Social media advertising offers businesses an opportunity to present their products and services and build powerful connections with customers. What’s great about this advertising medium is any business can utilize it. Unlike traditional channels that are only accessible to big entities, social media works for both small and large organizations.
According to a report by Smart Insights, over 4 billion people use social media worldwide. That’s more than half of the world’s total population. So if your business is not on any social media platform, you are missing out on a chance to reach your target clientele.
See These Tips and Insights to Advertise on Social Media
Read this post to learn how to get the most out of social media advertising. We will discuss the benefits of advertising on social media and then take you through how to choose the right social media channel. We will also cover the cost of social media advertising and provide a few tips to help you get started.
Benefits of Social Media Advertising
If there’s one thing that came and changed how businesses promote their products and services, it’s social media. The pros of this advertising medium greatly outweigh the cons. Let’s look at a few benefits that you stand to gain by advertising on social media.
Global Reach
Social media not only allows you to reach many users; it also offers you a global reach. Therefore, even if your target audience lives in another country or continent, you can still advertise to them via this method.
Social media advertising is a step up from traditional ad channels such as newspapers and television, which operate locally or nationally. You can’t reach a global audience with conventional advertising. The only way you can is if you go to that particular country and run your campaigns through the channels available there. Luckily, running an international business is now easier than ever with social media.
Low Cost
Compared to other advertising mediums, social media is one of the most cost-effective. It doesn’t require you to break the bank.
You also have more control over how you want to spend your money. You can set a budget for how much you are willing to use per day or ad. The cost-effectiveness of social media advertising makes this medium a viable choice for both small and large companies.
High Rate of Return
Most social media platforms charge per click or thousand impressions. You only pay after someone clicks your ad or after it gets displayed to 1,000 users. Social media payment methods allow you to save and offer you value for money. In traditional advertising channels, you pay regardless of whether customers see your ad or not.
Ability to Measure Ad Performance
Another benefit of social media advertising is you can analyze and track the performance of your ads. You can know in real-time if your ad is producing any results or not.
Most social media platforms have analytics tools and reports that show you the actions users took on your campaign. You get to see metrics like the number of views, followers, likes, and clicks. With this information, you can decide whether to keep running your ad or optimize it for better results.
Targeting Capabilities
Social media advertising offers you a highly targeted audience. If you sell a niche product, you can advertise to specific users most likely to show interest. You can target customers based on their age, demographics, interests, and economic status.
Some platforms even go to the extent of allowing you to target users based on previous interactions with your brand or page. This ability to segment your audience reduces your customer acquisition cost and increases your chances of achieving your campaign objective.
Offers Advertisers More Control
Unlike traditional advertising, social media gives you, the advertiser, more control over how to showcase your ad. Most social media platforms will offer you a campaign management tool where you can create and manage your ad however you please. Besides the ability to target your audience, you can also set your budget for the amount or bid you are willing to spend and schedule the days and time to run your campaign. And if you want to cancel or pause your ad, you can do so at any time.
Gives Customers More Interaction Options
When advertising via channels like radio or newspaper, the two main actions that a customer can take are calling you or buying your product. With social media advertising, they can do more. For example, if customers are not ready to get in touch or purchase anything, they can follow your page, save or like your ad campaign, and share it with friends and family. Social media advertising gives customers more interaction options.
Choosing the Right Social Media Channel
When choosing a social media platform for advertising your business, you want to pick the one hosting your target audience. All social media platforms offer advertising solutions, but not all have your potential customers. Let’s take you through the different social media channels for advertising your business.
Facebook being the largest social media platform is a convenient option for advertising your business. What’s great about this social network is it contains users of all demographics and locations. Your chances of finding your target audience are high, regardless of your business category. The ad formats available on Facebook include images, videos, Messenger, carousels, slideshow, and story ads. See How to Advertise on Facebook for more.
Unlike X, which is text-based, Instagram is visual-based. This platform is a good fit for businesses looking to market their products and services using photos and videos. Use this social network to target an audience aged 18 to 40 years. As for the location, you can find customers of different interests from any city or zip code.
The ad types available on Instagram are more or less the same as those offered by Facebook, for example, stories and sponsored image and video ads. The exception is Messenger ads, which are available only on Facebook.
LinkedIn is an excellent choice for B2B marketing. The users of this social network are working professionals, entrepreneurs, job seekers, and organizations. The ad formats that you can run on this platform are sponsored messaging, sponsored content, Lead Gen Forms, and dynamic ads. For more see How To Advertise on LinkedIn
TikTok
TikTok works best for reaching a younger audience aged between 18 and 25. This platform is video-based, meaning that users share content in the form of videos. Therefore, it is ideal for businesses that want to advertise their products and services in this format, but you can still use it for image ads. You can run the following ad formats on TikTok: infeed ads, carousel ads, spark ads, and TopView ads. For more, see How To Advertise on TikTok.
Pinterest is where most people go to discover new products and creative ways of doing things. The majority of users on this social network are women aged between 18 and 45 years old. Pinterest offers several ad formats. They include idea pins, promoted pins, collection ads, carousel ads, and shopping ads. For more see, How To Advertise on Pinterest
Advertising Costs
One great thing about social media advertising is it offers you control over how much to spend on your ad campaigns. You can choose to use as little or as much as you want.
There are several payment methods available with social media. Choose the one that aligns with your campaign objective. Let’s look at the payment methods.
- Cost per Click (CPC)
With CPC, you pay when a user clicks on your ad. This payment method works best for campaign objectives such as website clicks.
- Cost per Thousand Impressions (CPM)
Under CPM, you pay when your ads get shown to a thousand users. It doesn’t matter whether they view or click on your ad or not. Use this method if your goal is to reach as many people as possible.
- Cost per Video View (CPV)
For CPV, you pay each time a user watches your video campaign. The duration depends on the social network. On Facebook, for instance, a view gets counted when a user watches your video ad for more than 10 seconds.
- Cost per Conversion (CPC)
CPC is also known as cost per action. You pay for the action each user takes, for example, when they sign up for your newsletter or download your app.
6 Steps You Must Get Right To Advertise on Social Media
Here are a few advertising tips to help you run successful social media campaigns.
1. Know Your Target Audience
Before running social media ad campaigns, take some time to study your target audience. Where do they live? What are their age bracket, gender, hobbies, and interests? Learn all you can about your potential customers so that you target your ads specifically to them. Knowing who you’re selling to helps you select the right platform, determine the right time to run ad campaigns, and guide your ad creation process.
2. Determine a Marketing Objective
What objective do you want to achieve with your ad campaign? Do you want more website visits, followers, or product purchases? Clarify your marketing objective to choose the best ad formats and payment methods for your campaigns. You’ll also be in a better position to track the success of your ad if you have a goal in mind.
3. Use High-Quality Media Components
Keep in mind that most users will notice your visual components before reading your caption. Ensure they are high-quality and align with your brand and ad message to captivate your audience.
4. Choose the Right Platform
Only go for platforms whose users are your target audience. In addition, choose a social media outlet with a reasonable advertising cost and your desired ad format.
5. Pick the Right Ad Type
Choose the ad format best suited to help you achieve your business goals. For example, if your objective is to increase brand awareness, image ads would be a good fit. If you want to tell your product or brand story, consider using video ads.
6. Have a Call to Action
Tell customers what action you want them to take next. They will be more willing to engage with you if they know what to do. For example, if you want a customer to book an appointment, use a call to action like “Book Now.” If your objective is to get more sales, use “Buy Now” or “Place an Order Today.”
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What metrics should I check to measure my social media ads?
It depends on your marketing goal. For example, an advertiser looking to drive traffic to a URL will track website clicks and conversation rates. By contrast, if the advertiser’s goal is to get more page engagement, he will check the number of new followers, likes, reactions, comments, and shares. However, the essential metrics to check are conversion rate, click-through rate (CTC), engagement, and ad reach.
2. Does social media advertising work for B2B businesses?
Yes, social media advertising is just as effective for B2B businesses as it is for B2C. Platforms like LinkedIn, and Facebook are the best for B2B marketing.
3. What’s the best time to advertise on social media?
The best time to run ad campaigns on social media is when your target audience is most active. This reason is why your need to study your potential customers. Find out their location, demographics, interests, and social media surfing habits. For example, if you want to target working professionals, consider running your ads in the evening or over the weekend.
4. Do I need to advertise on all social media platforms?
No, you don’t need to advertise on all of them. Just choose the ones where the users are your target audience. LinkedIn, for instance, can help you reach working professionals, job seekers, entrepreneurs, and organizations. TikTok, by contrast, is great for targeting an audience aged 25 and below. Some social networks work for all kinds of audiences, for example, Facebook.
5. Do I need to advertise on social media?
You are missing out on a massive opportunity if you don’t. Compared to other marketing channels, social media advertising is one of the most cost-effective. It also offers benefits not available on traditional marketing channels, like targeting your ads to a specific audience.
6. Can I use social media to reach an audience in the older generation?
Yes, you can use social to target an older demographic. Again, it depends on the platform you use. For example, Facebook is the best social network for reaching older folks.
More About Advertising on Social Media
For this section of the post, let’s go over a few resources that can help you expand your knowledge of advertising on social media.
Many of the links lead to search results, and that’s by design to ensure you always have the latest and most popular information every time you use this page.
Advertising Statistics
If you’re interested in various statistics for social media advertising then the link below offers the latest search results. Studying statistics will give you an idea of what to expect, and looking at long-term data can help you identify trends.
Additionally, looking at statistics for the industry will provide an overview, while statistics for specific platforms will offer details for that medium.
Google’s search results related to social media advertising statistics.
Advertising Examples
One way to get an idea of advertising on social media is to look at ad examples. By studying samples you’ll become more familiar with the ad types and messages to create. You will want to create a message that will attract the audience you’re targeting. An ad on Facebook may be different from an ad on TikTok. Looking at ads for each platform allows you to see any differences in the advertising messages.
Google’s search results for social media advertising examples.
Pros and Cons of Advertising on Social Media
Naturally, there are many pros and cons to advertising on social media I’ll list a few here and provide a link to the latest search results if you want to dig deeper into the topic.
Pros:
- You can reach a wide audience.
- Social Media is affordable for small businesses.
- You can work with small budgets.
- You can pause and resumes campaigns as needed.
- You can target your demographics.
- For more see, Social Media Advertising Benefits.
Cons:
- There is a learning curve for each Social Media platform.
- You may spread yourself too thin if you take on too many platforms.
- Each site has its own culture you need to be aware of before advertising.
- You can ruin your company’s reputation if you approach advertising incorrectly leading to a viral backlash.
- Focusing on too many platforms at once without optimizing each can lead to a depleted budget very quickly.
For more see Google’s search results related to the pros and cons of advertising on Social Media.
Books
Books are another source of information you can use to strengthen your foundation in social media advertising. Many books are published on the topic, and you want to make sure you’re using newer publications because changes frequently occur with online advertising platforms.
You can always use a book to build your foundation and keep up to date with the changes online for each platform you plan to use.
Another point about nonfiction books is that you don’t have to read the book from cover to cover to understand the topic; instead, you can browse the table of contents and go directly to the chapter you’re interested in.
View the most recent books from Amazon related to advertising on social media.
Courses
Taking a course offers an additional way to expand your understanding of social media advertising. I prefer to use video tutorials because I’m more of a visual learner. I also like that many online courses offer lifetime access which means you can review the information anytime.
When you find a course that appeals to you, search for reviews to understand what others have experienced. Courses are affordable, but you don’t want to waste your time on a course that doesn’t deliver.
Google’s search results related to courses for advertising on social media.
News
The news is another source of information you can use when researching a topic. For example, I like using Google News because I get a list of the newest and archive stories related to my search query.
The media doesn’t report on anything unless it’s newsworthy, which is why I like using the news as part of my research.
See Google’s news search results related to advertising on social media.
Videos
YouTube is another resource for learning. They have endless amounts of video tutorials on virtually any topic. You type in your search query to get a list of the most recent and most popular videos, plus a list of related ones you may not have considered.
Why not take a few minutes to browse videos on YouTube?
See the most recent videos related to advertising on social media.
Conclusion
The great thing about social media advertising is it is accessible to any type or size of business. Whether you run a startup or a multi-million dollar corporation, you should be able to promote your business through social media.
There are several social media platforms that you can select for your advertising needs. Go for the ones where the users are your target audience. Therefore, it’s crucial to know your target audience before getting started with social media advertising.
There are also different payment methods available with social media advertising. Choose the one that aligns with your campaign objective. While at it, ensure you select the most suitable ad types for your social media campaigns.