If you are a business that is considering running any social media ads, there are a few things you should be aware of before you reach out to an agency or freelancer!

I have been working with both B2B and B2C businesses for over 5 years now and have developed a checklist of things that businesses should have prepared and be aware of before getting involved with an agency.

1. Organic Social Media Activity

This might sound obvious, but you need to have your social media accounts set up – whether you are looking to advertise on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest or Snapchat, you need to ensure you have set up your business account. And on top of that, you need to have some active already established on these platforms organically.

What do I mean when I say this? You need to have posted some content on your page. It is always best to have some followers as well. What I am saying is it is not a good idea just to set up a business account to run ads. You need to be active on your platforms organically as this helps establish trust in future customers. Check out my blog for some content ideas!

2. Know Your Goals

Know your goals and what a good return on ad spend is for your company. I always request this information from my clients, but a lot of the time, they never really give me a good benchmark of what their target ROAS (return on ad spend) is. This is VERY important as it lets your agency know how much wiggle room they have to test new campaigns and strategies and when they need to leave campaigns alone!

3. Know Your Audience

An agency will not know as well as you do who your ideal audience is, and if you can give them a good idea, this will help them make better audiences and will help them think of an audience they maybe wouldn’t have otherwise. If you do not already have an ideal avatar of your ideal customer, request your agency to help you develop one, and work with them to ensure you are targeting the right people!

4. Have a Brand Kit

A brand kit is a document that has your companies fonts, colour codes, tone of voice examples and links to logos and other company images/videos

This is great to have on hand to send to designers, marketers and even new staff members. It is a simple way to ensure ad designs and copy stay on brand.

Having a brand kit will help your agency save time trying to figure out who your company is as a brand and help them when it comes to copy and creatives!

5. You Need CONTENT!

This is probably the most important. If you do not have the right ad content, then there is no point in running any. I am being fully honest. I have had clients that do not want to put the time and effort into their content, and it affects my ability to help them achieve their goals! Clients will come on board and say, “Ok, well, let’s just start with what we have (usually very basic images), and we will work on getting better content and video” … and then it NEVER happens!!

Content has always been important, but now with the new apple updates and tracking issues – content is even more important!!

If you are thinking of expanding your social media landscape into TikTok, then you need good content. All social media platforms are visual platforms, but TikTok especially is a video-based-only platform. People and companies are getting very creative with how they advertise and if you want to compete, you need to put in the effort!

Now you might be a smaller business that is thinking, “Well, great. I do not have the money to be making flashy video content” – You do not need to spend thousands of dollars on a commercial-type video! Do you have a good iPhone? Perfect! You can create some great content using your phone! Adobe offers a really easy video editing app called Adobe Rush, where you can add different video clips and chop them up! – There is also a free software called Canva you can use or even edit your videos within TikTok and use these as ads!

Creating ad content is about capturing your audience’s attention within the first 3 seconds. Think about your audience problem – and how your product or service solves this issue, then come up with an engaging way of demonstrating this via video!

6. Maintain Expectations

Lastly, you need to understand that social media differs from Google Ads. You must remember that within a marketing funnel, i.e. Email Marketing & Google Ads. Social media would be at the top of the marketing funnel. Social media targets a new audience who most likely has not heard of you. They have not searched for your company or product like others on Google Search. Thus, they are not as far down the purchasing funnel.

This is why social media need time and nurturing and why content is so important. Social media ads are a lot of people’s first impressions of your company! So be patient, and don’t expect to become a millionaire within the first month of running social media ads!