Happy 2018 folks!!! Did you know that the top three New Year’s resolutions are: lose weight, enjoy life more, and save money?

Now, I may not be able to help you lose weight or live life to the fullest, BUT I do have some tips and tricks for how to spend your social media marketing budget to get the most out of it!

Carpet Bomb

Lorraine wrote a great blog on carpet bombing on Facebook, and how to use it. Essentially, you promote an original content video to Facebook users, based on their location only. Then, you can retarget a Facebook ad to individuals who watched your video for longer than 3 seconds.

One can assume that if someone saw the video, and actually watched it for an amount of time, they’re interested in your business and what you do.

BUT – here’s the best part – the cost of a 3 second view can be a little as 1 cent! This is a great technique for promoting your business to the masses, then retargeting a smaller audience that you know is interested in your company. It’s a great, cheap method for effective Facebook advertising.

Quality over Quantity

It’s no lie that LinkedIn advertising can be expensive. Furthermore, LinkedIn is NOT for every company – I hate to break it to you, but restaurants, boutiques, hair salons, and the like do not really need a LinkedIn company page. But if your company specializes in B2B, then LinkedIn is just *perfect* for you.

You’ll spend 10x as much on LinkedIn than on Facebook for the same results. That’s not necessarily a bad thing though.

When it comes to advertising on LinkedIn, think “quality over quantity.” The leads you’ll gain on LinkedIn are more likely to come to fruition than those from Facebook.

The most important thing is to know your LinkedIn audience and target them as specifically as you can. You can really dive into demographics on LinkedIn, so use that to your advantage!

Play by the Rules

Recently, Facebook began cracking down on posts that bait for likes, comments, and shares (i.e. “tag the biggest puppy fan you know!”).

Also, Facebook has always been very strict with their boosted photo guidelines. If you’re going to create a Facebook ad with an image, your graphic should not contain more than 20% text.

Lastly, both LinkedIn and Facebook are quite firm on their trademark infringement rules. If you’re going to use a stock image in your ad, spend the money to actually gain ownership of that photo, do NOT just pull a picture from a Google search. Otherwise, your ad probably won’t be approved, and you may get hit with a copyright fine.

Hire a Marketing Firm

Ok, yes, this is a bit of a shameless plug for Roundpeg. But hear me out!

As a small business owner, you have so many things to constantly focus on. Sometimes, your marketing could slip to the wayside, especially when it comes to digital marketing.

But your social media marketing is a vital part of your business!! It’s how people find you. Your competitors are using it, so you should be too!

Hiring a marketing firm can help to take a lot off your plate and give you more time to focus on sales, shipments, and your employees.  So focus on what you do and let us help you create your social media budget and marketing plan. We’re more than happy to do it (it’s our job).

We’re just a phone call away!