Week 12 – Second Due Date

Paid Ad Project

Background

In this project you will create and implement 3 Paid Advertising Campaigns. You will run at least 2 ads on one channel and the third promotion on your second channel. You may drive traffic anywhere you choose, but your visuals and copy for the ads must be made from scratch during this unit. You will spend approximately $5 per advertisement.

No Free Lunch

There was a short window, when social media was young, that you could get all of the benefits without spending any money. Early on, the quality of your content was the only thing that mattered, but social media companies need to turn a profit. Each one will have a different business model, some more effective than others, but they all have ways to promote your brand, message, etc. They need you to pay for services, so they'll limit the amount that you can get for free. Don't kid yourself, there is no free lunch. In this unit, you'll be introduced to some of the features available to promote things on social media channels.

What to promote

You may promote what you'd like. Different channels allow you different options including promoting websites, gaining followers, and getting likes. You might want to promote your website or run a campaign to increase your social media influence. Either way, be very clear during the planning process what your objectives are.

Project Components

Ads (copy & visual)

You will need to write copy and create visuals specific to each channel. Every ad platform is slightly different in the way it displays the ads. Your ads may be very similar from one channel to the next, but don't make the mistake of assuming that all ad platforms are the same.

Your copy and visuals will be created from start to finish during this unit.

Visual Comps are similar to what you produced for the Article Promotion project, basically refined thumbnails. Mockups are screenshots of the type of ad you're doing with your comps photoshopped into them.

Segmentation Ideas

There are many ways to do this; they all involve figuring out ways to reach your audience. You may want to find TV Shows, books or movies that your audience likes and target those. Or you may have a similar message to a well-known influencer. Your audience might be in a specific industry or have a certain type of job title. During this stage, you'll identify as many ways to segment your audience as you can think of. Be creative. You may want to consider doing a "mind map" to find as many ways to segment as possible.

Segmentation Plan

Each channel has different options on how to segment based on the amount of information that they have on their users. Get on the ad platform of each channel in your IPPIE plan and begin to build your ad campaigns by segmenting your audience. Find out the audience count for each segmentation qualification on at least one channel.

Additional Learning:

Here are some videos that might help in setting up your ads:

What is due?

Final Images & Mocks

Up until now, we have been working on creating images to promote your brand. Now it is time to finalize those images and add them to the ads manager. After you have completed the visuals and added them to your channel’s ad manager, you will either need to take a screenshot of how the paid post will look or create a mock of how the ad will look.

Implement Promotions

After you’ve created your images, put them into the ads manager and use them to promote your brand on the 2 social media channels. After you’ve added them to the ads manager, ad the copy and segmentation and take a screenshot of the final preview indicating the ad is running or has run.

Comments

For this part of the assignment, go to your class FACEBOOK GROUP, find the coinciding post, read your classmates’ initial posts and respond to three different classmates. Select someone without replies (if possible), and do some of the following:

  1. Ask questions
  2. Answer questions
  3. Suggest other principles which may help
  4. Give more insight
  5. Help with Taboos
  6. Give advice or feedback
  7. Provide advice on comps

Affirmations such as “nice post,” “I like the way your sketches,” or “I agree,” “this was such a great draft. You’ve really understood your audience and can see that with your IPPIE plan. I don’t really have any suggestions, I am just trying to make this post long enough” are not adequate for this discussion. Be thorough and thoughtful. Your replies should start a conversation, not end it.

Submit to iLearn

After you have made comments, you will collect screenshots and other artwork, and create a PDF to be submitted on ILearn with the following:

    1. First and Last Name
    2. Section, semester and professor
    3. IPPIE Plan
    4. Segmentation Ideas
    5. Segmentation Plan
    6. 15 Sketches
    7. Advertising Copy
    8. Visual Comps & Mock-ups
      • screenshot of your expanded Facebook post comment
    9. 3 Finished Ad Mocks
      • This mock should show how the ad will look on the channel
    10. Screenshot of the Ads Manager Page showing the ads have been run or are running
    11. A screenshot (from Facebook) of each of the three comments (expanded view) on a classmate’s initial post