Social Media Advertising: 5 Key Tactics for Brand Success

Updated: May 20, 2025 9 min read

Agnė Pelešinaitė-Čeledinė

Editor

When it comes to promoting your business, there’s no denying that social media is one of your greatest assets. However, as opposed to simply updating your feed, you may find that you get better results through targeted social media advertising instead.

Let’s explore the key tactics and ideas on how to make your social media advertising strategy a success.

TL;DR

Social media advertising is one of the best ways to promote your brand to a wider audience and improve your bottom line.
Effective campaigns require a lot of time and effort in order to be successful.
Partnering with companies that offer social media advertising services promises both quality content and the best possible ROI.

What is social media advertising?

Social media advertising is a subset of digital marketing that involves promoting your products and services on social media, either organically or through paid ad placements. These adverts can appear in a variety of formats, from videos to infographics.

Organic social media advertising refers to posting content on your social media pages without paying for ad placements. This allows you to build a consistent brand identity and connect with your audience/followers.

Paid social media advertising refers to paying for your advertisements to be pushed onto the feeds of your target audience.

There are many benefits associated with social media advertising. For example, in a recent survey:

83% of marketers stated that it increases brand exposure
73% of marketers stated that it brought more traffic to their website
65% of marketers stated that it supports lead generation
62% of marketers stated that it helped them build a loyal fan base

As such, this is something that business owners should be willing to invest in heavily moving forward, especially as all of the above will contribute, in one way or another, to an improved bottom line.

Social media advertising platforms

There are numerous different platforms that you can utilize during your next social media campaigns. This includes Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), TikTok, LinkedIn and SnapChat.

While the majority of companies opt to push campaigns out across numerous platforms, you should make sure that you are doing so on platforms your target demographic actually uses. This makes it much easier to ensure that your ads appear on the screens of those who are most likely to interact with or engage with them.

Social media advertising workflow

Step One: Define your goals.

The first step toward curating a strong social media advertising campaign is defining your goals. For example, are you simply hoping to increase brand awareness and add to your following? Or, are you trying to increase sales and conversions?

Either way, having clear goals and targets in mind is crucial and will help you use the right measures.

Step Two: Define your audience.

You should also make sure that you clearly define your target demographic and audience. This will make it easier to target them through paid and organic content, based on a variety of factors, including their online behaviors.

Such specification will allow you to choose which platforms you’d like to use for your campaign.

Step Three: Set your budget.

Following this, it is time to set yourself a budget for each campaign. While you may be trying to cut costs, remember that this kind of campaigns have an excellent ROI.

Furthermore, there are plenty of steps that you can take to reduce social media advertising costs.

Step Four: Work on your ads.

Once you’ve dealt with the formalities listed above, you can start working on the ads themselves. Try to experiment with a range of different formats, so that you can figure out which kind of ad gets the best response from your audience. Here are some of the latest performance data for video ads on TikTok.

For example, they may respond best to UGC (user-generated content), as this makes your brand appear much more trustworthy.

Step Five: Launch your campaigns.

Following this, it is time to launch your campaigns. However, you should not consider your job to be done at this stage.

You need to regularly assess the performance of each ad, paying attention to factors such as conversions, click-through rates (CTR), impressions, reach, and overall engagement.

Best tactics for social media advertising

Tailor ads to specific social media platforms. You’ll get the best possible results from your campaigns by tailoring them for each specific platform. This is because users on each platform tend to engage with content in slightly different ways.
For example, LinkedIn is designed for long-form content, whereas TikTok users prefer short, informative content.
Create quality content for your social media. While you may use social media primarily as an advertising tool, users/followers will quickly become disengaged if you post nothing but ads on your feed.
As such, you should make sure that you’re posting a wide range of relevant content across your social media, which will help to monetize this platform.
Focus on social proof. Social proof refers to the way in which customers are compelled to spend money on products or services through the recommendation of others. This is because it makes a brand appear much more trustworthy.
Fortunately, there are many ways in which you can embed social proof into your content, such as by sharing reviews and testimonials.
Work with content creators. If you don’t know your tweets from your TikToks or feel as though you’re always behind on the trends, then you may want to consider working with a social media content creator during this time.
They’ll be able to create high-quality, impactful content on your behalf, which in turn, makes your campaigns much more effective.

SMA examples

Effective social media advertising campaigns come in a variety of formats.

For example, if you’re focusing on creating organic content for your social media, this could include posts that showcase your company’s expertise, such as tutorials on how to use products, or insights into the daily running of your company. This adds an extra layer of authority to your brand, which could allow you to see an uptick in engagement and conversions.

Paid advertisements can also come in a variety of formats. For example, you could post:

Image-based advertisements and infographics
Video content (long-form videos, reels, TikToks)
Carousel posts

Generally speaking, paid advertisements allow you to receive more immediate results than organic posting. However, using a combination of both will provide you with the best results moving forward.

Social media advertising benefits

As mentioned above, there are many benefits associated with launching advertising campaigns on social media. This includes:

Improved reach. With the average consumer spending 2 hours and 20 minutes on social media each day, paid ads are a great way to expand your reach. This is because they’ll send your content directly to your target demographic.
Improved brand awareness. Strengthening your online presence via social media will also increase brand awareness. Even if viewers aren’t actively clicking or engaging with your campaigns, they will gradually become more familiar with your brand through exposure. This can help you build a name for yourself within your industry.
Higher conversions. Pushing ads through social media platforms will also help with conversions and sales. As a result, money invested in these campaigns is typically money well-spent, with global ad spending increasing year-on-year.

Social media advertising services

If your social media experience is limited to posting a few blurry pics of your holiday each year, the chances are that you’re not sure where to even begin when it comes to launching an effective marketing or advertising campaign. This, in turn, makes it difficult to get the results you want.

Fortunately, there are many steps that you can take to remedy this that don’t require you to spend hours scrolling through TikTok trying to make sense of the latest trends (or learning the accompanying dances).

For example, you could work with companies such as Billo to create authentic, meaningful user-generated content (UGC) across numerous platforms, including TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram.

If you’d like to find out more about our services, please do not hesitate to get in touch today.

FAQs

What is social media advertising?

Social media advertising is a digital marketing strategy, referring to advertisements that are shared through social media platforms such as Facebook, u003ca class=u0022wpil_keyword_linku0022 href=u0022https://billo.app/instagram-user-generated-content/u0022 title=u0022Instagramu0022 data-wpil-keyword-link=u0022linkedu0022 data-wpil-replace=u0022u0022u003eInstagramu003c/au003e, Twitter and more. Adverts can appear in a variety of formats, from images to videos, all of which can drive engagement and sales.

Is social media advertising better than other forms of advertising?

Both digital and traditional marketing campaigns have their strengths and weaknesses. However, digital marketing (particularly through social media) is quickly becoming the strategy of choice, due to the fact that we spend so much time online. As such, it can be a great way to get the results you want, as quickly as possible.

Why should I advertise my brand on social media?

In the digital age, companies that do not promote their brand, products or services on social media are limiting their overall success. For example, u003ca href=u0022https://digitalmarketingmagazine.co.uk/social-media-marketing/3-out-of-4-consumers-consult-social-media-before-buying/1659#:~:text=The%20numbers%20are%20staggering%2C%2074,the%20brands%20they%20buy%20fromu0022 target=u0022_blanku0022 rel=u0022noreferrer noopeneru0022u003e3 out of 4 buyers consult social media before buying something newu003c/au003e, which means it can be a great way to improve your sales figures. Not only that, but it helps to establish credibility, especially when you are first starting out.

What social media platforms should I advertise on?

Generally speaking, it is worth posting advertisements across numerous social media platforms at once. This will allow you to extend your reach as far as possible, capturing the attention of your audience while doing so. However, you should also pay close attention to the platforms your audience/demographic use the most, and invest more heavily in advertisements on this specific platform.

What is the purpose of UCG when advertising?

Sharing UCG (u003ca class=u0022wpil_keyword_linku0022 href=u0022https://billo.app/why-ugc/u0022 title=u0022user-generated contentu0022 data-wpil-keyword-link=u0022linkedu0022 data-wpil-replace=u0022u0022u003euser-generated contentu003c/au003e) through advertising campaigns makes it easier for new customers to trust your brand. This is because they are receiving information about it from another consumer, rather than directly from your brand. u003cbru003eSimply put, it means that they don’t have to take your word for it when it comes to learning how great your products or services are.

How much does it cost to launch a social media advertising campaign?

The amount of money it will cost to launch a social media advertising campaign can vary depending on numerous factors. This includes: The platform(s) you’re working on, The nature of the ads themselves , Ad placement, and Duration of the campaign.

How often should I post advertisements on social media?

The number of advertisements you should share with your audience can also vary. For example, if they come across your ads (whether that’s organically or through paid models) u003cemu003etoou003c/emu003e often, it may begin to have the opposite of your intended effect. This is because they may feel bombarded or overwhelmed, or feel as though your campaign is too pushy. u003cbru003eThis is something to keep in mind moving forward, especially when uploading campaigns directly onto your social media feed. Remember, your company’s individual social media pages should be a reflection of your brand, not simply an endless page of advertisement after advertisement.

How do I know if a campaign is a success?

There are a variety of different ways in which you can assess the success of social media advertising campaigns. The first, and perhaps most obvious, is ROI – did the money you spent come back to you in the form of sales and conversions? u003cbru003eHowever, you may also want to pay attention to the way in which you’re building upon brand awareness. For example, while it may not always correlate in sales, you may find that you are receiving more engagement on your posts and that your follower count is growing. This will only mean great things for your business moving forward. u003cbru003eYou should regularly assess how each and every one of your campaigns is performing. This way, you know whether you need to increase or decrease spending in this field, or whether you need to go back to square one and rethink your campaigns.