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:

• Facebook - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eb6v2Ktdn8s, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7ers2RZxqA
• Instagram and Facebook - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec2rPFrdAmY&spfreload=5
• Twitter - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd8Ai1TOc58
• Pinterest - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk9yOWpO2mY

Paid Ads Project Evaluation

Instructions:

Now that the project is over, it is time to reflect on how things went. Write a brief explanation of your experience, what went well and any areas of opportunities. This is where you will use the metrics defined within the ippie process you've written during the first week of the last project.

Submit to iLearn

After you have written an evaluation of the project, put together a PDF with the following:

1. First and Last Name
2. Section, semester and professor
3. Screenshots of the ads created for the last project
4. Evaluation of the metrics from the paid ads
5. A brief write up of what went well and what could be improved

Summary Presentation Project Description

Background

Throughout this semester you have been running 2 social media channels. For this final project, you will present what you have learned and what you've improved this semester on your social channels. This presentation, if done right, will be a great portfolio piece. This project will be a presentation deck and a  video presentation talking about your success. Below are some examples we see in the industry, which should help you come up with some ideas.

Professional Examples

Squatty Potty

Subaru, Make a Dog's Day

Hotels.com Silent Ads

Student Examples

If you would like to see some student examples go to this Pinterest board.

Project Components

Presentation Content

Although you are about to see some ideas of what to include in your presentation, don't treat these concepts checklist list. Your presentation should make sense and sometimes that means doing things in a different order or include more information. This is the bare minimum your presentation requires:

Background

Create slides and talk about where you started out. Talk about how you came up or got involved with the brand and how the brand was positioned. Talk about the followers you had at the begging and the original thoughts of who your audience was. The background should lead nicely into what you learned over the semester and how you either refined your original ideas or changed them.

Posts

Through the semester you should have been posting regularly. Without regularly posting, you won't have an opportunity to grow your channels. Talk about where, what , when and how you were posting. Discuss what you learned and how it improved over the course of the semester.

Growth

How you and the channels have grown will be the true indicator of how you've done this semester. Talk about the channel's growth, which isn't always a number of likes (engagement and others could also be an indicator of growth.)

Presentation Design

This project focuses on creating a well-designed presentation. You should start by looking back at your style guide and design the presentation based on your brand. Use design principles to create your own templates. This presentation design should be entirely your work, no templates should be copied or used. 

Presentation video

You will create a 2-3 minute presentation video to finish off this project. The video should cover the presentation you've created and the content you've put together. You can create the video in any program you would like and doesn't need to include your face. If your brand is about yourself, you probably should show yourself.