Social Engagement Campaigns – What Are They? Should You Use Them?

If you’re familiar with social media advertising, you’re probably aware of the engagement campaign objective, and use it to boost the odd post, however have never really considered it as part of a long time strategy. Personally, I include engagement campaigns in pretty much all of my long term social media strategies, especially when it comes to new brands and startups. Here’s why. 

What Are Engagement Campaigns?

Engagement campaigns are pretty self explanatory. They are campaigns with the aim of driving engagement. There are a couple of different focuses that you can use, from post engagement to page likes. The most common use of engagement campaigns is to ‘boost’ posts, but in a more effective, targeted way. You can simply choose an existing post at the ad creative level, y ya está. You can also choose to create an ad, if you don’t want the post to remain on the feed like it would with the ‘existing post’ option. Facebook will show your Instagram/Facebook post to people most likely to engage, and you can watch your likes/comments/shares increase. You build your engagement campaigns like you would any campaign, picking the targeting, placement, etc., so when people tell you that ‘boosted posts aren’t effective’, they just haven’t been doing it correctly. 

How To Use Engagement Campaigns Effectively

As simple as Engagement Campaigns sound, they really can be a great tool to draw in new audiences. If you’re a new brand looking to push your Yoga mats, for example, you can use your organic Instagram posting as part of an engagement campaign strategy and make sure your content is getting in front of the right audience. By targeting those interested in ‘yoga’, ‘meditation’ etc. and showing them your mat, you’re growing your reach immediately. What’s more, engagement campaigns are usually really cheap to run, so you’ll be reaching your target audience at a fraction of the cost of a website traffic campaign. 

The key with engagement campaigns is not just how cheaply you can reach your audience, but also what you can do with that data afterwards. By running engagement campaigns, and achieving engagement from your target audience for around £0.04 per engagement, you can then create a custom audience of that data, as you would normally with website traffic. You can then use it in the same way you would any custom audience – retarget, lookalikes – and ensure that you’re putting your conversion focused ads in front of your interested target audience. Of course, they may not be as interested as website traffic audiences, but you’re also growing your Instagram followers/engagement at the same time, so you really can’t complain. This is especially important for new brands, as you will initially struggle to achieve post engagements and followers without some kind of paid budget. 

My New Business Ads Strategy

All that being said, here’s my go-to social ads plan for new businesses/startups. (Spoiler, it includes engagement campaigns). 

Month 1

Engagement Campaign – Targeting Interest Based

Traffic Campaign – Targeting Interest Based

Conversion Campaign – Targeting Interest Based

Month 2

Engagement Campaign – Targeting Lookalike of Engagement

Traffic Campaign – Retargeting Page Engagement

Conversion Campaign – Retargeting Website Traffic

Month 3

Engagement Campaign – Targeting Lookalike of Engagement

Traffic Campaign – Retargeting Page Engagement

Conversion Campaign – Retargeting Website Traffic

If you want to find out more about Engagement Campaigns and my love for them, get in touch!