ShareIn our latest meet the team feature, we chat to our Paid Social & Display Specialist Jamie Potter. Jamie works with our clients to create, develop and manage powerful and profitable social media advertising campaigns. We discuss what clients ask the most about this channel, and his top tips for getting the most out of social media marketing.
How did you get into digital marketing, and what made you decide to work in paid social media especially?
I never studied marketing; I just fell into it by accident! I applied for a job in IT, with the understanding that I would be maintaining PCs, fixing stuff, and spending time looking after machines and servers.
However, when I started the job, the owners thought that if I could fix computers, I could do the other side of things, so I ended up getting involved in all sorts of things. I learnt how to do PPC campaigns, design broches, and I then took over the management of their social media channels as they were not doing much there. So, it was a bit of an accident really and I learnt on the job.
I moved on to become a videographer at another company. The business was really active on social media, and they were using paid Facebook ads to drive traffic. I started helping out with that, and over time I was doing less video and more paid social activity. I continued to learn more about everything that comes with social media marketing – how to build landing pages, reporting, and it went from there. It turned out I was good as it and really enjoyed doing it!
Which other part of our digital offering do you enjoy?
The biometrics stuff is really cool. Our recent post Biometrics: The emotional rollercoaster of being an England fan where we measured the emotions of a fan to see how things happening in the game affected him – that was so interesting! This isn’t something you would expect a marketing agency to offer, and it is something a little bit different. You can learn valuable insights that you wouldn’t have thought of without it.
What is your favourite social media channel and why?
Facebook. The main reason is that I find it can pretty much cover almost anything that other platforms can’t. For example, LinkedIn does not have targeting options anywhere near as detailed as what you can get on Facebook.
The ad objectives, the way you set everything up and use the platform really makes Facebook stand out, and the reporting is much better than the other social platforms.
What are your top social media targeting tips?
You really need to learn who your target audience are and what your ideal client is. Rather than just targeting things based on what you are offering, it is good to think outside the box and think about what your audiences’ interest are, and really drill down on that. You will end up appearing in front of people you didn’t think of before as you were focusing on what your offer, not what they like.
The other thing is to test everything. You need to constantly be testing and trying new audiences. If something doesn’t work, try something else. When you find something that does works, stick with it but keep looking out for other audiences.
Using lookalike audiences is another great thing. I’ve found a lot of great results by using lookalikes of people that have done something meaningful with you – such as users that have made a purchase or have added something to their cart. If you are service based, then newsletter sign up lists are another great lookalike audience. Using lookalikes can be really powerful in finding new people that sit outside of your targeting and may not have heard of you before.
What is the most common question you get from clients when it comes to paid social campaigns?
The biggest question is around budgets – how much should we be spending? The best way to deal with that is to look at the audiences you are going to be targeting, then base your budget off the size of the audiences. Using a couple of different formulas, we can figure out a rough number of impressions that our ads will serve. If it is a small audience, you don’t want to spend loads as the same people will keep seeing your ad again and again. If it is a big audience, you want to try and cover as much of that audience as you can, so that would be at the bigger end of the budget scale.
What do you think is the next big trend in social media marketing?
We have seen a massive explosion in video content and advertising in the last few years. I don’t think it has hit its peak yet – I expect it will keep growing. I think video is underestimated still by some people – they think that in order to make great video content you need to spend thousands on video equipment and spend a lot of times putting together scripts. This isn’t necessary the case.
I think advertising on Instagram reels will start to take off. In July, Instagram launched Reels ads, allowing businesses to reach people who don’t follow you and grow your audience. I think we will see a lot more of that happening over the coming months.
And finally, I think augmented reality (AR) will continue to be popular, especially with all the filters we see on Instagram and TikTok that can change your face. We have seen business use filters to let customers experience things before they buy. A great example of this is Specsavers, where you can use your webcam to try on glasses using virtual try-on technology.
I think we will start to see augmented reality ads with these features built in at some point.
If you have any questions of would like to know more about how Coast Digital’s social media marketing services can help your business, please get in touch.
