How can I use social media to market my campaign?

Key Takeaways

• Determine your targets for your ads
• Set goals that matter to you
• Always be willing to test and adapt

Social Media Marketing

Marketing is a necessary and powerful tool to be able to effectively launch your campaign and raise money.  On average, 30% of investments in your campaign will come from the StartEngine community-- and this is a number that StartEngine is very proud of. However, what this means is that in order to be successful, your company must utilize its own existing community and need to proactively market outside of StartEngine to drive new potential investors to your campaign.

Equity crowdfunding is great because, if done correctly, you can kill “two birds, with one stone”. Not only will you raise money for your company, but you’ll also raise interest and gain new followers and potential customers. Furthermore, you’ll gain valuable insights into who engages with your company. These insights can be used to market your product as you aim to grow your bottom line.

How do I set up Social Media Ads?

There are a few important steps necessary to take before you begin creating social media ads:

• Who is my audience?
  • It’s important to figure out who would want to invest in your company. Think about your average consumer’s age, interests, etc.  Individuals like to invest in their interests and you want to present your campaign to people who will know your market.
• Create goals for your campaign
  • Your main goal is to raise $X amount of dollars. However, for marketing purposes try create more focused, attainable goals. For example, “two purchases per week” for a total of eight per month allows you to see what marks you should be hitting in the short term.

How do I actually create ad content?

Once you’ve figured out who your audience is and created daily/weekly goals to track, it’s time to work on ad content. Content will obviously vary as there are many different content strategies. Below are a few tips we’ve seen work to drive conversions to your campaign.

• Use consistent voice and imagery
  Use the same voice in your ads as you’ve used on your page as well as similarly styled images.
  • What does your company sell? Think about whether or not you believe that an image of your product on its own would perform better than an image of someone using your product. Prove your value.
  • Does your copy reflect exactly what your company/product does in a clear and concise manner?
  • Make sure you show and offer value. Your goal is to convince a stranger to invest hundreds of dollars in a company they may or may not have heard about. It’s important to show why they should be intrigued by your company.
• Make sure you have a singular call to action
  • Try to create a sense of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). For instance, “Running out of spots in our equity offering” or “Invest before you miss out”. You want wording that creates a sense of exclusivity and urgency in your copy.
  • Make sure your call to action is clear and obvious.
  • Twitter pro-tip: If using hashtags, avoid using too many hashtags or distracting hashtags. Try to limit your #’s to one or two.
• People love images and videos.
  • Try to use high-quality media in your ads because they drive interest and clicks to your page. If using a video, keep it to 15-30 seconds (and don’t forget to use captions as most videos are watched on silent). Try to crop your video as a square as this takes up more screen space on mobile.
• Facebook Newsfeed ads typically have a higher conversion rate
  If using Facebook, newsfeed ads are pricier than other placements on Facebook but are the best option to drive intrigue and conversions.
  • Pro tip #1: Select the option in Facebook to show which of a person’s friends are already interested in this product or service, it’s like a free endorsement for what you’re doing using the “Advanced Combinations” tab (I.e. Jack and 3 other friends like [Your Company])
• Create custom audiences in Facebook from the email addresses you already have in your system.
  This will show your ad to individuals similar to those who are already interested in your product!
  • The StartEngine lookalike audience is a great place to start, but try to refine this audience into your industry, age range, or other audience classifiers you determined above. Simply send a message to [e-mail] and we can share the StartEngine lookalike audiences with you.
  • Keep in mind the more specific you make your audience, the more expensive your ads will become.
  • Pro tip: Use the right-hand column ads for retargeting individuals who have shown interest by previously clicking on your page already

Note: Please ensure you only use compliant communications packages when marketing 

How do I test my ads to see if they are working?

Great, now you’ve gathered creative, copy, and determined your audience. The last crucial step to take is to TEST your ads. You should be testing multiple variations of your ad, be it different images, or copy, or calls to action, to find which variant brings in the most conversions. A few tips for testing your ads:

• Don’t test too many different variations at once as you won’t get statistically significant results (Try to limit to two or three variations)
• Collect at least 500 clicks to your ads and reach at least 10,000 impressions before drawing any concrete conclusions
• This is where your daily goals from above will play in. Determine the ad which is driving the most investment to your campaign. Maybe one ad is leading to the best conversion rate while another ad has a lower conversion rate but a higher investment rate.

How much should I spend?

Now that you’ve created your ad variations, you need to decide the amount of money you should spend once you are live and accepting investments. It is suggested that you spend no less than ~$100 for a seven-day ad campaign. Make sure to budget your ad money so that you don’t use it all in the first week. Spending at our suggested rate does not guarantee your campaign’s success, but as we have seen from our most successful campaigns, spending money on advertising will bring you much closer to your fundraising goal than spending nothing at all.

How do I analyze my data?

Just because your ad campaign is up and running, doesn’t mean that the hard work is over yet. Looking through your campaign’s data will tell you which ad drives the most traffic, clicks, conversions, etc. Try to spend at least an hour a week looking through the data Using the results of your data, try new variations of ads. Set up additional ad tests in the future. Try a new target audience. It’s very important you don’t just let this run on autopilot as that will lead to your ads being seen less and less. Marketing requires a very hands-on approach throughout the duration of your campaign. Check this link for more information → https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/facebook-ad-analytics/

That’s it! Follow the above steps to position yourself to be a pro at marketing.  

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For more information try these links:

https://blog.hootsuite.com/twitter-ads/

https://blog.kissmetrics.com/unbeatable-facebook-ad-campaign/

https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/facebook-ads-tips/

https://instapage.com/blog/creative-facebook-ad-tips-to-increase-sales

https://business.twitter.com/en/blog/5-tips-writing-effective-Twitter-Ads-copy.html