Social Media Paid Advertising
Get the Most Out of Social Media Paid Advertising
Social media continues to grow in usage and popularity and has become a firmly established integrated marketing avenue for businesses looking to further engage with their customers. In addition to posting and engagement-oriented tactics, advertising across your social media channels is also an efficient use of your budget. Social media paid advertising can be highly effective for both small businesses and mid-sized companies. Social media digital advertising can also be useful to both companies offering B2B firms and ecommerce firms that provide consumer products. With paid social media ads, your business can make the most use of your social media presence.
Which Social Media Platforms Should You Use to Advertise?
The number of social media platforms popping up continues to grow, even if a few juggernauts (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram) still mostly dominate the landscape. Each one of these giants has its unique audience and demographics. These platforms also have different guidelines on how companies can advertise on them. Each of the social networks has unique audiences and parameters for advertising, so crafting a unique strategy to get the most out of your advertising dollars is essential.
LinkedIn’s demographics are more focused on business, businesspeople, and the most critical content for busy professional careers. Because of these demographics and user base, business-to-business (B2B) marketing is a natural fit for LinkedIn. Many of LinkedIn’s targeting parameters are similar to Facebook: language, location, age, gender, and more. LinkedIn, however, gives you parameters unique to a business-focused platform, such as job titles, job seniority, company size, and even the skills people have. For the ads themselves, the idea is to keep the copy simple and straightforward, targeting audiences’ pain points and the reason that their business can benefit from working with you.
Facebook has billions of users, offering a vast number of audiences your business can target. The primary demographics tend towards females, people with at least some college education, and young to middle-aged adults; maybe unsurprising with the number of aged 40+ users growing in the U.S. Another interesting statistic according to a Pew Research survey is that 74% of those who make incomes of more than $75,000 per year use Facebook. Social media paid advertising on Facebook allows you to target specific audiences based on numerous factors, such as
- Location
- Job title
- Gender
- Interests & hobbies
- Consumer behaviors
- Friends of friends
- Recent life events such as new home
Facebook advertising also allows you to get very granular with your specific marketing goals (such as traffic or engagement), the placement of your ads (mobile vs. desktop, or precise placement within people’s feeds), and the type of advertisements you run. You can use Facebook ad campaigns to target highly specific groups, meet their needs with engaging copy, and convert them into customers.
Twitter’s primary demographics skew noticeably younger than Facebook and LinkedIn, being more popular among the 18-29 age range. Like Facebook, you can target specific audiences based on numerous parameters, although one unique feature can target exact keywords. Your social media paid advertising strategy can target people who have either used particular keywords or hashtags in their tweets or have interacted with accounts that have used those keywords. Targeting keywords and hashtags lets you be more precise and specific, giving you a greater chance of reaching your desired audience. Make your Twitter ads more compelling by emphasizing urgency in your copy, using hashtags effectively and efficiently (no more than 2 relevant hashtags is a good rule of thumb), and creating tweets that engage your followers.
Similar to Twitter, Instagram’s primary demographic skews young, albeit even younger than Twitter (people aged 13-29 make up the majority of users). Instagram is the most visually focused out of the previously mentioned platforms, so having compelling, engaging photos and videos is crucial to getting conversions. Each of the ad formats is useful for a different business objective. Carousel ads can keep people engaged in one post much longer, and video ads are a great way to demonstrate your products or services in action, which consumers are highly receptive to. If your business’s products or services lend themselves well to photos or videos, paid advertising on Instagram is an excellent social media paid advertising strategy.
Contact VIEWS for Social Media Paid Advertising Services
Businesses need to strengthen their social media presence now more than ever, and paid advertising is a good way to do so. VIEWS Digital Marketing is a paid search advertising agency that will work with you to develop the best paid advertising strategies for your business. Our digital marketing consultants can develop a comprehensive social media marketing strategy to increase your followers, engagement, and customers. We have years of experience working with small and medium-sized businesses on their paid advertising campaigns and helping them generate leads (read our Stein Tree Service Case Study as an example.)
In addition, our marketing analytics company can also develop an integrated digital marketing strategy, incorporating your social media platforms, to drive more traffic and leads to your site. To enhance your business’s social media presence with social media paid advertising, contact VIEWS today.