It’s more challenging than ever to get noticed online. Google’s changes bury organic content, and paid search costs are skyrocketing. Organic social media reach is practically nonexistent—most content gets ignored. Facebook even admitted that even less likely. And, the average online marketing conversion rate is under 1%.

The Content Marketing Myth

Many imagine content marketing as simple:

1. Create content.
2. Share it on social media.
3. Profit!

This rarely works. Most content flops. The customer journey is winding and takes time. So how can you reliably generate leads and sales with content?

Social Media Ads: Your Content’s Hero

Here’s the good news: social media ads are the most effective way to boost your content and turn viewers into leads and customers. The best part? You don’t need a massive budget. A more effective content marketing strategy looks like this:

1. Create: Make content and share it on social media.
2. Amplify: Strategically promote your best content on social media.
3. Tag: Track website visitors with cookies.
4. Filter: Target your audience by behavior and demographics.
5. Remarket: Reach your audience with display ads, social ads, and Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA) to promote offers.
6. Convert: Secure qualified leads or sales.
7. Repeat. Use these 10 Twitter and Facebook advertising strategies to kickstart visibility or explode your content’s reach.

1. Prioritize Quality Score

Quality Score measures the relevance of your keywords and ads, affecting your cost-per-click. Facebook calls it “Relevancy Score”:

Twitter calls it “Quality Adjusted Bid”:

Regardless of the name, it’s crucial. Improve yours by increasing post engagement. A high score means more visibility at a lower cost, while a low score results in the opposite. Promote your top-performing content—“unicorns” (the top 1-3%) over “donkeys” (the bottom 97%). To differentiate them, test your content:

• Post frequently on Twitter and analyze engagement using Twitter Analytics.
• Share your top-performing Twitter content on LinkedIn and Facebook, tracking engagement.
• Pay to promote your unicorns on Facebook and Twitter. The key is selectivity. Focus your budget on maximizing engagement with the best content.

2. Precision Targeting is Key

Targeting everyone is ineffective and wasteful. Your audience is diverse. For example, by targeting fans of Donald Trump, people with social media marketing job titles, NRA members, and the hashtag #NeverHillary (while excluding Democrats, fans of Hillary Clinton, and #neverTrump), this tweet promoting my Inc. article received 10x more engagement:

Keyword and audience targeting can turn average ads into unicorns.

3. Maximize Free Clicks

On Twitter, tweet engagement campaigns are common, but inefficient. Paying for every interaction like profile views or hashtag clicks offers poor ROI. Focus on what matters: website clicks, app installs, followers, leads, or video views. For example, with a Twitter followers campaign campaign, you only pay for new followers. But your promoted tweet also gains impressions, retweets, replies, mentions, likes, and website visits—all for free.

4. Unleash the Power of Video

You can get thousands of video views for as low as $0.02 each!

Viewers are more likely to remember and buy from you. A few tips:

• Promote your best-performing videos from your website, YouTube, or elsewhere.
• Make them understandable without sound – 85% of Facebook videos are watched muted, according to Digiday.
• Keep them memorable, concise, and targeted. Bonus: video ads boost your relevancy score by 2 points!

5. Leverage Custom Audiences

I once wrote an article questioning Twitter Ads’ effectiveness and used tailored audiences to promote it to influencers. Business Insider requested permission to republish it, so I used tailored audiences again to promote their version. An hour later, a Fox News producer contacted me. This led to appearances on Fox News:

Custom audiences led to interviews with major outlets like the BBC, 250 press pickups, brand exposure, 100,000 website visits, and a partnership with Facebook. This illustrates the power of identity-based marketing using social media ads. This opens up a world of possibilities!

6. Expand Your Social Reach

Platforms like Medium, Hacker News, Reddit, Digg, and LinkedIn Pulse can drive significant traffic. Publish or repurpose your content there. Social media ads can amplify your reach on these platforms, potentially attracting millions of views and even syndication opportunities (like I’ve had with New York Observer and Time Magazine). Promoting your content on sites like Hacker News, Reddit, or Digg can generate valuable exposure and traffic. A small investment can yield significant returns!

7. Optimize for SEO Gold

Google uses RankBrain, an AI system, to understand search queries, including new ones. I believe Google considers user engagement metrics (click-through rates, bounce rates, dwell time, and conversions) to rank pages with few or no links and deliver better results.

Even if these metrics aren’t directly in the ranking algorithm, high organic CTRs and conversion rates bring benefits:

• Increased clicks and conversions.
• Higher organic search rankings.
• Even more clicks and conversions.

Social media ads build brand recognition and can double your organic click-through and conversion rates!

8. Embrace Social Media Remarketing

Social media remarketing can triple engagement, double conversions, and cut costs by a third. Use it to promote special offers, consultations, and downloads.

9. Supercharge With Super Remarketing

Super remarketing combines remarketing with demographics, behaviors, and engaging content.

• Behavior and interest targeting: Reaching those interested in your offerings.
• Remarketing: Engaging those who recently interacted with your content.
• Demographic targeting: Focusing on those who can afford your products or services. Target your ads to this narrow, qualified audience using your high-engagement unicorns.

10. The Power Couple: Paid Search & Social Ads

Combine social ads with Google Ads using RLSA. RLSA lets you show customized ads to recent website visitors when they search on Google, increasing click-through and conversion rates by 3x while reducing cost-per-click by a third. However, RLSA doesn’t target those unfamiliar with your brand. That’s where social ads shine. Social ads build brand familiarity affordably. Even if someone doesn’t need your product now, they’re more likely to find you later through branded searches or by recognizing your memorable content in organic results.

If your content marketing is struggling, these powerful Twitter and Facebook advertising strategies will turn your underperforming content into top performers! See the infographic below for a summary of these social media advertising tips: