Aidan Cole — June 20, 2018 With 68 percent of all American adults on Facebook, it’s no secret that social media is a marketing goldmine. Social media has connected us like never before, giving businesses and marketers the opportunity to reach wider audiences.
Unfortunately, it’s not all sunshine and roses when marketers buy ads on social media. Facebook released a report saying ad spend increased by 39 percent, while ad impressions only increased by eight percent. The social media ad buying marketplace is fraught with competition, pushing up advertising costs with little return. The result is spending more money for less engagement, a death knell for marketing budgets.
The answer is in systematizing your campaign from end to end, including your creative, distribution channels, and how the campaign itself is managed.
Systematized media buying for social
There are so many ways that marketers can streamline the social buying process. If you want to systematize and hit the ground running, your best bet is buying a ready-to-use system. There are two ways you can systematize your social buying: scrum management and campaign management.
Scrum management software is designed for teams in an Agile environment (learn more about Agile for marketing here). Originally designed for IT project management, scrum management software can help you run a tight ship.
This software unites your creative and marketing teams, increasing communication through joint planning and campaign management. Scrum management software also automates tasks, facilitates discussion, and lets teams share documents. If you’re looking for scrum management software, Sprinklr and Falcon are good options to start with.
But let’s say you don’t have an Agile environment. You can take a different approach with your media buying software, using it for systematized campaign management.
Campaign management software handles the sticky parts of media buying. Just outline your needs, goals, and other campaign details into the platform, and it takes care of the heavy lifting. Campaign management software has a big upside: it can significantly cut down on wasted ad spend, optimizing your campaigns for maximum ROI.
Campaign management software is most effective for bigger campaigns with lots of moving parts. Do you really want to check 30 campaigns across five platforms three times a day? That’s more than a full time job, and it takes up way too much of a marketer’s precious time. Implement a system that optimizes for you.
“If you don’t have a system that scales in place when you are running your ad campaigns on a large scale could mean the difference between spending $ 4,000 and $ 40,000 to hit the same goal. Scalability and efficiency in paid advertising is crucial for large scale success.” Wayne Reilly, 5th Wonder Entertainment.
This software frees you up to make big picture decisions instead of agonizing over hourly CPC. If you’re looking for a good campaign management software, look into Kenshoo or Nanigans.
Tools are only the beginning
Software tools are a mere baby step. The real benefit of creating systems is scalability.
You know the most common social channels: Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, Pinterest. But we have no idea what the future holds for social media. There’s a good chance that the number of social networks will continue to expand. As of 2017, each person had an average of nearly eight social network accounts. This number is only going to increase, and so will marketers’ workloads.
Systems create a framework for you to take on more and more campaigns without breaking a sweat. In fact, a systemic approach to social buying can affect your entire business’s culture. When you embrace and recognize the importance of systematizing and automating, it encourages a culture of speed, efficiency, and innovation.
We don’t know what software or solutions will be out there in five years’ time. But if you have a culture in place that embraces tools and automation, you’ll be ready to implement those systems more quickly. And that means blowing your stagnated competitors out of the water.
The bottom line
Systems are the ideal solution for combating social buying burnout. They allow marketers to carve out more time while optimizing their campaigns. Sure, every social channel is different and every audience has different needs. Marketers need to adjust their approach to work for their channels and audience. Systematizing doesn’t mean we remove the human element from marketing; we just automate the tedious tasks that prevent us from thinking critically. Stick it to your competition by becoming a lean, social media advertising machine.
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