“The most common trouble with advertising is that it tries too hard to impress people.” – James Randolph Adams
Are you still focusing on good old TV and radio advertising? What about digital advertising? Do you run any Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube ads?
You see, there are quite a few small business owners who think the world would be a better place without Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, you name it. And while some of you continue to be skeptical about experiencing and seeing REAL results using social advertising, others have familiarized themselves with these networks and are incredibly successful.
How can you model what these folks are doing and achieve similar results?
This is where tools and resources can come in handy.
There are a ton of awesome digital and social advertising tools out there and it’s quite difficult to choose the ones that will help you get the most out of your marketing strategy.
Related: 5 Top Twitter Tools to Increase Your Productivity
To help you pick the right toolkit for your specific business needs, I decided to put together a short list of advertising tools that have helped me:
- Quickly analyze how some of the best companies and brands are advertising on Facebook,
- Mock-up my ad prior to launching it on Facebook or Twitter,
- Increase productivity and
- Maximize outcomes.
See what these advertising tools can do for you.
Essential Digital Advertising Tools
1. Find Out How Your Competitors Are Advertising on Facebook: Adicted.io
This tool is awesome. It’s very intuitive and super easy to use.
Simply type in the search box the name of the brand, company, influencer, or the web URL you’re looking for and hit the “find ads now” button. You can also search based on some random text or a keyword.
Here’s what this tool looks like in action.
In the example below, I wanted to know more about the type of ads the footwear brand Nike runs on Facebook. So I typed “Nike” in the search field and here’s what came out…
As you might have noticed, this powerful Facebook advertising tools allows you to filter the results based on several criteria:
- Ad Placement: Newsfeed, Sidebar
- Ad Objective: Awareness, Content promotion, Lead generation, Event promotion, App install, Page Likes, Sale
- By Industry
- By Imagetype
- By Call-to-Action (CTA): Book Now, Sign Up, Download Now etc.
- By Number of Likes
- By Number of Shares
- By Number of Comments
- And When the Ad was Seen: Anytime, Last 24 hours, Last week, Last month
Furthermore, Adicted.io provides you with useful case studies that feature “The Top 10 Most Shared Facebook Ads”, “10 Inspiring Facebook Ads to Get People Buying”, or “The Top 10 Facebook Ads that Actually Work”.
Absolutely worth having a deeper look into these case studies. You might find some useful tips and hints there.
2. Mock-Up Your Twitter and Facebook Ads Prior to Uploading: AdParlor
The second digital advertising tool I’d like to introduce to you is AdParlor.
Simply put, it’s a social ad mockup generator.
Instead of creating your ad in Facebook’s Power Editor, you can actually head over to Ad Parlor and quickly configure your ad before even having to open Facebook. Same applies to Twitter, as the tool works for Twitter ads too.
The coolest thing about this social advertising tool is that it works for both Facebook and Twitter.
You don’t need to login to Facebook to use it. And neither do you need to login to Twitter to see how your ads are going to look like for the different ad formats.
Here are some of the ad types you can simulate beforehand:
- Facebook Ads: Photo Ads, Video Ads, Link Ads, Multi-Product Ads, Text Ads, Offer Ads, Ads to generate Page Likes, Ads to promote an Event, a Mobile App and / or a Desktop App
- Twitter Ads: Promoted Tweet, Promoted Account, Website Card, Lead Generation Card, Image App Card, Basic App Card
However, the biggest benefit of AdParlor is this:
It saves you TIME!
And if you’re like me, you want more time.
Instead of sitting for hours in front of a blank screen or switching between social platforms, you can use this advertising tool to boost your productivity and ultimately, invest that precious time you gained by working smarter on the things you love most.
Do you like the sound of that?
3. Discover Which of Your Existing Facebook Ads Are Suitable for Running on Instagram: Instagram Ads Analyzer
The Instagram Ads Analyzer is “hot off the press”.
Facebook introduced this advertising tool on October 16. to help advertisers find suitable Facebook ads that they can run on Instagram too. Obviously, if you haven’t run Facebook ads so far, the tool won’t be of much help.
This being said, here’s how Facebook‘s Marketing Developer Team describes its new advertising tool:
“This tool goes through all of an ad account’s ad sets, and rates if they are suitable candidates for running on Instagram. The script checks their objectives, audience sizes, and creatives to determine suitability. You can run the script interactively for your ad account and even see a preview of your ad on Instagram, if the ad creative is “Instagram-ready”.
We’ve open sourced the code on our sample code site. You can tailor it to suit your requirement and integrate it into your ads management app to give your clients ad placement suggestions.”
You’ll need to login to Facebook to try the sample.
Enjoy the process; it’s automated.
Wrapping It Up
Many brick and mortar or online businesses have tried Facebook, YouTube or Twitter advertising without achieving positive results. They have thrown themselves into digital advertising without understanding the platforms and / or without having a proven marketing system in place.
The above mentioned advertising tools can help you use Facebook, Twitter and Instagram more effectively, so that you can target your ideal prospects and convert quality leads into customers.
However, if you don’t know what you’re doing (lack of strategy, lack of sound systems), you won’t be able to accomplish your goals. Keep in mind: The best tools in the world are useless if you don’t know what you want to do with them or how to deploy them in your environment.
So get educated. Learn how to use social media effectively.
You can definitely master the game of social advertising.
===> Those of you who’re looking to unlock the hidden power of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram advertising, head over to the Social Advertising Academy. It’s time you take control of your digital advertising and achieve REAL results.
What are your favorite advertising tools? Why do you prefer them over others?
