How to choose where to run your campaign

Most non-profits and charities will, at some stage, need to make choices about which platforms they use to run ads on. Commercially this happens too (albeit usually with bigger budgets!) and actually the factors that feed into decision-making are remarkably similar.

Here are the things I think about when deciding which platform(s) will work best for a particular campaign.

Where’s your audience? What differentiates digital marketing from other forms of marketing is the ability to target your ads to specific audiences. And different platforms lend themselves towards different audiences. For example, if I was running a campaign where it was important to target people by employer/sector, job title or education, I’d choose LinkedIn. If I was looking more at interest/demographic based targeting, I’d use Facebook and Instagram. For events or ‘moment’ based ads - say tied to a particular sporting or cultural event - I’d go for Twitter (making use of their excellent marketing calendar).

What creative is available? Some platforms - Instagram being the most obvious example - are much more visual than others. And put simply, if you don’t have creatives that are going to work effectively on the platform you want to use, I’d opt for an alternative platform. This might mean switching to a platform where you don’t have to use creatives at all (e.g. Google Ads), or one where creative is a less dominant factor (e.g. perhaps giving you the option to design something simple on say, Canva, for a Tweet card or LinkedIn image ad).

On video, I’d always recommend trying to use something that’s been specifically designed for marketing purposes (rather than adapted or cut down from another format). Both Facebook and Twitter have some great tips on video ad best practice.

My top recommendation here, though, is to be as involved as possible in the creative commissioning process, so that you’re looped in from an early stage and able to advocate for the creative content you know will work best for the audiences and platforms you want to use.

What’s the total budget? Not just for the ad spend, but for the entire campaign - i.e. creative development, marketing copywriting etc. Think about what’s a sensible split between content commissioning and delivery. Remember that developing some types of content will (in general) be cheaper than others, e.g. writing copy for x5 Google Ads variants is likely to cost less than commissioning x5 Instagram Stories ads. That being said, don’t go for something just because it’s cost effective - if you know your audience is on Instagram, think about whether you can use your budget more efficiently by using fewer ad variants or running in fewer markets.

What’s the objective of the campaign? Some activity works at all levels of the marketing funnel but there are some specific types of campaign that lend themselves more to one platform over another. For example, if you’re running a very focused acquisition campaign, I would tend to start with Google Ads to target users showing the highest level of intent. Whereas for an upper-funnel brand campaign, I would lean more towards YouTube ads. Some platforms also have some more specific campaign types that can be useful for more specific goals, e.g. Twitter’s Followers campaign to build organic followers.