Endless ways exist to create a perfect advertising campaign, and a perfect ad campaign for your business will not look like an ad campaign for any other. What perfect campaigns all have in common is that they supply enough touchpoints to create a full customer journey. 

Customers need numerous touchpoints before they're ready to make a purchase from your brand. They need to feel confident you understand their pain points and that your product will address them effectively. Integrating social media into your ad campaign ensures that it will cover the full buyer's journey.

Ad Campaigns and the Customer Journey

Your ads need to appeal at each stage of the buyer's journey. Understanding the stages of the customer journey is critical to creating an ad campaign that will reach across all stages and help guide customers to a sale. 

During the awareness stage, you might want to design an ad or video campaign that helps educate consumers about the problems they are facing. Those ads don't have to go into a great deal of detail about your company or your products. Rather, they should start to draw in consumers who might be interested in what you have to offer. 

During the consideration phase,  consumers are more interested in solutions. They want to know how those solutions can solve their problem--and you need to provide ads that address that question.

By the time consumers reach the decision stage, they have narrowed down the businesses they're considering. If they're still considering yours, you want to offer the extra reason that helps push them to take action in favor of your brand. 

Social Media Ads

Consumers spend an average of an hour and twenty-two minutes on social media each day. That means a lot of opportunities for you to connect with potential customers. Even better, many social media platforms, including Facebook, allow for a high degree of ad targeting. 

For example, Facebook allows you to choose goals that range from "awareness" to "consideration" and ultimately "conversion" goals. That means you can customize your ads specifically to the stage an individual is at in the buyer's journey. 

Social media also allows you to use a wide range of formats for your ads. You can use static images that show various pictures  of your products, and what they have to offer. Alternatively, you can show videos that evoke emotion and allow consumers to connect more directly. There is also a gallery feature that consumers can flip through to learn more about your offerings. If appropriate, you can even use lead generation forms which automatically input the prospect’s information.

The perfect combination of social media ad strategies will depend on your business’ marketing objective and target audience. Your presence on social media, however, makes a big difference for your business. Consumers are already on these platforms. Many of them are looking for opportunities for interaction. Social media ads can be perfectly tailored to fill in gaps in the customer journey--and to allow you to connect directly with interested prospects. 

Great ad campaigns also include retargeting--and social media easily offers that opportunity with pixels that can be used to help expose individuals to your brand multiple times. A consumer targeted on social can be retargeted outside of the social platform. Alternatively, once a consumer interacts with the website, they can be retargeted on social platforms. 

Social Media Marketing

In addition to ads, it's important to use your social media platforms as part of your overall marketing strategy. When you interact with customers, their followers get exposed to your brand and your products. It also allows for a higher degree of connection with individual consumers. 

Marketing goes far beyond the first sale, and social media offers a great opportunity to stay in touch with customers. Through social media, you can interact one-on-one with prospects and customers and create a deeper sense of connection with your brand. It's also a great complement to your existing marketing strategy. 

The core of social media marketing is regular posting on your platform with engaging content. The more consumers engage with your social media, the higher the visibility of your posts. It is also a great way to stay in touch with your current customers.

Social Media and Your Ad Campaign

Utilizing social media through ads or organic content posting, your business will appear in the places your prospects spend the most time. Social media marketing is a natural way to expand your reach, establish your brand, and nurture customers to become evangelists of your brand. By integrating social media into your ad campaign, you're better positioned to reach your goals and increase your ROI.