Whether you are looking to target your audience, increase organic reach or get customers to make a purchase – the case for advertising on social media marketing has never been stronger.
A recent report showed that businesses increased their yearly social media advertising budgets by 32% in 2019, with experts predicting it to nearly double in the next 5 years. This means that in today’s social landscape, if you don’t advertise on social media, you risk falling behind!
What is Paid Social Media?
Social media advertising allows you to display branded content to your target audience thus increasing brand and product awareness, building traffic to your website and turning prospects into customers. Social ad tools, like Buffer and Hootsuite are used to create, schedule and post targeted ads that will reach your intended target audience and provide you with in-depth metrics to tailor your marketing strategy and get the results you want.
When choosing where to place your ads, it is helpful to know which channel will work best for your brand, as each platform will have a different audience. Here are three channels to get you started.
LinkedIn is viewed as the ideal platform to get noticed by other businesses and professionals in your industry, with the potential to reach 60-million decision-makers. LinkedIn ads allows you to target a quality audience in a professional context and combine targeting criteria (small business owners, C-level executives, decision makers) to build your ideal customer profile.
LinkedIn ads are based on choosing keywords and selecting specific audiences by categories. You can also tailor your budget in response to your campaign’s performance. When you advertise on LinkedIn, you can use text, images, and video or other formats, like carousel ads and email advertisements, allowing you to find the best format for your business.
Tip: Create personalised ads to increase engagement and get more people to interact with your brand and always make sure your ads look professional.
Facebook Targeted Ads are all about customer behaviour, based mainly on interests, demographics and location. It allows you to build audiences, target specific users, retarget certain groups and measure success.
Facebook advertising offers a variety of ad formats, from photos, videos, stories, to carousel, slideshows, lead generation and messenger ads. Each in its own way will allow you to advertise with an image or video, link and call-to-action button.
Tip: try using different ad formats to see which gets the best results and engages your audience the most.
With over 60% of people discovering new products on Instagram, it is no wonder Instagram is increasing in popularity. Instagram is an excellent platform to build awareness to your brand as sales and leads are easily trackable, you can build and strengthen a connection with your audience and take advantage of higher conversion rates.
Running an ad on Instagram allows you to choose your budget and the length of campaign you want to run. With options like images or videos, carousel and collections, you can create different types of ads for either your Instagram feed or Instagram Stories.
Tip: Be consistent in style with your images and use interactive elements to help viewers recognise the best ad for your brand.
In conclusion, paid social media is worth the investment if done correctly. Armed with the knowledge to create effective advertising campaigns on each social media platform, you can amplify your reach, enhance targeting and drive even better results.
For more information on how we can help you deliver your social media marketing strategy, get in touch by calling 01962 862760 or emailing info@waypointdigitalmarketing.com.
