Do you run multiple campaigns on both Instagram and Facebook? If so, you’re probably reading this because you need a savior. How are you expected to keep each of the campaigns on the right path? How are you supposed to optimize all campaigns and ensure that they contribute toward the marketing goals? Thankfully, there is a light at the end of the tunnel because artificial intelligence tools can help.
In fact, you’ll find AI these days on the native platforms as well as through third-party tools. For instance, Facebook has invested in a machine learning tool to help marketers with their ad campaigns. In terms of third-party tools, one of the best examples is Trapica (and we’ll explore this marketing cloud in more detail later in the guide!).
If you want to introduce automation to the social media ad optimization process, you’re in the right place. Today, we’re going to discuss some of the most prominent solutions.
Campaign Objectives
Before we talk about external tools, we first want to address one of the best features on Facebook, and it’s often taken for granted. When launching a campaign in the Facebook Ads Manager, one of the first things that Facebook asks about regards your campaign objectives. Essentially, this asks what you want to achieve from the campaign.
Depending on your goals, you’ll choose between the following:
Often, we see businesses choosing randomly from this list; they think that the campaign objective isn’t as important as everything else they’re about to do with the campaign. In reality, the objective is critical because it communicates your goals to Facebook. If you choose awareness, Facebook will put your ads in front of people to generate awareness. If you choose conversion, Facebook will put your ads in front of a very different audience. Get this bit wrong and your ads can end up with the wrong audience.
Although this is only a simple form of artificial intelligence, we see marketers go wrong with it every year. Make sure that the campaign objective you choose on Facebook aligns with your goals for the whole campaign.
Automatic Placements
Throughout this guide, we think you’ll be surprised by the number of AI features offered by native advertising platforms. As you probably know, placements across the Facebook infrastructure are growing. You can now advertise on Instagram, Messenger, and various locations within Facebook itself. For example, this includes stories, search, feeds, and more.
Rather than choosing a specific placement when launching a campaign, you can select the Automatic Placements option and Facebook will use AI to optimize performance. Using an advanced algorithm, Facebook will determine the best places to serve your ads while maintaining a low CPM.
In addition to recommending placements, Facebook also shows you the best platforms and devices for your ads. As an example, those seeking conversions shouldn’t pursue right column advertising because it doesn’t allow for a CTA button.
By using the automatic placements option at the start, you’ll soon learn where your ads thrive and where performance isn’t as positive. From here, you can use the information to adjust placements and optimize your strategy.
AI Marketing Clouds
Now, it’s time to take a foray into the world of third-party tools because you can only do so much with the AI tools on Instagram and Facebook. In particular, we want to review the Trapica Marketing Cloud because it has a wealth of features that will have you wishing you signed up sooner. Most importantly, it offers ad optimization automation. In other words, you optimize the various components of your ad automatically.
Trapica has several artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms that monitor ad campaigns, analyze data, make predictions, and optimize the following areas:
Without lifting a finger, Trapica constantly seeks better audiences, bidding strategies, and budgeting plans. With the last two, the idea is to always spend the right amount on placements while ensuring that the best-performing campaigns get the largest share of the budget. Just in case this wasn’t enough, Trapica also automates the A/B testing process for creatives.
You might ask why we’ve focused on Trapica when several marketing clouds exist, and there are two reasons. Firstly, you can automate the optimization process on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Google, Pinterest, Reddit, and other platforms (how can you not love a tool that does all this?). Secondly, the marketing cloud also uses AI and machine learning to help with audience discovery, performance targeting, ad account protection, and analytics. With all this, it’s not hard to generate a positive ROI.
Facebook Ad Delivery
Returning to Facebook itself, you can choose a budget at the ad set level as well as ad delivery. With various delivery optimization settings, the Facebook algorithm has more information and should position your ads with the right audience.
As a basic example, you might decide to push for reach as the objective. If so, you’ll need to decide between optimizing for impressions, link clicks, or audience reach. If you optimize for link clicks, Facebook will search for people who are likely to click on your links (and this will generate website traffic). Ultimately, the settings you choose during the campaign setup process have more importance than perhaps you first gave them credit.
Instagram Campaign Automation
Throughout this guide, we’ve focused quite heavily on Facebook. However, it’s important to remember that Instagram is part of the same family and, in many cases, offers the same value when it comes to advertising. When using Instagram, the platform manages and optimizes campaigns using the Facebook Ads Manager.
As we’ve seen, however, this doesn’t mean that you’re stuck with the native tools alone. With something like Trapica, you can automate the optimization of your ad campaigns and ensure that you always generate the best ROI for your business.
However, you can benefit from other tools too. For example, some automate the interaction with those who engage with a post. Without manual intervention, the tool will like comments and engage with people automatically. Elsewhere, other tools automate the publishing and scheduling process.
Depending on your strategy, it might even be the analytics and reporting part that you want to automate. If you’re to automate in the areas mentioned in this section, be careful because Instagram has cracked down on bots and automated tools in recent years. Here are some of the most reliable AI tools for Instagram:
Publishing and Scheduling
With this tool, you can follow up ad campaigns with scheduled posts. One of the best things about AI tools in this area is that you can queue posts. Therefore, you can create posts in advance and schedule them to go live at specific times. Even if nobody in the business is logged into the Instagram account, your posts will still go live.
When you integrate AI, you analyze data and get suggestions as to the best times to post for your audience.
Follower Identification
Furthermore, some people use tools to find the right people to follow on Instagram and other social media platforms. After reviewing accounts and hashtags, these tools look for relevant accounts for the business. Alternatively, you might want to find some new hashtags for your content, and this is also possible with many tools.
Follower Management
If you don’t like wasting time following and unfollowing, you’ll find intelligent tools that manage these tasks on your behalf. When using a tool like this, remember that Instagram will not let you follow more than 7,500 accounts.
Reporting and Analytics
What’s the point of creating ad campaigns if you aren’t going to analyze them on the other side? You’ll never learn what works and what doesn’t for your audience. In other words, your ad campaigns will never improve, and you’ll never get the most from your budget. However, analysis no longer requires a sub-section of the marketing team to gather and review metrics and KPIs. Instead, tools these days analyze data on your behalf before then offering insights, suggestions, and recommendations.
Competitor Analysis
How do your competitors fare when it comes to social media advertising? What do they do well? What do they do poorly? What can you learn from other services to improve your own advertising strategy? Many AI tools analyze competitors and offer insights into their strategies. By doing this, you answer all these questions and more. You’ll learn about their ad types, publishing frequency, engagement, branding, and other factors.
Social Listening
With a social listening tool, the idea is to learn what people are saying about your brand across the internet. You can review brand hashtags and listen to conversations about your brand, products, and industry. Once again, you’ll use this information to your advantage and improve your marketing strategy.
This year, take advantage of tools like Trapica because they automate time-consuming tasks and ensure that you’re always on the right path with your campaigns!
