Both seasoned and novice marketers need help managing their social media advertising campaigns. And, if you’re working across numerous clients, the capabilities these tools offer are the only way you can scale your work efficiently.
Thankfully, there’s a wide range of social media ad tools that cater to the needs of every type of agency or brand. In this guide, we’ll explore native ad management platforms as well as the top social media advertising tools available, their key features, and how they can help you manage campaigns and achieve your business goals.
You can then make an informed decision about whether you need a third-party social media ad management platform, and if you do, which one is best for you.
What Does a Social Media Ads Tool Do?
Specialized social media advertising tools help you enhance your campaign efficiency with features that optimize ad performance and offer deeper insights so that you can get more ROI from your budget. These are even tools that can help you manage multiple campaigns seamlessly across different platforms, saving you time, effort, and enabling you to work at scale.
If you’re considering multi-platform ad management suites, know that the dynamic and diverse nature of ad platforms pose certain feature limitations. For example, while many ad management tools allow for extensive automation and reporting, they might lack comprehensive integration with certain social media platforms or CRM systems. This can lead to inefficiencies where some tasks, such as replying to comments or detailed creative customization, still require manual intervention on the native platforms. This gap can limit the overall effectiveness and management capabilities that such tools aim to provide.
However, these tools offer advantages that make them invaluable for marketers and businesses looking to attract customers via social channels, including:
- Cross-platform campaign and budget management — Centralize your ad management efforts without juggling different accounts and settings for different social ad platforms.
- Custom automations — Handle repetitive tasks, such as adjusting bids, pausing underperforming ads, and reallocating budgets.
- Reliable reporting — Get detailed multi-platform analytics and insights that can help you understand what’s working and what’s not, allowing you to tweak your strategies for better outcomes.
- Bulk scheduling — Plan ahead and schedule your marketing calendar in a way that aligns with your business goals.
When You Should Consider Multi-Platform Social Media Ads Tools
Social media ad tools provide you with numerous benefits that go beyond what native tools can offer. Here’s why social media ad tools might be a valuable investment for your campaigns.
Protect Against Ad Platform Volatility
Ad platforms, like Facebook and LinkedIn, frequently update their algorithms and policies, which can lead to unexpected changes in ad performance. Social media ad tools help protect your campaigns against this volatility by allowing you to set up alerts and automations for whenever an anomaly occurs.
Create backup systems and central repositories of your creatives and customer data to ensure that your ads remain effective, and that any negative impacts from platform changes are minimized. This stability allows you to maintain consistent results even when platforms evolve.
Constantly Monitor Campaign Performance
Keeping an eye on your campaigns is crucial for success. Social media ad tools provide real-time monitoring and alerts, so you can instantly respond to changes in performance, without having to do it separately on individual ad platforms.
Optmyzr Social’s KPI and budget alerts, for example, notify you when your campaigns underperform or budgets are exceeded. This proactive approach helps you stay on top of your campaigns, address issues promptly, and maximize opportunities.
Automate Recurring and Time-Sensitive Actions
Manually managing social media ads can be time-consuming and prone to errors. With social media ad tools, you can automate recurring and time-sensitive actions, such as scheduling posts, adjusting bids, and rotating creatives.
Optmyzr Social’s fully customizable automated rule builder allows you to set specific conditions and actions tailored to your campaign needs. This automation not only saves time but also ensures that your campaigns are always optimized and running smoothly.
By investing in social media ad tools, you gain the ability to manage your campaigns more efficiently, respond quickly to changes, and automate tasks that would otherwise take up valuable time.
These advantages help you achieve better results with less effort, making your advertising efforts more effective and impactful. You can invest your time and energy in creative and strategic planning, leaving the mundane tasks to these tools.
First-party Social Media Advertising Tools: What You Need to Know
If this is your first exposure to social media ads platforms, then understand that native platforms (e.g., Meta Ads Manager, LinkedIn Campaign Manager, X Ads Manager) are designed to serve their own social networks, providing features tailored to their specific channels.
While multi-platform social media advertising tools offer powerful features and capabilities, it’s important to recognize that not all businesses need these additional functions (and the costs that come with them). Native ad management platforms are effective for many users—especially if you’re only advertising on a single social channel, or Facebook and Instagram as you can manage them both via Meta Ads.
LinkedIn Campaign Manager
LinkedIn Ads Manager, also known as Campaign Manager, is a platform for creating, managing, and optimizing advertising campaigns on LinkedIn. It offers features for setting up various ad formats, targeting specific professional audiences, and controlling budgets and schedules. You can track campaign performance with detailed analytics and reporting tools, helping you refine your marketing strategies to meet your business goals.
Advantages | Potential limitations |
|
|
For more information, visit LinkedIn Ads Manager.
Meta Ads Manager
Meta Ads Manager can serve as your central hub for running advertisements on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, or Audience Network. You can create ads, manage their scheduling and placement, and monitor the performance of your campaigns.
The platform offers detailed analytics and insights to help marketers optimize their ad strategies.
Advantages | Potential limitations |
|
|
For more detailed information, visit Meta Ads Manager.
X Ads Manager
Twitter Ads Manager (now X Ads Manager) is a comprehensive platform for creating, managing, and analyzing ad campaigns on Twitter. It offers detailed audience targeting with filters such as location, keywords, and behaviors.
The platform supports various ad formats to engage users effectively. Users can manage budgets and schedules for precise ad spend control and monitor campaign performance through customizable metrics and detailed analytics.
Advantages | Potential limitations |
|
|
For more detailed information, visit X Ads Manager.
6 Leading Social Media Advertising Tools
While there are numerous social media ad management tools out there, we’ve shortlisted the top six tools available now. Take a look at what each of these platforms offer and choose the one that best aligns with your social ad management requirements.
- Optmyzr Social
- Madgicx
- AdRoll
- AdEspresso
- Smartly.io
- Semrush Social Media Marketing
Before we take a deeper look at what each of these social tools offer, there are features that are common to all the tools mentioned above; these features include:
- Audience targeting
- Reporting and analytics
- Budget management
- Creative builders
- Custom conversion tracking
- A/B testing
Optmyzr Social
Venturing into social ad management softwares, Optmyzr has launched Optmyzr Social. The platform supports Meta and LinkedIn Ads management and is currently under public beta.You can check out all our tools and features for free.
What you need to know about Optmyzr Social
Suitable for: Agencies, B2B marketing teams, ecomm brands, enterprise brands
Cost: TBD (currently under public beta)
Payment model: TBD (currently under public beta)
Unique features:
- Easily monitor KPIs for your portfolios and specific entities (e.g., Ad sets) separately with dual dashboards.
- Get insights into which ads are creating incremental growth and where to allocate your budget for greater profitability with Ad Analyzer.
- Combat ad fatigue, speed up reporting, or granularize your audience targeting by building rules for your social campaigns.
Madgicx
Madgicx has made a name for itself with AI and automation-based features to optimize Meta and Google Ads campaigns.
What you need to know about Madgicx
Suitable for: Ecomm brands, agencies, solopreneurs
Cost: All-in-one suite starting at $44/month
Payment model: Seven-day free trial; monthly, quarterly, and annual plans
Unique features:
- The AI Marketer feature gives you actions to take to optimize your results based on your current account data.
- Pixel-based attribution reporting allows you to insert a code onto a webpage and get data about when users interact with your ad.
- Ad library to help with creative ideas and inspiration for your ad campaigns.
AdRoll
AdRoll specializes in retargeting and machine learning-based ad analyses. It provides cross-channel analytics, dynamic ad creation, and audience targeting for most social platforms including Meta, TikTok, Pinterest, Snapchat, and X (Twitter) Ads.
What you need to know about AdRoll
Suitable for: Ecomm brands, financial institutions, hospitality businesses, agencies
Cost: Pay-as-you-go for display and native ads, display and native ad management, along with social management starting at $36/month
Payment model: Pay-as-you-go; monthly subscription
Unique features:
- Machine learning-driven features to predict user behavior and ad performance, manage budgets, and target audiences.
- The native ad creation tool creates ads that are designed to feel like a part of the webpage they are on.
AdEspresso
AdEspresso is designed to simplify the ad creation and management process for Facebook, Instagram, and Google. Known for its user-friendly interface, AdEspresso offers features like A/B testing and customizable templates.
What you need to know about AdEspresso
Suitable for: Agencies, ecomm brands, small- and medium-sized businesses
Cost: Starter pack starting at $49/month
Payment model: 14-day free trial; Starter ($1000/month spend limit), Plus, and Enterprise plans for unlimited ad spends
Unique features:
- Automatic post promotion tool to give you full control over what’s promoted and for how long.
- Campaign approval flow to ease communication with clients and managers.
Smartly
Smartly offers three different suites, one for creative development, one to optimize campaigns, and the third to analyze reports. It leverages AI to optimize ad performance on most social platforms, including Meta, Snapchat, Pinterest, TikTok, and Google Marketing Platform.
What you need to know about Smartly
Suitable for: Brand marketing, Creative teams, agencies, performance teams
Cost: Media spend percentage fee
Payment model: Demo request followed by paid subscription
Unique features:
- ‘Dynamic creative optimization’ updates creative content and copy, utilizing real-time data.
- AI-powered creative and campaign recommendations to enhance creative at scale
Semrush Social Media Marketing
Semrush offers a comprehensive social media marketing tool as part of its suite. It offers two different toolkits: Semrush Social and Influencer Analytics. While the platform does not have a creative building suite, users can manage and optimize campaigns across various social media platforms, providing features like content scheduling, analytics, and KPI tracking.
What you need to know about Semrush Social Media Marketing
Suitable for: Influencers, agencies, marketers, performance teams
Cost: Starting at $29.99/month
Payment model: Seven-day free trial, followed by plans based on company size
Unique features:
- Centralized community management to consolidate your messages, mentions, alerts, etc.
- Competitor influencer spend forecasts and tracking to help decide budget allocation for campaigns.
Let your needs dictate your social media tools
There are so many diverse ad platforms to choose from today, but there are even more tools to help with ad optimization. Picking the right one can be challenging, but aligning your marketing goals with the capabilities that these platforms offer is the best way forward.
At the end of the day, these tools are meant to make your job easier and help you make time for the more critical aspects of your business. Find a tool that meets at least most, if not all, of these basic criteria:
- Ease of use — While every new tool has a learning curve, you shouldn’t spend more time figuring your way around it than you would creating your ad campaigns.
- Scalability — Make sure the tool can accommodate your business growth and subsequent needs.
- Customer support and training — Do your research about the initial training and ongoing support that the platform can provide, if and when you need it.
- Integration capabilities — Ensure the tool integrates seamlessly with other software and platforms you use, such as CRM systems and analytics tools.
- Customization options — Look for tools that offer customizable features to tailor the platform to your specific needs.
- Data security — Verify that the tool has robust data security measures to protect your business and customer information.
- Cost-effectiveness — Assess whether the tool provides good value for its price, considering both its features and your budget constraints.
By leveraging Optmyzr Social, you can focus more on the strategic planning and creative execution of your social ads. Sign up for the Optmyzr Social free beta to explore its capabilities and elevate your social media advertising strategy today.
