Your Complete Guide to Paid Social Media Marketing

It is the nature of commerce to experience periods where orders decline and customer visits or interest in products decrease. Fortunately, this interest can be rekindled through smart and simple practices. In this guide, we offer you 9 practices that not only re-engage your customers with your products, but also help you win new, ready-to-buy customers.

This guide helps you address the quick distraction of customers away from your store, products, and ads, turning it into interest, visits, and ultimately: increased sales; all through social media platforms, the favourite hangout of your customers.

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In this guide, you will learn practical methods for:

1. Optimising your store design

2. Integrating with Google Analytics

3. Integrating with Pixel apps

4. Linking the catalogue to your store

5. Connecting the Conversions API to your store

6. Preparing ad creatives

7. Adding custom and lookalike audiences to the Pixel

8. Launching a broad targeting campaign

9. Launching a retargeting campaign

Let’s start the ultimate marketing journey together.

1. Optimising Your Store Design

The first step in marketing your store to boost sales is: inviting visitors to an impressive space. Having a store page that is easy on the eyes, colour-coordinated, and effortless to browse will encourage visitors to explore and spend more time. This impression and motivation to browse are formed within a few seconds in your visitors' minds; hence, your store's design is the first and most critical step in making your ad campaigns successful and driving sales. Here you will find 11 inspiring tips for designing a professional, free e-commerce store

https://youtu.be/Pcv8ceEouMs?si=9ZP-o41Gt0t6FcQg

Also discover the steps to create a homepage that contributes to increasing your sales, and you can enhance your storefront components by adding categories for your products, and adding tags to them that help your customers easily understand what you offer.

2. Integrating with Google Analytics

It is crucial to understand your store visitors and what caught their attention while browsing and discovering your products. How many are they? And from which platform did they arrive? This data and more allow you to improve your store and future marketing campaigns based on visitor preferences. You might even discover that you need to alter something fundamental in the customer journey across your store, such as the placement of the buy button, or offering an additional service, among other tweaks that will help you refine marketing and boost sales.

Therefore, you will need an analytical tool that helps you make the most of this valuable data, which is precisely what you'll find in Google Analytics:

https://youtu.be/TbFyb9a6wOU?si=tDm73voLEbIH6Fwx

And here you will find how to integrate with Google Analytics

As well as how to install the Google Analytics app

3. Integrating with Pixel Apps

This step is both meticulous and simple. Its main benefit is making your ad campaigns more precise on each social media platform, enabling you to target your product audience more professionally to increase sales opportunities.

Connecting your campaigns to Pixel apps is not complicated at all; learn more about it in this video:

https://youtu.be/Dy1XFUTjtzg?si=ezIXlwxA-HK8Fibt

How to integrate with TikTok Pixel 

How to integrate with Snapchat Pixel 

How to integrate with Facebook Pixel 

How to integrate with X (Twitter) Pixel

To install the TikTok Pixel app

To install the Facebook & Instagram Pixel app

To install the Snapchat Pixel app

To install the X (Twitter) Pixel app

4. Linking the Catalogue to Your Store

The impressive design of your store must be mirrored in how your products appear across social media platforms during ad campaigns. Instead of random ad placements across the platforms, you can leverage catalogue apps for each platform to display your products distinctively, automatically tailoring which items appear to each customer based on their interests.

It is another straightforward step, yet its impact on your store’s professionalism and branding is immense, not to mention its definite effect on boosting sales.

https://youtu.be/BVYlH95juGU?si=cSaKnDoah9jKBuEu

To install the TikTok Catalogue app

To install the Facebook & Instagram Catalogue app

To install the Snapchat Catalogue app

To install the X Catalogue app

How to integrate with Snapchat Catalogue 

How to integrate with Facebook & Instagram Catalogue 

How to integrate with Snapchat Catalogue

How to integrate with X Catalogue

5. Connecting the Conversions API to Your Store

In short: don't worry, we promised that all these practices would be easy and impactful, and this step is no exception even if it sounds advanced or complicated. This step helps the Pixel apps—which you previously linked your store to—bypass some of the restrictions imposed by operating systems on tracking customer data, as the Conversions API enhances how Pixels function across these systems.

It's that simple, and activating it on your store is just as straightforward:

https://youtu.be/mHOfJb8wMCI?si=2S_Tkd3Xe34BLBrz

To install the TikTok Conversions API app 

To install the Snapchat Conversions API app

To install the Facebook Conversions API app 

How to integrate with TikTok Conversions API 

How to integrate with Snapchat Conversions API

How to integrate with Facebook Conversions API

6. Preparing Ad Creatives

Here is where the fun begins. Your store is now ready to launch a wide advertising campaign, leaving only the design of this campaign aligned with your brand identity and then launching it. Below, we recommend keeping these practices in mind when designing your ads to increase sales and improve results:

https://youtu.be/PeJWF4Ej8K8?si=4bm0yK5XLCXhVvlt

To learn the fundamental basics of designing a paid advertisement

You can request an ad design service from one of the service providers on the Merchant Services page from Salla

7. Adding Customers and Lookalike Audiences to the Pixel

After designing your ad campaign and preparing your creatives, one final step remains to boost sales before launch. It functions like training for the Pixel apps to accurately target and analyse the right potential audience. In this step, you will learn how to add your customer list to the Pixel apps to automatically target and generate lookalike audiences based on that list, thereby increasing the likelihood of conversions and higher sales:

https://youtu.be/g--joFqJHH8?si=rfKSefVJ5TBWSr4s

8. Launching a Broad Targeting Campaign

Now comes the real deal: the time to launch your ad campaign. Campaigns are typically divided based on targeting. Core campaigns target the broader potential audience who have either visited your store before or haven't heard about you yet, while other ad campaigns specifically target only those who previously visited the store or purchased from it.

The difference between the two types lies in the tone of voice and focus. For instance, broad targeting campaigns usually introduce the audience to your product and brand identity, focusing on encouraging visits to discover the store and driving traffic. Retargeting campaigns, on the other hand, mostly focus on driving sales by building on the customer's previous experience, inviting them to repurchase, download the app, and so on.

Now, let's launch a broad targeting campaign together:

https://youtu.be/kBMt19hJyGU?si=7NV7KO7iXdZypS3q

9. Launching a Retargeting Campaign

The broad targeting campaign has brought in an audience interested in your products and services, and now it is time to rekindle their interest once more—perhaps due to a new shopping season or any other reason. Retargeting campaigns aim to encourage customers to repurchase from your store to increase sales, utilising discount codes, special offers, and deals, for instance. Just as launching the broad campaign was easy, so is launching the retargeting campaign. Let's launch it together:

https://youtu.be/HKSsMVdIWdQ?si=dGA32pMY6THZuDUY

Learn more about retargeting strategies.

With that, you are ready to launch powerful and impactful ad campaigns. It is worth noting that most social media platforms share similar campaign launch procedures; with these nine practices, you will be able to launch a standout campaign on virtually any platform using essentially the same steps.

Digital marketing is an enjoyable process that requires ongoing analysis and tracking. Monitor your campaign performance after launching, revisit the steps you learned, identify the strengths and weaknesses of your campaign, refine them, and invest in them to increase sales and see continuously rising results.