If you want to progress from a scarcity/poverty mentality to an abundance mentality, be careful about with whom you hangout on a regular basis. The people from the “old days” may be fun to reach out to keep in touch with, but they’re not going to be the ones who help you to grow. (That’s why you have to “reach out” to stay in touch with them.) You won’t find the right support from people trying to keep you anchored in the past.
And as you are successful and progress, your peers need to change. Otherwise, Michael Jordon wouldn’t have gone farther than college basketball.
BDO has announced a duo of partner hires in its UK wing. Steve Ringham and Andrew Orgill will bolster the firm’s audit and tax wings respectively. Anna Draper, head of people, culture and purpose at BDO, remarked, “Steve and Andy’s appointments are part of our ongoing investment into talented and high-performing individuals who offer a broad range of bespoke services.
Beechwood Partners has joined S&W for an undisclosed fee. As the first deal since S&W’s new independence, the move takes its headcount in Ireland to more than 100. S&W is a fast-growing UK accounting and advisory firm.
Raise your hand if you’ve ever bought something you saw in a social media ad. Looking at you, my favorite lamp, candle, timer, and headphones (um, yeah, I might have a problem). 🙋♀️
I’m far from alone: 43% of participants in a Disqo survey said they’ve purchased a product they saw in a social media advertisement. This hefty number makes sense — their product of choice was likely targeted directly at them.
Social media advertising can be an excellent way to reach more people with more precision than organic marketing allows.
But if you’ve not run social media advertising campaigns before, it can be challenging to figure out which platforms you should invest in, what kind of ads you should run, and how much money you need to begin.
In this article, we’ll cover everything from what social media advertising is to how you can start running ads on social and how to make the most of your investment.
What is social media advertising?
Social media advertising is a digital marketing strategy where you use ads on social media platforms to reach your target demographics. Think of the posts that appear on your feed with a “sponsored” label.
Instead of relying on algorithms to push your posts in front of the right people, social media advertising gives you back the control to bypass the algorithm and reach your target audience directly using paid ads.
Social media ads are a great addition to your organic social media marketing strategy. In fact, your organic marketing can help you understand what your audience loves — by extension, helping you improve your social media advertising efforts.
5 benefits of social media advertising
Should you consider running ads on social media? If you have the budget, a carefully crafted social media advertising strategy can go a long way. Here are its top five benefits:
1. Reach more of the right people
Social media ads don’t just expand your reach, they allow you to target your potential customers with accuracy — you can choose demographics, user behavior, location, and more. Advanced social media advertising tactics even include retargeting people who’ve already interacted with your website or social media posts!
2. Adjust your spending in real-time
Social media advertising allows you to understand what’s working quickly and tweak your campaigns based on feedback. This can minimize learning costs — especially compared to traditional advertising.
Most social media platforms also allow you to start advertising spend at a minimal amount and scale as you learn more. This flexibility also helps when you want to adjust the spending on social ads depending on season, budget, etc.
3. In-depth analytics
It’s hard to prove the impact of your organic social media marketing efforts. But in social media ads, you can easily calculate your return on investment (ROI) to report and improve your campaigns.
4. Flexible formats
Most social media platforms offer various ad formats so you can choose the one you’re most comfortable with and spend money on high-ROI media types.
5. Bypass the algorithm
Social media ads allow you to bypass the algorithm by blending into your audience’s feed and building awareness more quickly than you would with organic social media marketing alone.
If that wasn’t enough to convince you, these social media advertising stats speak for themselves:
74% of marketers say they find social media advertising effective.
The biggest obstacle to social media advertising for marketers is the lack of understanding of the investment required. The next section will help you understand the budget you need to start running ads on social networks.
How much does social media advertising cost?
According to a study by WebFX, marketers spend anywhere between $850 to $2,000 per month on social media advertising. This is 11–25% of their overall digital advertising budget.
How much you will spend on running, optimising, and managing social media ads depends on the following factors:
Ad format and placement: Different ad formats are priced differently depending on how much they engage the audience. Video ads and interactive ads cost more than image ads, for instance. Similarly, many social media platforms also adjust prices depending on where you place your ads (feed, stories, search results, etc.)
Industry: If you’re in a competitive industry or a small niche, you might need more precise audience targeting — inflating the costs.
Campaign objective: Social media platforms let you choose different campaign objectives — each of which are priced differently. Awareness campaigns might cost less because they focus on impressions, for instance, while sales campaigns will cost more because they entice users to take action.
Bidding model: There are various bidding strategies (target cost bids, bid caps, etc.) that affect how much money you can invest in a social media advertising campaign.
Seasonality: Social media advertising costs rise during holidays and peak shopping seasons like Black Friday.
External talent: If you’re partnering with influencers or creating user-generated content with the help of creators to run social media ads, the cost you pay to them is also coming from your advertising budget.
Platforms: Social media ad costs fluctuate based on the platform. The same WebFX study also found the average cost per click (CPC), cost per mille (CPM/thousand impressions), and cost per engagement (CPE) across Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter (now X), and Pinterest.
Ultimately, most platforms offer a lot of flexibility to social media advertisers — so you don’t need a large ad budget to start. Begin with what you can and scale as you learn more.
But you can’t just begin anywhere — you have to be on the right social media platforms.
How audience demographics influence social media advertising
You should advertise on channels where your target audience is present and active. Here’s a quick summary of various social media platforms for each generation, according to a report by GWI.
The social network(s) where you’re the most successful in organic social media marketing is likely also the best place for your social media ads. If you’re already active on Instagram and have gained a following there, your Instagram ads might be a better place to kickstart your social media advertising efforts than YouTube.
The reason: When you’ve already tested a social media network in the organic environment, you’re more likely to find your target audience there (that’s why you chose it in the first place!) and you also have a feel for the platform and can better guess what kind of ads work there.
How to form your social media advertising strategy in 5 steps
No matter which social media platforms you choose, the foundations of your advertising strategy will remain the same. Here’s a step-by-step guide:
1. Thoroughly define and understand your target audience
Precise audience targeting is crucial because you don’t want to waste your ad spend on social media users who don’t match your potential customers. That’s not the right audience for your advertisements.
If you’re doing any kind of digital marketing, you already have a rough idea of your ideal customer persona.
All social media channels will ask you to choose your target audience for advertising campaigns. You can get as specific as possible. In Facebook ads, for instance, you can choose location, age, gender, interests, behavior, and languages.
An example of Meta’s audience targeting options
If you’re unsure if your audience targeting is accurate, match it with your customer personas and/or people you reach using organic social media marketing.
2. Set goals for your social media advertising efforts
Your social media ads should work to achieve your business objectives. Zoom out and understand your current business goals and design your advertising campaigns to contribute positively toward that larger goal.
If you aren’t 100% clear on your ultimate business goals, it’s going to be difficult to choose the right social media networks, ad objectives, and even design the best ad creatives.
Once you get the hang of things and start scaling your advertising efforts, you can also set specific goal metrics for your social media ads.
3. Decide on your bidding strategy and budget
There are various bidding strategies, such as bid cap, cost cap, highest volume, and more. They vary based on the platform and your campaign goals.
Before you dip your toes into social media ads, learn about the various bidding strategies and when they’re best to use. It’s going to be a little complicated and will require some trial-and-error, but knowing the basics of how each bidding tactic works will reduce the overwhelm and help you think more strategically.
Your bidding tactic will also depend on your budget — so know how much you’re willing to assign to ad spend before deciding on a bidding strategy.
4. Analyze ad campaign performance to improve
All social media platforms give excellent ad campaign insights to help you understand which ad was the most cost-effective, which ad creative performs the best, and which ads gave you the highest ROI. Monitor your ad performance regularly to improve fast.
Remember, though, that it takes some time for social media advertising and bidding strategies (especially if you’ve switched from one to another) to show results. Give breathing room to your social ad campaigns, but always keep an eye on the numbers.
5. Integrate with overall marketing campaigns
Social media ads work best in harmony with your overall marketing efforts. Use your organic social media presence to guide your advertisements and vice-versa.
And it’s not limited to social networks — you can use your social media ads to track the full customer journey and use the insights you get from your advertising efforts in other marketing avenues. For example, if you tested an offer on one of your social ads and found great success, you can run the same promotion in email campaigns.
3 (shared) components of social media advertising
Each social media network has different ad types, objectives, audience targeting options, and unique features. But if you take a bird’s-eye view, there are a few common elements across the most popular social media platforms — even if the nitty-gritty inside each of these pointers might differ a bit. Here are three of them and what they mean.
1. Campaign objectives
In social media advertising, you have to design your ads in specific campaigns and each ad campaign has to have an objective — even if you’re running an always-on campaign. Primarily, there are three types of campaign objectives:
Awareness. Choose this objective when your goal is to reach as many new people in your target audience as possible.
Consideration. This objective is midway between awareness and conversions. Instead of just making people aware of your brand, you want them to interact with your business. Choose this objective when you want to boost website traffic, start conversations, or get people to register for an event.
Conversion. The last one’s for lead generation. When you want your social media advertising efforts to generate sales, go with this objective.
Different social platforms call these objectives with different names. In Instagram advertising, for example, the three core objectives are bifurcated into six categories — awareness, traffic, engagement, leads, app promotion, and sales.
Ad objective within Meta (for Facebook and Instagram).
Similarly, when running ads on LinkedIn, you’ll find these three primary objectives with options within them.
LinkedIn ad objectives
Choosing the right objective for your social media advertising campaigns is crucial because it influences ad designs, the data social platforms collect to report on campaign success, and budget decisions.
2. Various ad format options
Ad formats are the various content types you can choose from — images, videos, carousels, etc. Ad format options dictate the ad creatives you choose, and most social platforms offer various choices, allowing you to run ads with lots of freedom and creativity. Here are the most common options:
Image ads allow the use of visual media in your ad creatives. This can be user-generated content, reviews, text-based copy on a unique design, etc.
Video ads are the use of video content in your ads. All social platforms — even the text-based ones like LinkedIn and X — have options for video ads. But on video-only channels like YouTube, the options are more intricate. For example, in YouTube advertising, you can choose to place your video ad at the start, middle, or end of the video, and also in the recommendation section.
Carousel ads are like carousel posts — you display various images or video ads in a slideshow-style format. Carousel ads are great because you can mix different types of creatives (image and video) and make your ads more interactive.
Collection ads are similar to carousel ads, where you can show various images and video ads. But where collection ads differ is it also embeds your product catalog into the ad — so your target audience can directly purchase your product without ever leaving the platform.
Story ads are vertical, full-screen ads placed inside the stories section on various social platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat. Story ads can be vertical video ads or image ads.
Dynamic ads are highly personalized ads where the display is tailored to the viewer. For example, your Facebook ads can show the product catalog a potential customer has already seen on your website. You need to connect your online store and/or website to the social channel to see success with dynamic ads.
These various ad format options are important to understand so you can design creatives to match them. As a platform’s feature set evolves, the ad format options expand, too. Experiment with various formats to understand which works the best for different campaigns.
3. Audience targeting
Social media advertising ensures you bypass the algorithm and reach your target audience. All social media platforms allow you to really hone in on your ideal demographic for every campaign.
The exact audience targeting options differ based on the channel. On LinkedIn ads, for example, you can select job experience, company, education, demographics, interests, and traits. For each of these options, you can get more specific — for example, you can choose to target people working in companies with over 100 employees.
LinkedIn audience targeting options
But for Instagram ads, the job options are absent because it isn’t a career-driven platform. Instead, you see options for location, age, gender, and interests.
Audience targeting is one of the most crucial aspects of running social media advertising campaigns. Many social channels offer suggestions to broaden your target audience and let them make use of their machine learning to help you reach more of the right people.
If you’ve connected your website to ad managers, you can also reach a much more accurate subset of your target audience by allowing social networks to access the demographics and behaviors of your website visitors.
Now that you’ve learned the various elements inside the ad managers of social media platforms, the following section will help you choose the right network(s) for your needs.
Which social media platform should I advertise on?
Here’s a quick guide to the pros, cons, and costs of major social media platforms to help you pick the best network for your ads.
Facebook ads
You can run Facebook ads in the Meta Ads Manager. The average cost of Facebook advertising is as follows:
Average cost per click (CPC): $0.26–$0.50
Average cost per mille, aka 1,000 impressions (CPM): $1.01–$3.00
Average cost per like (CPL): $0.00–$0.25
Average cost per download (CPD): $0.00–$5.00
Facebook ads are one of the most popular choices of social media advertising — especially for DTC businesses. Here’s an honest look at its pros and cons:
Pros of Facebook ads
Cons of Facebook ads
2.9 billion monthly active users — most popular social media platform worldwide
Facebook ads require a minimum seven-day budget for its advertising campaigns
Diverse ad formats, including collection ads, shopping ads, and more
High competition drives up ad costs — especially in popular industries
Advanced targeting capabilities to reach your target audience
Using Meta ads manager can take time and resources
Overall, Facebook ads are a great choice for DTC businesses — especially if they’re already seeing organic success on the platform. Compared to other social media platforms, Facebook is a great network to begin your social media advertising endeavours.
It’s more cost-effective than other channels (like Google ads), it has excellent targeting capabilities, and learning the Meta Ads Manager is also useful if you plan to dabble in Instagram advertising in the future.
Ads on Instagram are also run inside Meta. Here’s the average cost of Instagram advertising:
Average CPC: $0.00–$0.25
Average CPM: $0.00–$4.00
Average CPE: $0.03–$0.08
Instagram ads are highly visual and often influencer-driven — I’ve personally purchased so many items from ads on my Instagram compared to any other social media platform. Here’s a microscopic view of Instagram’s pros and cons for advertising:
Pros of Instagram ads
Cons of Instagram ads
Built-in ecommerce features in ads allow people to purchase from Instagram ads directly without ever leaving the app
CPMs cost more than a few other social networks, like Facebook
Access to Meta’s strong targeting capabilities
Some advanced targeting options aren’t available for Instagram campaigns (yet)
Various placement options — feed, stories, explore, reels, and more
Instagram has a strong visual focus, which can be limiting for certain brands
Instagram is a highly visual platform that allows for lots of creativity in aesthetics. But if you aren’t strong in the visual ad quality and storytelling department, you might find the platform’s advertising options limiting.
You need a high budget to start and scale TikTok advertising
TikTok ads are excellent for partnering with influencers — they blend in the feed seamlessly
Video ads work best on TikTok, which can be limiting in ad formats
Unique options like Spark Ads and TikTok Shop Ads
Targeting features aren’t as advanced as Meta
Overall, I wouldn’t suggest beginning your social media advertising journey with TikTok, but you can definitely upgrade to it once you’ve gained some organic wins and run ads on other social channels like Facebook or Instagram.
LinkedIn ads are some of the most expensive in the social media world. Here’s the average cost of running them:
Average CPC: $2.00–$3.00
Average CPM: $5.01–$8.00
Average CPS (S stands for sends for sponsored InMail campaigns): $0.26–$0.50
LinkedIn is mostly suited when you want to run ads for professionals. It doesn’t have a large audience base like Facebook, but it’s more targeted. Here are the pros and cons of LinkedIn advertising:
Pros of LinkedIn ads
Cons of LinkedIn ads
Perfect for targeting professionals — audience selection capabilities cater to it
Need a minimum daily budget of $10 and a minimum lifetime budget of $100
Each lead will probably be worth more than the leads you get via other social media networks
You require more budget to run ads on LinkedIn compared to Facebook or Instagram
The ad manager is comparatively easier to use, even as a beginner
Limited ad options (but it does include text ads, too)
Overall, LinkedIn advertising is perfect for you if you have customers in the B2B space. Despite a smaller audience size and higher costs, LinkedIn offers a more targeted environment to reach your potential customers (if they’re professionals).
YouTube ads
The average cost per view for YouTube ads is $0.31–$0.40.
Like TikTok, YouTube advertising is also all about video ads. Here are the pros and cons of running YouTube ads:
People can skip your ads after a few seconds (except bumper ads, which are unskippable)
Various options for ad placements — beginning, end, middle of the video
Video ads typically take longer to create and edit
Detailed metrics on ad performance that are easy to understand
Lack of control over the accompanying video with your ad (it might be irrelevant)
Advertising on YouTube is an excellent option if you have a video-first social strategy and want to reach more people at a lower cost compared to TikTok.
Excellent channel for running time-sensitive ads centering trending topics
Smaller user base compared to Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube
Less competition compared to other social media channels
Active users of X don’t usually come to the platform for buying (especially compared to TikTok or Instagram)
X has been in some controversy since Musk’s takeover — which has definitely impacted ad spending on the platform. I’d recommend experimenting with a few X ads first and then dedicating a larger budget if you see success.
Many X alternatives are also launching (or have already launched) ads like Threads and Bluesky. Consider them for your advertising, too.
Pinterest ads
Pinterest ads are an untapped opportunity — especially for visual, DTC brands. Here’s how much they cost:
Average CPC: $0.00–$0.10
Average CPM: $0.00–$1.50
Average cost per conversion: $0.00–$.200
Here are the pros and cons of running Pinterest ads:
Pros of Pinterest ads
Cons of Pinterest ads
Users often come to Pinterest in active search to buy new products
E-commerce features like shopping ads and product pins can help boost conversions
Heavy concentration in niche categories like food, decor, fashion may not work well for all industries
Lower competition compared to Meta and TikTok
Different than other channels, so there might be a slight learning curve
I’d suggest going for Pinterest advertising if you’re already active with organic efforts on the platform and belong in Pinterest-friendly industries like home decor, food, fashion, etc. It’s not great for B2B or tech industries.
Hopefully, now you have a solid idea of which social channel is best to begin with for your advertising efforts. The following section will share the top social media advertising tips to ace your paid campaigns.
5 social media advertising pro tips
The above sections helped you understand how social platforms structure ads and which ones are best suited to meet your goals. Here are a few parting pro tips to design better social ad campaigns:
1. Show real people using your product in social media ads
Social media ads aren’t like traditional banner ads, where you need a celebrity to endorse your products and gain credibility. In fact, people prefer to see real people using your products on social media. Use influencer and user-generated content to make your ads blend into the social media feed and make them more relatable.
2. Test, test, and test some more
Social channels provide lots of options to run A/B tests that you can use to test one ad creative against another, switch ad copy, and experiment with ad placements in different places. Run lots of tests on the same ad to understand what clicks with buyers and double down on it. Bake testing and experimentation into your advertising strategy.
3. Begin your advertising efforts with one channel
If you’ve been all about organic social media marketing up until now, dive into the paid ads world slowly. Begin by boosting your most successful posts (platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and LinkedIn allow this) and slowly dip your toes into designing a whole campaign from scratch. Don’t begin with multiple platforms at once. Go slow and steady to achieve a positive ROI.
4. Think mobile-first
While many social media apps are launching desktop apps and improving their browser versions, many internet users use social media on their mobile devices. Keep this in mind when you’re designing your ads — you don’t want a part of your ad to be cut off because you didn’t create it to fit into a smartphone. Almost all social channels also offer previews of your ads on different devices — use this feature to ensure your ads look great on mobile.
5. Hit on your audience’s pain points with your ad copy
Your ad copy is just as crucial as the creative — it should speak to your potential buyers. Speak in their language to talk about their pain points and also make use of copywriting formulas and hooks to pique their interest.
Ads shine when organic content is solid
Social media advertising doesn’t have to be intimidating or expensive. When you have clear goals, a well-designed ad structure, and excellent creative, you can use ads to complement your organic efforts. Ads work best when they’re built on top of a consistent, organic social media presence.
And to manage your organic social media, use tools like Buffer — it’ll help you automate the admin stuff like planning and posting so you can focus more on understanding your audience and refining your social strategy.
✨ From planning and scheduling to tracking what’s performing, Buffer helps you strengthen your organic strategy so your ads (when you do run them) have an even bigger impact. Sign up to Buffer for free today.
Raise your hand if you’ve ever bought something you saw in a social media ad. Looking at you, my favorite lamp, candle, timer, and headphones (um, yeah, I might have a problem). 🙋♀️
I’m far from alone: 43% of participants in a Disqo survey said they’ve purchased a product they saw in a social media advertisement. This hefty number makes sense — their product of choice was likely targeted directly at them.
Social media advertising can be an excellent way to reach more people with more precision than organic marketing allows.
But if you’ve not run social media advertising campaigns before, it can be challenging to figure out which platforms you should invest in, what kind of ads you should run, and how much money you need to begin.
In this article, we’ll cover everything from what social media advertising is to how you can start running ads on social and how to make the most of your investment.
What is social media advertising?
Social media advertising is a digital marketing strategy where you use ads on social media platforms to reach your target demographics. Think of the posts that appear on your feed with a “sponsored” label.
Instead of relying on algorithms to push your posts in front of the right people, social media advertising gives you back the control to bypass the algorithm and reach your target audience directly using paid ads.
Social media ads are a great addition to your organic social media marketing strategy. In fact, your organic marketing can help you understand what your audience loves — by extension, helping you improve your social media advertising efforts.
5 benefits of social media advertising
Should you consider running ads on social media? If you have the budget, a carefully crafted social media advertising strategy can go a long way. Here are its top five benefits:
1. Reach more of the right people
Social media ads don’t just expand your reach, they allow you to target your potential customers with accuracy — you can choose demographics, user behavior, location, and more. Advanced social media advertising tactics even include retargeting people who’ve already interacted with your website or social media posts!
2. Adjust your spending in real-time
Social media advertising allows you to understand what’s working quickly and tweak your campaigns based on feedback. This can minimize learning costs — especially compared to traditional advertising.
Most social media platforms also allow you to start advertising spend at a minimal amount and scale as you learn more. This flexibility also helps when you want to adjust the spending on social ads depending on season, budget, etc.
3. In-depth analytics
It’s hard to prove the impact of your organic social media marketing efforts. But in social media ads, you can easily calculate your return on investment (ROI) to report and improve your campaigns.
4. Flexible formats
Most social media platforms offer various ad formats so you can choose the one you’re most comfortable with and spend money on high-ROI media types.
5. Bypass the algorithm
Social media ads allow you to bypass the algorithm by blending into your audience’s feed and building awareness more quickly than you would with organic social media marketing alone.
If that wasn’t enough to convince you, these social media advertising stats speak for themselves:
74% of marketers say they find social media advertising effective.
The biggest obstacle to social media advertising for marketers is the lack of understanding of the investment required. The next section will help you understand the budget you need to start running ads on social networks.
How much does social media advertising cost?
According to a study by WebFX, marketers spend anywhere between $850 to $2,000 per month on social media advertising. This is 11–25% of their overall digital advertising budget.
How much you will spend on running, optimising, and managing social media ads depends on the following factors:
Ad format and placement: Different ad formats are priced differently depending on how much they engage the audience. Video ads and interactive ads cost more than image ads, for instance. Similarly, many social media platforms also adjust prices depending on where you place your ads (feed, stories, search results, etc.)
Industry: If you’re in a competitive industry or a small niche, you might need more precise audience targeting — inflating the costs.
Campaign objective: Social media platforms let you choose different campaign objectives — each of which are priced differently. Awareness campaigns might cost less because they focus on impressions, for instance, while sales campaigns will cost more because they entice users to take action.
Bidding model: There are various bidding strategies (target cost bids, bid caps, etc.) that affect how much money you can invest in a social media advertising campaign.
Seasonality: Social media advertising costs rise during holidays and peak shopping seasons like Black Friday.
External talent: If you’re partnering with influencers or creating user-generated content with the help of creators to run social media ads, the cost you pay to them is also coming from your advertising budget.
Platforms: Social media ad costs fluctuate based on the platform. The same WebFX study also found the average cost per click (CPC), cost per mille (CPM/thousand impressions), and cost per engagement (CPE) across Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter (now X), and Pinterest.
Ultimately, most platforms offer a lot of flexibility to social media advertisers — so you don’t need a large ad budget to start. Begin with what you can and scale as you learn more.
But you can’t just begin anywhere — you have to be on the right social media platforms.
How audience demographics influence social media advertising
You should advertise on channels where your target audience is present and active. Here’s a quick summary of various social media platforms for each generation, according to a report by GWI.
The social network(s) where you’re the most successful in organic social media marketing is likely also the best place for your social media ads. If you’re already active on Instagram and have gained a following there, your Instagram ads might be a better place to kickstart your social media advertising efforts than YouTube.
The reason: When you’ve already tested a social media network in the organic environment, you’re more likely to find your target audience there (that’s why you chose it in the first place!) and you also have a feel for the platform and can better guess what kind of ads work there.
How to form your social media advertising strategy in 5 steps
No matter which social media platforms you choose, the foundations of your advertising strategy will remain the same. Here’s a step-by-step guide:
1. Thoroughly define and understand your target audience
Precise audience targeting is crucial because you don’t want to waste your ad spend on social media users who don’t match your potential customers. That’s not the right audience for your advertisements.
If you’re doing any kind of digital marketing, you already have a rough idea of your ideal customer persona.
All social media channels will ask you to choose your target audience for advertising campaigns. You can get as specific as possible. In Facebook ads, for instance, you can choose location, age, gender, interests, behavior, and languages.
An example of Meta’s audience targeting options
If you’re unsure if your audience targeting is accurate, match it with your customer personas and/or people you reach using organic social media marketing.
2. Set goals for your social media advertising efforts
Your social media ads should work to achieve your business objectives. Zoom out and understand your current business goals and design your advertising campaigns to contribute positively toward that larger goal.
If you aren’t 100% clear on your ultimate business goals, it’s going to be difficult to choose the right social media networks, ad objectives, and even design the best ad creatives.
Once you get the hang of things and start scaling your advertising efforts, you can also set specific goal metrics for your social media ads.
3. Decide on your bidding strategy and budget
There are various bidding strategies, such as bid cap, cost cap, highest volume, and more. They vary based on the platform and your campaign goals.
Before you dip your toes into social media ads, learn about the various bidding strategies and when they’re best to use. It’s going to be a little complicated and will require some trial-and-error, but knowing the basics of how each bidding tactic works will reduce the overwhelm and help you think more strategically.
Your bidding tactic will also depend on your budget — so know how much you’re willing to assign to ad spend before deciding on a bidding strategy.
4. Analyze ad campaign performance to improve
All social media platforms give excellent ad campaign insights to help you understand which ad was the most cost-effective, which ad creative performs the best, and which ads gave you the highest ROI. Monitor your ad performance regularly to improve fast.
Remember, though, that it takes some time for social media advertising and bidding strategies (especially if you’ve switched from one to another) to show results. Give breathing room to your social ad campaigns, but always keep an eye on the numbers.
5. Integrate with overall marketing campaigns
Social media ads work best in harmony with your overall marketing efforts. Use your organic social media presence to guide your advertisements and vice-versa.
And it’s not limited to social networks — you can use your social media ads to track the full customer journey and use the insights you get from your advertising efforts in other marketing avenues. For example, if you tested an offer on one of your social ads and found great success, you can run the same promotion in email campaigns.
3 (shared) components of social media advertising
Each social media network has different ad types, objectives, audience targeting options, and unique features. But if you take a bird’s-eye view, there are a few common elements across the most popular social media platforms — even if the nitty-gritty inside each of these pointers might differ a bit. Here are three of them and what they mean.
1. Campaign objectives
In social media advertising, you have to design your ads in specific campaigns and each ad campaign has to have an objective — even if you’re running an always-on campaign. Primarily, there are three types of campaign objectives:
Awareness. Choose this objective when your goal is to reach as many new people in your target audience as possible.
Consideration. This objective is midway between awareness and conversions. Instead of just making people aware of your brand, you want them to interact with your business. Choose this objective when you want to boost website traffic, start conversations, or get people to register for an event.
Conversion. The last one’s for lead generation. When you want your social media advertising efforts to generate sales, go with this objective.
Different social platforms call these objectives with different names. In Instagram advertising, for example, the three core objectives are bifurcated into six categories — awareness, traffic, engagement, leads, app promotion, and sales.
Ad objective within Meta (for Facebook and Instagram).
Similarly, when running ads on LinkedIn, you’ll find these three primary objectives with options within them.
LinkedIn ad objectives
Choosing the right objective for your social media advertising campaigns is crucial because it influences ad designs, the data social platforms collect to report on campaign success, and budget decisions.
2. Various ad format options
Ad formats are the various content types you can choose from — images, videos, carousels, etc. Ad format options dictate the ad creatives you choose, and most social platforms offer various choices, allowing you to run ads with lots of freedom and creativity. Here are the most common options:
Image ads allow the use of visual media in your ad creatives. This can be user-generated content, reviews, text-based copy on a unique design, etc.
Video ads are the use of video content in your ads. All social platforms — even the text-based ones like LinkedIn and X — have options for video ads. But on video-only channels like YouTube, the options are more intricate. For example, in YouTube advertising, you can choose to place your video ad at the start, middle, or end of the video, and also in the recommendation section.
Carousel ads are like carousel posts — you display various images or video ads in a slideshow-style format. Carousel ads are great because you can mix different types of creatives (image and video) and make your ads more interactive.
Collection ads are similar to carousel ads, where you can show various images and video ads. But where collection ads differ is it also embeds your product catalog into the ad — so your target audience can directly purchase your product without ever leaving the platform.
Story ads are vertical, full-screen ads placed inside the stories section on various social platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat. Story ads can be vertical video ads or image ads.
Dynamic ads are highly personalized ads where the display is tailored to the viewer. For example, your Facebook ads can show the product catalog a potential customer has already seen on your website. You need to connect your online store and/or website to the social channel to see success with dynamic ads.
These various ad format options are important to understand so you can design creatives to match them. As a platform’s feature set evolves, the ad format options expand, too. Experiment with various formats to understand which works the best for different campaigns.
3. Audience targeting
Social media advertising ensures you bypass the algorithm and reach your target audience. All social media platforms allow you to really hone in on your ideal demographic for every campaign.
The exact audience targeting options differ based on the channel. On LinkedIn ads, for example, you can select job experience, company, education, demographics, interests, and traits. For each of these options, you can get more specific — for example, you can choose to target people working in companies with over 100 employees.
LinkedIn audience targeting options
But for Instagram ads, the job options are absent because it isn’t a career-driven platform. Instead, you see options for location, age, gender, and interests.
Audience targeting is one of the most crucial aspects of running social media advertising campaigns. Many social channels offer suggestions to broaden your target audience and let them make use of their machine learning to help you reach more of the right people.
If you’ve connected your website to ad managers, you can also reach a much more accurate subset of your target audience by allowing social networks to access the demographics and behaviors of your website visitors.
Now that you’ve learned the various elements inside the ad managers of social media platforms, the following section will help you choose the right network(s) for your needs.
Which social media platform should I advertise on?
Here’s a quick guide to the pros, cons, and costs of major social media platforms to help you pick the best network for your ads.
Facebook ads
You can run Facebook ads in the Meta Ads Manager. The average cost of Facebook advertising is as follows:
Average cost per click (CPC): $0.26–$0.50
Average cost per mille, aka 1,000 impressions (CPM): $1.01–$3.00
Average cost per like (CPL): $0.00–$0.25
Average cost per download (CPD): $0.00–$5.00
Facebook ads are one of the most popular choices of social media advertising — especially for DTC businesses. Here’s an honest look at its pros and cons:
Pros of Facebook ads
Cons of Facebook ads
2.9 billion monthly active users — most popular social media platform worldwide
Facebook ads require a minimum seven-day budget for its advertising campaigns
Diverse ad formats, including collection ads, shopping ads, and more
High competition drives up ad costs — especially in popular industries
Advanced targeting capabilities to reach your target audience
Using Meta ads manager can take time and resources
Overall, Facebook ads are a great choice for DTC businesses — especially if they’re already seeing organic success on the platform. Compared to other social media platforms, Facebook is a great network to begin your social media advertising endeavours.
It’s more cost-effective than other channels (like Google ads), it has excellent targeting capabilities, and learning the Meta Ads Manager is also useful if you plan to dabble in Instagram advertising in the future.
Ads on Instagram are also run inside Meta. Here’s the average cost of Instagram advertising:
Average CPC: $0.00–$0.25
Average CPM: $0.00–$4.00
Average CPE: $0.03–$0.08
Instagram ads are highly visual and often influencer-driven — I’ve personally purchased so many items from ads on my Instagram compared to any other social media platform. Here’s a microscopic view of Instagram’s pros and cons for advertising:
Pros of Instagram ads
Cons of Instagram ads
Built-in ecommerce features in ads allow people to purchase from Instagram ads directly without ever leaving the app
CPMs cost more than a few other social networks, like Facebook
Access to Meta’s strong targeting capabilities
Some advanced targeting options aren’t available for Instagram campaigns (yet)
Various placement options — feed, stories, explore, reels, and more
Instagram has a strong visual focus, which can be limiting for certain brands
Instagram is a highly visual platform that allows for lots of creativity in aesthetics. But if you aren’t strong in the visual ad quality and storytelling department, you might find the platform’s advertising options limiting.
You need a high budget to start and scale TikTok advertising
TikTok ads are excellent for partnering with influencers — they blend in the feed seamlessly
Video ads work best on TikTok, which can be limiting in ad formats
Unique options like Spark Ads and TikTok Shop Ads
Targeting features aren’t as advanced as Meta
Overall, I wouldn’t suggest beginning your social media advertising journey with TikTok, but you can definitely upgrade to it once you’ve gained some organic wins and run ads on other social channels like Facebook or Instagram.
LinkedIn ads are some of the most expensive in the social media world. Here’s the average cost of running them:
Average CPC: $2.00–$3.00
Average CPM: $5.01–$8.00
Average CPS (S stands for sends for sponsored InMail campaigns): $0.26–$0.50
LinkedIn is mostly suited when you want to run ads for professionals. It doesn’t have a large audience base like Facebook, but it’s more targeted. Here are the pros and cons of LinkedIn advertising:
Pros of LinkedIn ads
Cons of LinkedIn ads
Perfect for targeting professionals — audience selection capabilities cater to it
Need a minimum daily budget of $10 and a minimum lifetime budget of $100
Each lead will probably be worth more than the leads you get via other social media networks
You require more budget to run ads on LinkedIn compared to Facebook or Instagram
The ad manager is comparatively easier to use, even as a beginner
Limited ad options (but it does include text ads, too)
Overall, LinkedIn advertising is perfect for you if you have customers in the B2B space. Despite a smaller audience size and higher costs, LinkedIn offers a more targeted environment to reach your potential customers (if they’re professionals).
YouTube ads
The average cost per view for YouTube ads is $0.31–$0.40.
Like TikTok, YouTube advertising is also all about video ads. Here are the pros and cons of running YouTube ads:
People can skip your ads after a few seconds (except bumper ads, which are unskippable)
Various options for ad placements — beginning, end, middle of the video
Video ads typically take longer to create and edit
Detailed metrics on ad performance that are easy to understand
Lack of control over the accompanying video with your ad (it might be irrelevant)
Advertising on YouTube is an excellent option if you have a video-first social strategy and want to reach more people at a lower cost compared to TikTok.
Excellent channel for running time-sensitive ads centering trending topics
Smaller user base compared to Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube
Less competition compared to other social media channels
Active users of X don’t usually come to the platform for buying (especially compared to TikTok or Instagram)
X has been in some controversy since Musk’s takeover — which has definitely impacted ad spending on the platform. I’d recommend experimenting with a few X ads first and then dedicating a larger budget if you see success.
Many X alternatives are also launching (or have already launched) ads like Threads and Bluesky. Consider them for your advertising, too.
Pinterest ads
Pinterest ads are an untapped opportunity — especially for visual, DTC brands. Here’s how much they cost:
Average CPC: $0.00–$0.10
Average CPM: $0.00–$1.50
Average cost per conversion: $0.00–$.200
Here are the pros and cons of running Pinterest ads:
Pros of Pinterest ads
Cons of Pinterest ads
Users often come to Pinterest in active search to buy new products
E-commerce features like shopping ads and product pins can help boost conversions
Heavy concentration in niche categories like food, decor, fashion may not work well for all industries
Lower competition compared to Meta and TikTok
Different than other channels, so there might be a slight learning curve
I’d suggest going for Pinterest advertising if you’re already active with organic efforts on the platform and belong in Pinterest-friendly industries like home decor, food, fashion, etc. It’s not great for B2B or tech industries.
Hopefully, now you have a solid idea of which social channel is best to begin with for your advertising efforts. The following section will share the top social media advertising tips to ace your paid campaigns.
5 social media advertising pro tips
The above sections helped you understand how social platforms structure ads and which ones are best suited to meet your goals. Here are a few parting pro tips to design better social ad campaigns:
1. Show real people using your product in social media ads
Social media ads aren’t like traditional banner ads, where you need a celebrity to endorse your products and gain credibility. In fact, people prefer to see real people using your products on social media. Use influencer and user-generated content to make your ads blend into the social media feed and make them more relatable.
2. Test, test, and test some more
Social channels provide lots of options to run A/B tests that you can use to test one ad creative against another, switch ad copy, and experiment with ad placements in different places. Run lots of tests on the same ad to understand what clicks with buyers and double down on it. Bake testing and experimentation into your advertising strategy.
3. Begin your advertising efforts with one channel
If you’ve been all about organic social media marketing up until now, dive into the paid ads world slowly. Begin by boosting your most successful posts (platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and LinkedIn allow this) and slowly dip your toes into designing a whole campaign from scratch. Don’t begin with multiple platforms at once. Go slow and steady to achieve a positive ROI.
4. Think mobile-first
While many social media apps are launching desktop apps and improving their browser versions, many internet users use social media on their mobile devices. Keep this in mind when you’re designing your ads — you don’t want a part of your ad to be cut off because you didn’t create it to fit into a smartphone. Almost all social channels also offer previews of your ads on different devices — use this feature to ensure your ads look great on mobile.
5. Hit on your audience’s pain points with your ad copy
Your ad copy is just as crucial as the creative — it should speak to your potential buyers. Speak in their language to talk about their pain points and also make use of copywriting formulas and hooks to pique their interest.
Ads shine when organic content is solid
Social media advertising doesn’t have to be intimidating or expensive. When you have clear goals, a well-designed ad structure, and excellent creative, you can use ads to complement your organic efforts. Ads work best when they’re built on top of a consistent, organic social media presence.
And to manage your organic social media, use tools like Buffer — it’ll help you automate the admin stuff like planning and posting so you can focus more on understanding your audience and refining your social strategy.
✨ From planning and scheduling to tracking what’s performing, Buffer helps you strengthen your organic strategy so your ads (when you do run them) have an even bigger impact. Sign up to Buffer for free today.
If you’ve noticed your organic traffic shrinking even though you’re ranking well, you’re not imagining it. AI-driven engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews are answering questions before people click any links.
Generative engine optimization is how you fix this. It’s the practice of shaping your content so these AI systems pull it into their responses. Instead of someone getting a generic AI answer, your brand becomes part of that answer.
I’ve watched too many marketers ignore this shift because their SEO dashboards still look decent. The real problem? Clicks are happening inside the answer box now. If you want to stay visible where decisions actually start, you need GEO working alongside your traditional SEO.
Key Takeaways
Generative engine optimization puts your brand in AI answers, making your content easier for AI platforms to find, understand, and cite.
Search is no longer just about website links. People are getting answers from AI summaries without ever clicking to a website.
Traditional SEO still matters, but it’s not enough. GEO works alongside SEO to keep you visible in both search results and AI-generated responses.
Early adopters win the visibility battle. The sooner you adapt, the better your chances of being a source AI engines trust.
GEO is a new skillset for marketers. GEO requires smart keyword usage, creating strong E-E-A-T signals, and producing content formats AI can process.
Generative Engine Optimization Definition
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is how you shape your content so AI-driven platforms can easily pull it into their answers. These platforms don’t work like Google’s ranking algorithm. They combine semantic search with large language models to generate responses, pulling from sources they trust. Instead of giving you a list of website links, they often just give you the answer.
That changes everything. You’re not just trying to rank high anymore. You need to be a source the AI engine chooses to include. GEO builds on SEO basics like clean site structure, strong topical authority, and keyword alignment, but adds a layer focused on how AI systems interpret and present your expertise.
Why Generative Engine Optimization Is Important
AI-driven results are now part of search. Google’s AI Overviews, Bing’s Copilot, and platforms like Perplexity deliver full answers right in the results. Users often don’t click anything.
Nearly 60% of U.S. and EU searches end without an external click, according to SparkToro’s 2024 zero-click study. For marketers, that means less traffic from rankings alone.
GEO gives you another path. Structure your content so AI platforms can cite it, and you still get visibility even if users never leave the results page. In a zero-click world, being part of the answer matters as much as being part of the rankings.
How To Implement Generative Engine Optimization
GEO isn’t a single tactic. You’re better served treating it as a set of evolving practices that make your content easier for AI engines to find, interpret, and use in their answers. Like SEO, it combines strategic content creation, technical optimization, and authority building.
The next sections break down the core areas to focus on, starting with brand authority and moving through technical and content-based strategies.
Build Brand Authority
AI engines pull answers from sources they trust. If they don’t know you or can’t verify your expertise, you’re less likely to get cited.
Start by making your author profiles work harder. Put a name and face to your content, and back it up with credentials or proof you’ve done the work. Use examples from your own experience, share data you’ve collected, and show insights that are hard to fake.
Don’t stay in your own bubble. Get your name and brand into respected publications in your industry. Offer quotes, share original stats, or write guest content for sites your audience already trusts. Our VP of SEO, Nikki Lam, for example, is a regular contributor to Search Engine Land.
The more these connections appear online, the stronger your authority signal becomes, and the better your odds of showing up in AI-driven answers.
Show experience by sharing real examples, case studies, and first-hand insights. Make your expertise visible with clear author attribution, relevant credentials, and links to other respected work you have done. Build authority through backlinks from reputable sites in your field. Strengthen trust by being transparent with tactics like using HTTPS, list contact information, and publish accurate, well-sourced data.
Treat E-E-A-T as a checklist for every piece of content you publish. While not a direct ranking factor, it consistently improves your chances of performing well and increases your chances of showing up in tomorrow’s AI-generated results.
Reinforcing Your Site’s Technical SEO
If search engines cannot crawl, index, and understand your site, AI engines will not either. Technical SEO is the backbone that supports both.
Keep your site fast. Optimize images, reduce unused code, and use a content delivery network (CDN) if you have a global audience. Make sure your site works well on mobile and passes Core Web Vitals benchmarks. Use a logical URL structure and internal linking, so important pages are easy to find.
Regularly run site audits to catch broken links, duplicate content, or indexing issues before they hurt your visibility. Tools like Google Search Console, Screaming Frog, and Ubersuggest can make this part easier. The cleaner your technical setup, the better your chances of being surfaced in both search results and AI-generated answers.
Write Like People Talk
AI search engines handle queries differently from traditional search engines. People type full questions, not just keywords, into AI searches. To match that, your content needs to read like a direct answer.
Use long-tail, conversational phrases that mirror how someone would ask the question out loud. Include common “who,” “what,” “where,” “when,” and “how” formats in your headings and subheadings. Break down complex answers into short, scannable sections so AI can easily extract them.
Skip the keyword stuffing. Focus on clarity and context instead. Your content should sound like something a real person would say. That makes it more likely to align with how AI models interpret and deliver answers.
Moving Beyond Text
AI engines do not just pull from written articles. They can reference videos, podcasts, and visual content when it adds value to the answer. That means your expertise should show up in multiple formats. Certain types of videos are more likely to get citations, as you can see from the example below.
Add original images, charts, and infographics to explain complex points visually. Short videos or audio clips that summarize key takeaways from your content are valuable as well, but there’s some added nuance here. Right now, AI isn’t listening to podcasts or watching videos. It extracts info through optimizations like meta data, alt text, structured data, and captions. When all that’s done, host them on platforms like YouTube or as embedded media on your site so they are easy for AI search engines to find, like the example below..
Diversifying your formats helps you reach audiences who prefer to watch or listen, and it gives AI more ways to surface your content. If you are only publishing text, you are leaving potential visibility on the table.
Use Digital PR to Build Expertise
Digital PR is one of the fastest ways to build the kind of authority AI engines look for. When trusted publications, influencers, or industry sites talk about your brand, those mentions strengthen your credibility.
Pitch guest articles or expert quotes to sites your audience already reads. Share original research or unique data that journalists can cite. Monitor platforms like HARO or Qwoted for opportunities to contribute insights on relevant topics.
The goal is consistent, high-quality mentions across the web. Over time, this builds a visible footprint of credibility that tells AI models your expertise is recognized beyond your own website, making you a stronger candidate for citation in generated answers.
Vary Content Distribution
AI tools do not only pull from traditional websites. They scan public content on forums, Q&A platforms, and social channels. If your brand shows up in those spaces, you give the engines more opportunities to connect your name to your expertise.
Join relevant discussions on platforms like Reddit, Quora, and niche industry forums. Share insights, answer questions, and link to deeper resources when it adds value. Repurpose your blog posts into short LinkedIn updates or Twitter threads so your ideas travel beyond your own site.
The more your expertise appears across different platforms, the more signals AI engines have to work with, and the more likely they are to surface your content in their answers.
GEO and Search Everywhere Optimization
Search is no longer confined to Google. People look for answers on social media, YouTube, forums via AI searches and more. Search Everywhere Optimization is about showing up in all of those places.
Map out the platforms your audience uses most, then adapt your content for each one. That could mean shorter video explainers for social, structured Q&A formats for forums, and well-formatted long-form articles for web search. The more channels you optimize for, the more resilient your visibility becomes. GEO extends this strategy by making your content easy for AI systems to cite.
The Future of GEO
Search is changing fast, and GEO is going to change with it. Here are three shifts you cannot ignore if you want to stay in front of your audience.
AI Mode in Google Google is testing AI Mode that gives people a complete AI-written answer before they ever see a list of website links. If this approach becomes permanent, those AI boxes will be the first thing people read — and if your brand is not in them, your visibility will shrink dramatically. To compete, you need content that is structured, well-sourced, and easy for Google’s systems to pull into those summaries.
Predictive and Multimodal Search Search is evolving to work ahead of the query. Predictive tools deliver answers based on a user’s behavior, location, and history. Multimodal search lets people combine text, images, and video into one request. To show up here, your content has to work in every format: clear copy, keyword-rich image descriptions, transcripts for videos, and structured data that connects it all together.
Voice and Visual Search More people are asking questions out loud to their phones or smart speakers. Others are pointing their camera at an object and letting a tool like Google Lens do the searching. To win here, you need natural, conversational answers for voice search and highly detailed, optimized, context-rich visuals for image search.
GEO is not standing still, and neither should you. Keep an eye on where people are searching, watch how AI answers are built, and adapt. The brands that move with the trend will keep showing up, no matter how search results evolve.
FAQs
What is generative engine optimization?
Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the process of creating and structuring content so AI-driven platforms, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews, can easily find, interpret, and cite it in their answers.
How is GEO different from SEO?
SEO focuses on improving rankings and visibility in traditional search results extends beyond that by targeting AI engines, ensuring your content appears in AI-generated answers.
Do I need to change my existing SEO strategy for GEO?
Not entirely. GEO builds on a strong SEO foundation. If your technical SEO, site structure, and content quality are already solid, the next step is formatting and distributing content in ways that AI systems can process and trust.
What types of content work best for GEO?
Clear, well-structured, and factually accurate content that answers specific questions tends to work best. Adding supporting data, original research, and multimedia formats can increase your chances of being cited.
How can I track GEO performance?
Tools in this area are still emerging. Some companies, like Profound, have technology specifically to help brands measure performance in LLMs and AI search. Additionally, there are traditional SEO tools that are expanding their capabilities. For example, Semrush now reports on AI Overview rankings in addition to standard SERP results.
Conclusion
GEO isn’t a “later” project. It’s already reshaping how people find information, and every month more searches are ending inside AI-generated answers. If your brand isn’t showing up there, you’re losing visibility you might not get back.
The shift is in how you present and distribute that expertise so AI engines can understand and trust it. That means stronger E-E-A-T signals, content in multiple formats, and a presence in the places your audience is asking questions.
You don’t have to overhaul everything at once. Start with your highest-value content, make it more AI-friendly, and track where it appears.
