience and drive views to the landing pages that generate leads for your business. This Twitter Ads option gives you a lot more flexibility in terms of the content you want potential viewers and customers to see.

Here's a quick definition of this type of ad so you can understand how it differs from the ad campaign we walked you through in the above section

Promoted Tweets

Promoted tweets are paid advertisements that Twitter places in front of your target audience based on their interests or location. Each ad supports a single tweet, and you can customize the audience of each individual ad. Currently, businesses can only promote tweets in the U.S., U.K., and Japan.

1. Select "Promote Mode" from the campaign menu and click "Get started."
2. You'll start from the same place you start when creating a full, multi-tweet Twitter Ads campaign. Once there, click "Get started." When you're done, click "Next" on the top-righthand corner of the page.
3. Select your promoted tweet's country and timezone.
4. Choose either "Interests" or "Location" as your targeting method.
5. Twitter can promote tweets to an audience based on their interests or location.
6. Choose up to five interests associated with your target audience.
7. Choose up to five locations associated with your target audience.
8. Review your ad criteria and select "Proceed."

Once you've customized your audience's interests or location, hit "Next" and Twitter will show you an overview of your ad criteria, including your bill.

HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO PROMOTE A TWEET?

The cost to promote a tweet has changed since Twitter first began offering this type of ad. Unlike Twitter Ads campaigns, promoted tweets currently cost a flat monthly fee of $99 per month. Each new tweet you promote will carry a separate monthly fee.

Sound good to you? Review your ad criteria and check that you agree to the Twitter Promote Mode's Terms of Service at the bottom of this page. Then, click "Proceed" on the top-righthand corner of your screen.

TWITTER ADVERTISING ROI 

Twitter’s analytics help you understand how the content you share on Twitter grows your business. Beyond the basic metrics, there are some incredibly important things you can discover about your Twitter account and audience using Tweet Analytics. Then, take a look at some of the free third-party analytics tools that give you a deeper dive into the Twitter performance metrics you want more information on.

Account home

This is your Twitter report card, with high-level statistics tracked from month to month. It’s also a gallery of your greatest hits: Twitter spotlights your top-performing organic Tweets and introduces you to the influencers in your network.

Your Tweet activity dashboard

This is where you’ll find metrics for every single one of your Tweets. You’ll know exactly how many times Twitter users have seen, Retweeted, liked and replied to each Tweet.

What we’re looking for is in the Tweets tab, right at the top, there's a chart that gives an overview of your paid and organic tweet performance. Like other Twitter Analytics charts, this one is interactive, so hovering over specific parts will show you more precise numbers, as in the example below. Keep in mind that the data only goes back 91 days, so take advantage of the ability to export it regularly. You can make comparisons over longer periods of time in another program.

Even if you’re not spending a lot on paid promotions, you can see that compared to organic posts, if they're not having a huge effect. If I were running specific promotions, I'd be interested in the Conversions information available in Twitter Analytics.

Just below that chart, you can click "Promoted" to see all of your paid promotions in chronological order. This shows you how many engagements and impressions each one earned, helping you pinpoint which paid promotions are working (and which ones aren't).

LINKEDIN

Advertising on LinkedIn is a two-step process: first, setting up your LinkedIn campaign and then, creating your ad(s). In this section, we walk through how to set up a campaign and build your ad(s) — plus some best practices and tips for each.

SETTING UP YOUR CAMPAIGN

Your LinkedIn advertising campaigns will live on a platform separate from the LinkedIn you see every day — the LinkedIn Marketing Solutions platform. Visit this page to get started with your campaign, and select "Create Ad."

From there, you'll be prompted to create a LinkedIn Campaign Manager account (if you haven’t yet). Make sure you enter your associated LinkedIn Company Page if you have one.

Next, you’ll be taken to your member dashboard. If you haven’t entered your billing information, you’ll need to do so to unlock your account. (Don't worry — you won't be charged until your campaign is live, and from there, you'll be charged periodically for ad clicks and other engagements.)

On your dashboard — or "Campaign Manager," as it's formally called — you'll see a call-to-action (CTA) to “Create campaign.” Click that button, and you'll be redirected to a page where you can start setting up your campaign.

Note: As of February 2019, LinkedIn introduced a “new objective-based campaign creation experience”. Learn more, check out this page.

First, indicate a Campaign Group and name your campaign. Campaign Groups help you organize your campaign. You can leave the Default Campaign Group as-is, or create a new Group.

As for the campaign name, these are only visible internally, so we recommend you choose a highly descriptive name — especially if you have a few different folks working on the campaign.

For example, if I was doing a test to determine the best type of demographic targeting, I might use the title, "Velociraptor Fence Weakness Test — North America, 18 to 24, Female." That name describes exactly who I'm targeting, without having to view its details. Compare this to something like "Velociraptor Fence Weakness Test 1," which doesn't indicate anything about who the ad is targeting.

Once you choose your Campaign Group and name, you can start setting up your campaign.

1. Objective selection

First, choose your campaign objective. Your objective is what you want people to do when they see your ads. According to LinkedIn, choosing an objective helps them “customize your campaign creation, deliver the best ROI for your stated goal, and show you relevant reporting.”

There are three overarching campaign themes: Awareness, Consideration, and Conversions. Under those themes, the available campaign objectives are:

• Website visits will drive traffic to your website and landing pages. According to LinkedIn, this type of campaign will also boost brand awareness (at least while that objective option remains unavailable).
• Engagement will increase engagement on your content and boost followers on your LinkedIn Company Page.
• Video views will increase the exposure of your videos to people who are likely to engage with them.
• Lead generation will show a LinkedIn lead generation form with pre-filled LinkedIn profile data to those LinkedIn users most likely to engage with the form.

2. Audience

Next, choose the parameters of your target audience. Targeting who sees your ad can help it fulfill its campaign objective — the more specific and relevant it is to your audience, the better it’ll perform. LinkedIn allows you to target according to a few different categories, which we've outlined below.

You don't have to use all of these options, but the more specific your targeting criteria, the more relevant it's likely to be to the audience you select — and, therefore, the more likely you are to have a better ROI.

First, answer a few basic questions, like the language in which you'd like your ad to appear. It can be written in any of the 20 languages LinkedIn supports, including French, German, and French.

You must also select at least one location for your ads. Depending on your business, more specific targeting may be helpful. You can select a location as broad as North America, or as specific as the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area. Consider excluding any nearby locations from your campaign so your budget isn’t wasted on locations where your ad isn’t relevant.

Next, click “+ Add new targeting criteria.

COMPANY

If your target audience has a certain employer, you can target it directly — even by name. You don't need to have specific names in mind, though; LinkedIn allows you to also target companies based on the industry (like Banking, Non-Profit, or Insurance) and company size.

DEMOGRAPHICS

If your audience is heavily skewed toward one gender and/or age group, target your ad toward them.

EDUCATION

If you are looking to target people who have a particular educational background, you can target your ads based on schools. For example, perhaps you're trying to target a certain alumni association — you can reach out to it through a LinkedIn ad. You can also customize the targeting according to the field of study and degree.

JOB EXPERIENCE

If your product or service is best for CMOs, targeting only people with "CMO" in their titles will increase your conversions, and, ultimately, save you money. You can choose specific job titles or choose from job functions, seniority, and years of experience. From the CEO of retail companies to the entry-level associates at a law firm, you can target a specific group of people for your ads.

Your target audience may also have a certain skill set, such as email marketing, financial planning, or risk management. Think about what your target audience does well or where it aspires to excel. Then, use the ad to target people with similar capabilities.

INTERESTS

One of LinkedIn's best attributes is the ability to join groups with like-minded professionals in which you can discuss industry trends and topics. If your audience is very vocal on a topic, or you're trying to gain thought leadership in a certain area, this type of targeting might be a good option for you.

Once you establish your ad targeting criteria, you can save it as a template for future campaigns. You can also enable LinkedIn to expand your audience to include people similar to your target audience.

3. Ad format

Next, choose your ad format. There are eight different types of LinkedIn ads you can create as part of your campaign.

• Text ads show up on the right column or top of the page on LinkedIn. They feature text only.
• Single image ads feature one image and show up on the LinkedIn newsfeed along organic content.
• Carousel ads feature two or more images and show up on the LinkedIn newsfeed along organic content.
• Video ads feature one video and show up on the LinkedIn newsfeed along organic content.
• Follower ads promote your LinkedIn Company Page and use LinkedIn profile data to personalize each ad. They’re only visible on the LinkedIn desktop platform.
• Spotlight ads promote a special offering and use LinkedIn profile data to personalize each ad. They’re only visible on the LinkedIn desktop platform.
• Job ads promote open jobs and use LinkedIn profile data to personalize each ad. They’re only visible on the LinkedIn desktop platform.
• Message ads are delivered to your target audience’s LinkedIn inbox.

When you toggle between the ad types, you’ll see that the Forecasted Results box on the right-hand side will change. This feature analyzes your campaign parameters (bid, budget, targeting, start/end dates, etc.) and takes into account similar campaigns and advertisers. It also simulates the ad auction to generate the numbers displayed.

Keep an eye on this box as you choose your LinkedIn ad type. If you're first starting out, deciding what ad type to choose might come down to your budget. Outline your priorities, and then you can decide which type works best for you.

Additionally, some ad types require you to link your LinkedIn Company Page, and some tap into LinkedIn translation services.

4. Placement

Next, decide whether you want your ad to be displayed on the LinkedIn Audience Network, which gives your campaign more reach and exposure among LinkedIn’s third-party platforms and sites. Note: This option isn’t available for every ad type.

You can also choose to exclude or block certain categories, applications, and sites in the Network if you so choose

5. Budget and schedule

Next, set up the budget, scheduling, and bidding options that work best for you.

BUDGET

Set a daily budget for what works best for your company's marketing spending. Before investing a lot into one campaign, test and measure the success of each campaign and ad variation. You don't want to put thousands of dollars, for example, into an ad that doesn't resonate with your target audience.

That said, because of its extensive targeting opportunities, LinkedIn ads can successfully target niche markets. But the cautionary experimentation is crucial to do early on — if you observe a campaign performing well, then you can put a larger budget toward it.

SCHEDULE

Choose a date for your campaign to start. You can indicate for your campaign to be shown continuously or ‘til an end date.

BID TYPE

In this section, the three options you have are:

• Automated bid, which allows LinkedIn to determine what amount will maximize your campaign objective and whatever option you choose (Clicks, Impressions, or Conversions).
• Maximum cost-per-click (CPC) bid, where you'll be charged each time someone clicks on your ad. LinkedIn will suggest a bid range depending on your budget and the competition for your ads — the more advertisers bidding on a similar campaign, the higher your bid will need to be. This bid is the maximum you will be charged. If the current rate is lower than your max bid, you will only be charged the current rate.
• Maximum pay-per-1,000 Impressions (CPM) bid, where you’ll be charged a certain amount each time your ad is viewed by every 1,000 people on LinkedIn. This option is unavailable if you’re using the LinkedIn Audience Network option.

Deciding on the best maximum bid can be tricky. When deciding between CPC and CPM, think about your end goal. Are you trying to get as many people as possible to see your ad to help with something like a branding campaign? If so, CPM might be your best option.

On the other hand, if you want more people to click on your ads to drive traffic to your website or generate new leads, CPC might be better for you.

As for your optimal maximum bid, some trial and error might be necessary. LinkedIn will give you a suggested bid, which is a good place to start. Then, think about when your audience is most likely online. You'll want to bid higher during that particular time to be sure that your ads are the ones being seen. And make sure LinkedIn is actually the best place to reach them, too — different populations use different types of social media. Play around with your bids and see when you get the most return for your dollars spent.

6. Conversion tracking

Lastly, you have the option to set up conversion tracking for your LinkedIn campaign, which will track and measure the actions people take after clicking on your ads.

Conversion tracking is an optional part of setting up your LinkedIn advertising campaign but is highly valuable for your business.

If you choose to set up conversion tracking, click “+ Add conversions.” A new window will pop up, where you’ll name your conversion, choose your conversion settings, and decide how you’ll track the conversions. Note: The information on the right-hand side of the window is super helpful — it’ll answer any questions you have and walk you through the process.

For more help on implementing and managing your LinkedIn Conversions, visit their help page here.

Excellent! You’ve officially set up your LinkedIn advertising campaign… but you’re not done yet. When you’re ready to move on, click “Save.”

Beware: Your objective and ad format cannot be changed once you save, so be sure about your choices before moving forward.

SETTING UP YOUR AD(S)

This section corresponds to what type of LinkedIn ad you chose for your campaign. Once you establish the basic parameters for your ad in step one, you'll be prompted to start building it and choose how LinkedIn will display and rotate your ad variations — if you create more than one.

To get started, click “Create new ad.”

A screen will pop up with the title “Create a new [Your chosen ad type] for this campaign” on which you'll create the copy for your ad, pair it with an image, and preview the different layout options.

Of course, there are a few guidelines around the copy that we suggest:

• Ad image, which is the artwork or graphic that your audience will see for your ad. It must be 100x100 pixels and uploaded as a .jpg or .png file that is 2MB or smaller.
• Ad headline, which is the main message your audience will see. It cannot be more than 25 characters.
• Ad description, which is the body of your ad. It can be up to 75 characters long and should be relevant both to the person viewing the ad and the offer or page to which you're sending them.
• Destination URL, which is where your audience will go when they click your ad. Double check that the URL is accurate.

Once you input this information, you’ll see it reflected in the Preview box to the right.

Once you click “Create,” you’ll be directed back to the previous Campaign Manager screen. From there, you can create more ads and, eventually, review and submit your order. Note: LinkedIn does review every submitted campaign order, so don’t expect to see your ads published right away.

To see the best results for your ads, consider creating a different ad for each of your buyer personas and tweak the copy accordingly. For example, when promoting a book to college professors, leading the title with the words "College Professor's Guide to …” may generate a higher CTR than generic, un-targeted headlines and copy.

Here are a few of our best copywriting tips for LinkedIn ads.

Call-to-Action (CTA)

Including an actionable CTA within your ad copy will also help you improve your ad's click-through rate (CTR). Consider asking people to "Download your e-book now," or "Click now for free samples" instead of writing copy that's devoid of actionable next steps.

Value

Incorporate your value proposition into your ad copy — this can make people more likely to click on your ad. By boasting something like "20% off your first purchase" or "Clearance sale ends today — Shop now," you're sending a clear signal of what someone will specifically gain when he or she clicks your ad.

Testing

Don't be afraid to test your ad copy. You can create multiple variations of your ad in each campaign, which allow you to test different images and copy within ads to find what works best for your audience.

HOW TO ANALYZE YOUR LINKEDIN ADVERTISING ROI

Congratulations! You've officially launched your LinkedIn Ad campaign!

Now, for the best and debatably most important part of campaign marketing — analytics. LinkedIn makes it easy to track your progress in the Campaign Manager dashboard (under “Campaign Performance”), where you'll see various charts that measure performance like clicks, expenditures, and CTR. You can also keep track of conversions in the graphs toward the bottom of the dashboard.

When you finish setting up your first campaign, you'll see a lot of "0"s at first. Don’t worry, that's only because your campaign is new (and don’t forget that LinkedIn usually has to approve your ads before they go live).

HOW TO OPTIMIZE YOUR LINKEDIN AD CAMPAIGNS

Social ad campaigns can always be improved. Remember, your audience and content are always changing as well as the platform itself. Here are some ways to optimize your LinkedIn ad campaign.

OPTIMIZING UNDER-PERFORMING CAMPAIGNS

If your campaigns aren’t performing as well as you’d hope, here are a few measures you can take to optimize your campaigns. Tip: Set a reminder for yourself to check and optimize your campaigns each month.

Look at each campaign click-through rate.

Is one campaign out-performing the other(s)? If so, you may want to pause the less successful campaign(s). LinkedIn will automatically display less successful campaigns with lower frequency, so it makes sense to minimize any resources spent on them. Instead, putting more resources into successful ad variations and campaigns is more likely to accomplish your marketing goals.

Tweak one variable at a time.

Just because your ad is under-performing doesn’t mean you need to scrap the whole thing. Test different variations of the same ad to see what factor is contributing to or hindering its success. Edit the copy in your headline, change your feature image, tweak the target audience attributes, or update your bids — just don’t do these all at the same time or you won’t know which one is the fix.

Get — and stay — familiar with your audience.

Take a refresher on your target audience every month. Check out your buyer persona and conduct new research on the audience attributes that might need to be tweaked on your campaign. Update these attributes regularly so the very best people are always seeing — and hopefully engaging — with your ads.

QUALIFYING LINKEDIN AD LEADS WITH POST-CLICK REPORTING

Once your ads are running and people begin clicking on them, it's time to determine if they're actually driving qualified traffic to your website. That isn't something LinkedIn can tell you, so you’ll need to do some closed-loop reporting on these campaigns to get more details on the makeup of this traffic.

How can you figure that out? It's all about "gated" offers and forms — when someone clicks on your ad and lands on your website, “gating” the content you are offering with a lead form will help you collect data that qualifies that person as a good lead (or not). Connect that lead capture form to your customer relationship management (CRM) software, so that once the information is imported, your sales team can act upon them.

Contact Nifty today for a complimentary digital advertising assessment

But don’t neglect your LinkedIn ad campaigns in favor of the landing page form data in your CRM. Is the traffic to your website generated by LinkedIn ads qualified? Is it generating customers? If not, you might need to further optimize your campaigns.

For example, if your LinkedIn ads are targeting people in companies with 1 to 10 people, but you find that the majority of your closed deals are from leads with companies with 100 to 200 — stop paying to target those smaller companies on LinkedIn.

The targeting options we covered above allow you to change any of your criteria, so use it to your advantage.

PINTEREST

Pinterest is a visual discovery engine for finding ideas like recipes, home and style inspiration, and more. ... When you discover Pins you love, save them to boards to keep your ideas organized and easy to find.

Almost all searches on Pinterest are unbranded, which means Pinners are open to new ideas and products. In fact, 73 percent of Pinners say content from brands makes Pinterest more useful.

 

In the Pinterest Ads Manager, you can create, edit and manage your Pinterest campaigns. Below you’ll find step-by-step instructions for setting up campaigns in Ads Manager, along with some tips and tricks.

WHY SHOULD MY BRAND USE PINTEREST ADS?

Pinterest ads are great for getting your products and content in front of more people as they search, browse and discover on Pinterest. They offer marketers the chance to earn awareness and consideration from Pinterest’s 250 million users early in their consumer journeys.

And connecting early works: 98 percent of Pinners say they’ve tried new things they found on Pinterest, versus 71 percent on other social media platforms.

Beyond driving awareness, brands using Pinterest ads’ targeting capabilities see results. More than half of Pinterest’s users have made a purchase after seeing business content on the site.

And Pinners spend 29 percent more than non-Pinners, delivering an average of $2 in profit for every advertiser dollar.

With that in mind, it’s time to get pin-spired about advertising on Pinterest.

Just one catch: For the time being, Pinterest ads are only available in Australia, Canada, France, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

TYPES OF PINTEREST ADS

Your Pinterest ad campaign type will determine what ad format you use, as well as your bid type and available placements. So it’s good to know the attributes of each format before starting a campaign.

PROMOTED PINS

Promoted Pins appear in the home feed and search results just like a regular Pin except that they’re boosted and targeted to deliver way more reach. Other than the “Promoted” label on the Pin, they look and behave the way other Pins do. Users can Pin them to boards, share them, and comment on them.

Perhaps the best feature of Promoted Pins is that after a Pinner shares it, the “Promoted” label goes away and subsequent repins are considered earned media. In other words, you get added exposure for free. When a user taps or clicks your ad, they’re taken directly to your landing page.

Promoted Pin Specs:

• Campaign objective: Brand awareness
• File type: .PNG or .JPEG
• Ideal aspect ratio: 2:3
• File size: Max 10 MB
• Description copy: Max 500 characters

ONE-TAP PINS

Pinterest tells us that, as of 2019, all Pinterest ad formats have officially been migrated to the one-tap system. That means that when a user taps or clicks your ad, they’re taken directly to your landing page.

“Two-tap” ads (where the first click resulted in a zoom-in) no longer exist. And since all ads are technically “one-tap,” it doesn’t make sense to use that term anymore either. “One-tap Pins” are no longer a category of Pinterest ad.

PROMOTED CAROUSELS

Promoted Carousels were introduced in November 2018. They feature two to five images that Pinners can swipe through.

These multi-image ads can appear wherever Pins can, and they behave the same, except for the dots beneath that signal the swipe option.

Each card in a Promoted Carousel ad can feature a different image, title, description, and landing page. This format is great if you have multiple products or multiple features to showcase because different images and selling points can speak to different Pinners.

CoverGirl used a Promoted Carousel to show every shade of its TruBlend Foundation, resulting in a 3.8 point lift in brand awareness.

REI’s Experience the Outdoors campaign earned strong engagement and a 32 percent higher click-through rate using a Promoted Carousel.

Promoted Carousel Specs:

• File type: .PNG or .JPEG
• Ideal aspect ratio: 1:1 or 2:3
• File size: Max 10 MB
• Title copy: Max 100 characters
• Description copy: Max 500 characters

PROMOTED VIDEO PINS

Promoted Video Pins are just like Promoted Pins except the static image is replaced with video. Like Promoted Pins, Promoted Video appears in the home feed, search results, and the “more like this” section under a Pin close-up.

Pinterest videos autoplay as soon as they’re 50 percent in view. For greater accessibility, and because many viewers watch video with sound off, it’s important to produce video that’s not dependent on audio and if possible, has closed captions for the hearing-impaired.

Pinterest offers two sizes for Promoted Video Pins: Max width and standard.

Standard width videos are the same size as regular Pins, whereas max width video spreads across the feed, minimizing distraction from competing Pins. Maximum video exposure can be more expensive, since minimum bids start higher.

Videos are ideal for awareness campaigns, and a good format for telling a brand or product story.

A Pinterest study conducted with Millward Brown found the Promoted videos are four times more memorable than non-video ads. And 67 percent of Pinners said that video inspires them to take action.

Promoted Video Specs:

• Campaign objective: Video views
• File type: .MPR or .MOV
• Encoding: H264
• Ideal aspect ratio: 1:1, 2:3, 9:16 or 16:9.
• File size: Max 2GB
• Video length: Minimum 4 sec, maximum 30 min
• Description copy: Max 500 characters

PROMOTED APP PINS

Promoted App Pins let Pinners download your mobile app directly from Pinterest. These mobile-only ads are a good fit for Pinterest’s audience, since 80 percent of Pinterest traffic comes from mobile devices.

Promoted App Pins look and act just like a Promoted Pin or Promoted Video Pin, only they link to a valid iTunes or Google Play app store URL. An install button accompanies these Pins, but you should also make sure your copy and image or video conveys attributes about your app.

Pinners have a penchant for shopping, so quick-and-easy app downloads can quickly turn into sales. When Playrix chose Promoted App Pins to promoted its Fishdom and Gardenscapes game apps, one in five installs from Pinterest resulted in paying users. Overall Playrix doubled their ROI.

BUYABLE PINS

Buyable Pins are designed to be shoppable. Also known as Shop the Look, these Pins allow Pinners to find and buy products directly from your Pin.

These Pins work across mobile and web, and appear in the same places as a Promoted Pin would. The only difference is items in the image are tagged with white dots that can be tapped or clicked on to display and link to product information.

This format is ideal for images that feature multiple products working together. Imagine a fully decorated living room, Christmas dinner spread, or the latest fall fashion arrivals.

Pinterest recommends that images should be tagged with four to six dots. Ideally, each dot should be linked directly to the product’s page. If that’s not possible, Pinterest suggests finding one exact match, and other close matches.

To create Buyable Pins, Pinterest offers a bespoke tagging tool. For larger campaigns, it may be better to work with Curalate and Olapic are Pinterest’s preferred partners.

These Pins are designed to deliver sales. After Modern Citizen enabled Buyable Pins, the fashion brand saw its retail orders increase by 73 percent.

STORY PINS

A new type of Pin format that is being tested with select business accounts, Story Pins feature up to 20 pages of images, text, and links.

Story Pins appear in users’ home feeds with a cover image and a title. They also say “Story” underneath. Tapping a Story Pin allows you to see all of its pages.

Story Pins can be saved to boards like any other Pin. Watch this space for updates on how they perform for brands.

HOW TO ADVERTISE ON PINTEREST

SIGN UP OR CONVERT YOUR EXISTING BUSINESS ACCOUNT

Either convert your existing Pinterest account to a business account or create a new account for your business.

INSTALL THE PINTEREST TAG

Before starting a Pinterest ad campaign, make sure you have installed the Pinterest Tag. With the Promoted Tag you’ll be able to track the actions people take on your website after seeing your Pinterest ads, including checkouts, sign-ups, and searches.

CHOOSE YOUR CAMPAIGN GOAL

Each campaign starts at ads.pinterest.com with an objective. Choosing the right goal is important because it will determine what ad formats are available and how you bid in the ad auction.

There are four campaign objectives available:

1. Get traffic to your website. Earn high-quality leads and send Pinners to your website. You pay-per each click.
2. Build brand awareness. Gain broad exposure with current and prospective customers. You get charged per 1,000 impressions.
3. Increase installs for your app. There are two ways to promote app downloads on Pinterest. When you pay by install, Pinterest regularly adjusts your bid based on your budget. When you pay by the click, your ad is optimized for click traffic.
4. Build awareness through video views. Autoplay videos are ideal for promoting awareness and consideration. You pay per 1,000 impressions.

CHOOSE YOUR CAMPAIGN BUDGET

Add your campaign name and then set your daily and lifetime spend limit. More specific pricing parameters will come later.

If you’re creating a carousel ad campaign, make sure you enable the option. This will only work if you’ve selected brand awareness as your campaign objective.

CREATE AN AD GROUP

Choose a pre-existing ad group or create a new one. Think of an ad group as a container for your Promoted Pins. Each ad group can have a different assigned budget and different targeting.

Ad groups help you manage multiple goals within a single campaign. For example, perhaps you’d like to target specific content to a particular geography, but you have a limited budget for it.

Plan to launch with between two and four Pins per ad group.

CHOOSE YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE

Set the parameters for the audience you would like to reach with your campaign.

You can target based on gender, location, language, and device. If your Pinterest ad campaign objectives are traffic or awareness, use a broad targeting strategy to avoid low click volume.

SELECT AD PLACEMENT

If your budget permits, go with the all placements default. Otherwise, there are two primary avenues for your ads to appear in: Browse and Search.

Browse placements end up in the home feed and related pins. They pair nicely with interest targeting, whereas search result placements perform better with keyword targeting.

ADD INTERESTS AND KEYWORDS

You can expand on your targeting by adding interest and keyword targeting as well. This setting will ensure that your ads are automatically targeted to relevant searches and interests.

Pinterest finds that in general, campaigns improve reach, click-through rates, and better achieve scale when interest and keyword targeting is enabled.

For the best results, use 25 keywords. Keywords can be formatted to indicate a broad match, phrase match, or exact match. Negative keywords can also be added to exclude certain search terms from triggering ads.

Keyword formatting

• Broad match: art modern
• Phrase match: “art modern”
• Exact match: [art modern]

Not sure what keywords to add? Learn how to find relevant keywords here.

SET YOUR BUDGET AND SCHEDULE

Enter the start and end date for your Pinterest ad campaign. Then set your daily or lifetime budget. Your daily budget sets your daily spending limit for your ad group. The lifetime budget is the total amount you want to spend between your start and end date.

Be careful what you add here because this cannot be edited later on.

TAILOR FOR OPTIMIZATION AND DELIVERY

Start by setting a maximum bid for your Pinterest ads. This is also known as your target CPM rate. Minimum bids must be above $2.00.

DETERMINE YOUR PACING

There are two types of pacing options for your Pinterest ad campaign: Standard and accelerated.

1. Standard pacing aligns your bids with your overall spend and campaign duration.
2. Accelerated pacing may be better for high impact campaigns as it enables faster delivery of your budget and faster results.

Pinterest will never spend over your daily or total budget caps, but accelerated pacing may drain your budget before your campaign end date.

PICK YOUR PROMOTED PINS

Click Pick a Pin to add Pins to your ad group. Remember, each ad group should aim to include two-four Pins. You can either create new Pins or pick Pins that you’ve added before. Assigned each Pin with a name and a URL.

For Pins to be eligible, they must:

• Be saved to your profile
• Not be saved to secret boards
• Have destination URLs (they should not be shortened)
• Not feature third-party videos or GIF

MONITOR CAMPAIGN PERFORMANCE

Click on Analytics from the Pinterest Ads Manager dashboard to measure the performance of your campaign. You’ll first be presented with an overview of all campaigns and their key metrics, including total clicks or impressions; engagement rate or CTR; average eCPM (earned and non-earned cost-per impression) and eCPC (effective cost-per click); and total spend. Click on a specific campaign to drill down into its performance details.

Each campaign is different, but a few ways you can further optimize your campaign are to broaden your audience, increase your budget, try different formats, or plan around events.

Ready to Try A Digital Ad Strategy?

With the right amount of patience and strategy, digital advertising campaigns can be a huge factor in your company's marketing success. From LinkedIn to Google Advertising, there is a powerful advertising platform that will work for you; don’t leave this off your social campaign marketing list. A well-researched, optimized campaign has the potential to bring in thousands of new leads, engagement, — and sales.

Contact Marketing Orchard to set up a complimentary digital marketing assessment for your inbound marketing strategy and execution plan today.