4 Solutions You Need to Launch a Multi-Platform Social Strategy

Earlier this month, we shared why diversifying budgets and investing in a multi-platform social strategy is more critical than ever. Haven’t read it yet? We’ll give you a hint: we’re currently living through one of the most significant disruptions of the digital ad industry. Therefore, advertisers need to rethink how to connect with and be relevant to their audiences.

But we also understand that sometimes, investing (and more importantly, executing) a multi-platform social strategy is easier said than done.

The main culprits: Minimal bandwidth to scale across social platforms from campaign setup to optimization. Lack of the proper tech setup and “know-how” when it comes to launching a new platform. Lack of creative resources to deliver high-performing assets across platforms that follow platform-specific best practices. Lack of framework and technology to properly test what works (and what doesn’t) across social platforms. And finally, silos across teams and tools that slow collaboration and execution while breaking down consistent branding across social platforms.

Read on to learn the four solutions to battling these culprits and easily launching a multi-platform strategy today.

#1 Automated workflows to reduce manual work

Launching a new platform can be a lot – yet, a new platform pilot rarely brings new team resources from the start. Stretching yourself to learn the ins and outs of new optimization best practices and set up specifics doesn't necessarily sound like the most fun way to spend your after-hours. This is why making the most out of automation and reducing the manual work to the minimum is crucial when expanding your social activity. After all, time is money – and you should focus your time where it matters the most.

At Smartly.io, we operate with the principle of "if you need to do it twice, you should automate it." Our tools enable advertisers to take actions in bulk, add creatives across multiple ad groups at once, turn the ready-made ads live at the moment of truth and adjust your budgets and bids across campaigns with just a few clicks.

Beyond the optimized workflows, we also provide algorithmic and programmatic optimization technology to do the heavy lifting for you. Predictive Budget Allocation (PBA) is an advanced artificial intelligence feature that continuously moves your budget between ad sets or campaigns based upon their performance to maximize the number of future conversions and minimize CPA levels. We built PBA to respect the platform algorithms' best practices so that the changes made will not disrupt the native intelligence and learning. PBA helps you find the best performance and make better budget decisions while freeing your time from manual allocation tasks. Simultaneously, we offer optimization strategies (triggers) that you can set up as "if this, then that" (IFTT) rules. This enables advertisers to set repetitive actions automatically based on preset conditions or take actions like activating sale campaign ads (while you are sleeping).

#2 Streamlined tech set-up for seamless launch

Navigating the technical setup for a new platform can be a pain, especially when your internal technical resources are scarce and desk floating with other priorities. In today's Digital Marketing world, it's no longer enough to add a small Tag in your Tag Manager and reap the benefits from a new platform. It's best if you play around with privacy sandboxes, Server-side tracking, Multi-touch attribution platforms and ensure all of them fit together.

This is why technical consulting is always a part of our regular service. Our technical team can help you make sense of all the ad tech jargon and even help navigate the most complex engineering conversations. The team has helped set up the most complex catalogs in the industry and automate the most scalable workflows. Also, when running into any issues, you have access to technical help via our support chat 24 hours on weekdays.

Smartly.io tool also makes catalog management easy and more streamlined, as you can handle most of your day-to-day catalog management across platforms within a single place. Additionally, it is easy to manipulate and format the data you want to show in the ads from the catalog without always having to go and make changes in the physical source. In Smartly.io, you can utilize liquid markup language to do simple computations to the existing catalog field values, such as rounding up a currency, changing the text to uppercase, or even counting out a sale price. The ability to use a variable instead of static values opens up many possibilities and cuts down on the back and forth between departments.

#3 Creative tools and “know-how” to scale effectively

We previously mentioned that leveraging a multi-platform strategy doesn't only allow you to reach customers across the purchase journey - it also allows you to reach incremental audiences you may not find everywhere.

However, scaling your creative across all platforms can be challenging, as what performs on Facebook may not perform on Snapchat and vice versa. You may be asking yourself, "What types of images should you use on Instagram? Does a certain CTA work better on Snapchat? And what are Pinners really looking for when they browse Pinterest?" When expanding to a new platform, oftentimes, the same creative teams are tasked with designing these assets on top of your original platforms. When creative teams are strapped for time, how can your team be sure you have enough creative to scale?

Smartly.io's cross-platform Image and Video Templates allow advertisers to scale winning designs across platforms to deliver a consistent customer experience. Our platform makes it easy to store all of your assets in a shared Library to use across your channels and resize your ads to any format to launch across Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, YouTube, or any other visual platform seamlessly.

But this still begs the question, "how will you ensure your creative is following platform-specific best practices?" Don't fret. Smartly.io's services teams are here to help you scale across platforms without scaling your headcount. Our team uses data from testing your creatives (plus analyzing $3B in annual ad spend) to produce ads that consumers connect with at every step of their journey, no matter the platform.

#4 A single place to create, launch, and optimize your campaigns

In our recent survey, Global Social Media Advertising Trends in 2021, we found that 56% of advertisers say that their media advertising and creative teams will work together more closely in 2021. However, when most creative and media teams use separate tools to execute their work, breaking down silos can be nearly impossible.

To improve how brands communicate externally, they first need to transform how they work internally. That means integrating media, creative, and data into one platform to create, launch, and optimize campaigns more effectively (and quicker).

Smartly.io breaks down silos by providing a central hub for creative teams to collaborate with performance teams, enabling real-time collaboration when launching campaigns across any social platform. Our platform surfaces the most important data by combining creative and data into the same platform, empowering advertisers to embrace a testing culture and inform decision-making as a whole. The result is actionable insights across the buyer's journey so both creative and performance teams can drive true impact.

Contact us here if you want help in getting started with your Snapchat campaigns!

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