A social ad campaign is one of the best ways for dealerships to build their brand’s presence. A staggering 2.8 billion people use social media, so it’s an amazing opportunity to connect with your target audience, in new, fun and also cost-effective ways. Since ads on social media are so seamlessly interspersed into user feeds, people don’t find them as intrusive as say pop-up ads, and it doesn’t interfere with their use of the platform. 500 million tweets are published per day, 300 thousand photos are uploaded on Facebook and there are 4million shares per minute! There’s a lot of content out there so your ads have to stand out –and they have to be relevant. So here are five tips to drive a successful social ad campaign.

1. Decide on your goal

Ask yourself what you want to accomplish and what results you want to achieve through your ad campaign. What’s the purpose of thead campaign? Is it to collect e-mails? Or lead people to a landing page? When you know your purpose, then determine where it’s going to be implemented and whom you want to target. Will you focus on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat–or all of these social media platforms?

2. Determine your target audience

It’s important to know your audience and which networks are relevant to and popular with that demographic. Networks where your content and brand naturally resonate with users are your obvious first choice. Facebook has a more general audience whereas Pinterest is more popular with female users. So this would give you an idea about how to tailor your ads to females in particular. What’s important to women? What do they care about in a vehicle?

3. Choose the kind of campaign that works best for your brand

Once you’ve determined your goal and target demographic this step is easy. Social media platforms offer a variety of customizable options, so you can tailor each ad accordingly. Each type of ad is different, from e-mail collection ads to ones that direct users to landing pages. You can use copy, photo ads or video ads, or all a combination of all of them, depending on the results you want to achieve.

4. Choose Content that is eye-catching but also has a clear message

Everyone loves pretty pictures and engaging videos, so make your content eye-catching and easy to watch. But remember people are scrolling and won’t wait around so keep videos short –15 seconds is a sweet spot. Pictures alone are not very persuasive as people will just shrug and say, “yeah, cool, but so what?” So there also has to be a message, a reason for the ad. Good content needs a story and a purpose, and photos and videos should reflect this.

5. Set a budget, a timeline, and track the results!

Know your budget before running a campaign, and stick to it. It’s wiser to manage your own campaign rather than letting social networks do it for you. Find out the best times to run campaigns–some days are better than others. And then lastly, track the results by using the free metrics social media platforms offer to help you keep tabs on how your ads are performing.