Paid Social Media Advertising For Beginners
Nowadays, its impossible to ignore paid advertising on social media platforms like Facebook. With 3.2 billion people on the internet, its a matter of “fishing where the fish are”. Year after year the popularity of television and radio decline, as global social media users continue grow. Facebook alone boasts a whopping 1.9 billion unique monthly users. Data like this paints a clear picture of why paid social media must be part of your marketing strategy.
Why Should I Spend Money On Paid Ads?
You probably put your business on social media because it was free, which may make “paid” social media almost seem counter productive. When it comes to paid social, there are 3 major benefits you should understand.
1. Increase Your Reach
It’s important to understand that without paid ads, or just posting organically, your social efforts are probably not doing much. For example, on Facebook only users that like your page will ever have the opportunity to see your post. And, the current algorithm will only show your posts to a small percentage of those users.
Paying for social ads allows you to get your content in-front of anyone in the world. Not only can you generate massive awareness, you can push users to take action such as filling out lead forms, downloading apps, purchasing items, claiming offers, and sending messages. Organic social media posts don’t preform anywhere near paid ads.
2. Laser-Focused Targeting
Just because you can show your ads to anyone in the world doesn’t mean you should. When buying ad placements on social media, you have access to a lot of information about users. Targeting data such as demographic, interests, location, gender, income, job title, and more allow you to pinpoint your ideal customer with laser precision.
Each social media platform is made up of different types of users, giving you almost unlimited targeting capabilities. Testing different audiences, social networks, and ad types allows you to refine your campaigns to produce amazing ROI.
3. Re-Targeting (Ads That Follow You)
Have you ever been shopping online only to find an ad for the exact item you were just looking at on another website, or in your social media news feed? We all have, this is re-targeting at its finest. Running re-targeting social media ads allow you to take full advantage of all the traffic landing on your website.
The average click-through-rate for a re-targeting ad is 70% versus about 7% for a normal ad targeting new users. Connect with your website users and “follow them” across every digital platform they hang out on.
Finding The Right Advertising Network.
After understanding the benefits of social advertising, its important to choose the right platform for your business. Each platform works different, its important to understand which form of communication will be best received by your target market.
Facebook Ads
Facebook ads are usually the best place to start, because Facebook is the industry leader in both users and advertising experience. Their experience has allowed them to develop the most robust social media advertising platform available.
Facebook offers a variety of advertising campaign objectives, and many types of ads, designed to match the needs of pretty much any business you can think of. Using the Facebook Ads Manager you can create targeted ads, and keep an eye on key metrics that allow you to monitor the success of your campaign.
Most Facebook users fall between the ages of 18-50, and tend to be predominantly female. The typical Facebook user spends 20 min a day or more on the platform, so you will have plenty of time to connect with you ideal customer.
Instagram Ads
Instagram is one of the newer social media platforms, but has quickly become a powerhouse. Instagram is owned by Facebook but attracts a different demographic.
Users on Instagram tend to be much younger, most of which are under 30 years old. Content is also consumed in a very different way on Instagram, which translates to users spending an average of 32 mins each day on the app.
Instagram greatly relies on visual content such as photo and video. This can be a challenge for business owners that lack the assets needed to create cool content. But, using compelling images and video ads to effectively communicate with your target market pays off greatly. Over 80% of all Instagram users follow brands that put out engaging content, and about 75% of users that see branded posts on Instagram take action. Also, mobile users landing on your website from Instagram are about 70% more likely to make a purchase than other mobile users.
The image heavy approach to Instagram can be a challenge to some, but can be a huge pay-day when executed correctly. Facebook Ads Manager allows you to create highly targeted ad campeings that put single images, videos, and product carousel ads to work for you.
YouTube Ads
If you have a video camera, a computer, and the ability to film an effective video ad, you can break into the enormous world of YouTube Advertising. Every day users around the globe watch 1 billion hours of YouTube videos. That’s equivalent to about 100,000 years, or more than than all of human history.
Each year the audience of traditional T.V. is declining, and YouTube viewership increases. When creating a YouTube ad think “Movie Trailer”. Short and engaging content will perform best when users come across your video ads.
The most familiar YouTube ad placements are before and after organic videos users are already watching. Unlike every other social media platform YouTube attracts more men than women. If you are trying to promote a primarily masculine brand YouTube may work better for you than other platforms.
YouTube is owned by Google, so your ad campaigns are backed by the full power of Google Adwords. In your Google account you will have access to key metrics and placement options that will allow you to fully understand and manage the progress of your video ad campaign.
LinkedIn only has about 100 Million users, but gives you access to advanced targeting data other platforms can’t compete with. If your focus is generating Business to Business (B2B) Sales LinkedIn is the winning social media platform.
LinkedIn’s user base is evenly split between men and women, but is skewed toward a higher income demographic of about $80,000/year or greater. LinkedIn even claims that about 80% of all B2B leads generated come from their social media platform.
Targeting options include company size, seniority, income, job title, job history, education, qualifications, and much more. Engage your ideal client with sponsored InMail messages, images ads, articles, and videos. LinkedIn will even allow users to “auto fill” form/lead generation ads with their profile information.
Snapchat
Snapchat is the”new kid on the block” but it shouldn’t be overlooked. With 200 million users, Snapchat is an all-star when targeting millennials. Many teens consider Snapchat to be the most important social media platform.
Unlike Instagram, Snapchat only allows users to view a piece of content once before it vanishes forever. However, Snapchat offers advertisers a few ways to get exposure on their network. Sponsored stories, geo-filters, and video can be great ways to boost brand awareness on Snapchat.
Snapchat is one of the harder platform to gain traction on, but can be extremely powerful when executed correctly.
Summary
Social media has become such a huge part of our daily lives, business owners can not ignore it. Its important to keep in mind “quality” is often more important than “quantity”. Targeting, Re-targeting, and split testing are some of the most important factors for generating ROI from social media marketing Virginia.
Thankfully, there are so many different social media platforms and ad types that any business can find a profitable way to advertise on social media. Regardless of demographic or target market there is a way to get your message directly in front of them.
If you would like our help in crafting a killer social media marketing strategy, reach out to an expert at Bryant Digital.