Social advertising is a great way for brands to increase awareness to a broad audience at a relatively low cost, but it can be difficult to navigate the ever-evolving social media landscape and figure out how to best allocate your marketing budget to get the best results. From different social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn to changes to iOS and Android privacy policies, and unique industry dynamics, we are here to help you understand the opportunities and challenges that social media advertising can present while maximizing ROI for your business. Let’s dive in!
Advertising on Different Social Media Platforms
When deciding where to advertise on social media, there are several platforms to choose from but not all will be the right fit for your business or your goals. Consider your target audience and which platform they are most likely to use. Teens and younger consumers are more likely to use TikTok (although the demographics are beginning to trend towards a more mature audience) while older generations still enjoy Facebook. Consider investing on platforms where your content performs best organically.
Your specific goals will also help dictate where you spend your social advertising dollars. If you want to increase brand awareness or consideration, Facebook reaches a wide audience (2.45 billion monthly active users) at a fairly low cost per result while LinkedIn has a higher cost per result but with a much more targeted audience.
Social Advertising on Facebook
Facebook is one of the most popular social media platforms to advertise on because it reaches a large audience, has a low cost per result, and it is very targeted. With 2.45 billion active users, Facebook ads can be seen by a large audience. This platform also has a relatively low cost per result which means a small budget can go far and a larger budget can go even further. In addition, Facebook has very targeted ad options.
Awareness – You can create an ad with the goal of raising awareness for your brand.
Engagement – Ads with the goal of engagement can focus on likes, comments, and shares on a post, video playthroughs, or page likes based on the specific goal you have for the ad.
Traffic Driving – Driving traffic to your website or a specific landing page, for example, a sale page or a certain product is a great way you can utilize social advertising.
Leads – Lead generation ads can help bring leads to your business through short forms, messages, calls, and sign-ups.
App Promotion – You can create an ad to specifically encourage downloads of your app.
Sales – With the capability to sell directly through Facebook, you can set up an ad that is targeted toward people who are likely to purchase your product or service.
Social Advertising on Instagram
Since Instagram is owned by Facebook, advertising on Instagram is very similar to Facebook. When you create an ad in Facebook Business Manager, your ad will automatically run on Instagram as well if you have your Instagram account connected to your Facebook. You can also set up ads directly in the Instagram app. The audience on Instagram trends younger and tends to have more females than on Facebook. It is also a visual platform so great photos and videos tend to perform better. Advertisements on Instagram also appear in Instagram stories which increases exposure.
Social Advertising on LinkedIn
Advertising on LinkedIn can be very effective when working with B2B brands. This is because this social platform predominantly serves management and executive-level professionals. With LinkedIn advertising, you can select from 3 types of ads based on your goals: awareness, consideration (engagement, website visits, video views), and conversation (lead generation, website conversions, and job applicants). You can target the audience you want to serve your ad to using criteria like company size, company names, member schools, member interests, skills, job title, and more. You can then select the ad format ranging from sponsored posts to message ads, dynamic ads (personalizes your ad based on LinkedIn profile data), and text ads.
LinkedIn advertising is more costly than advertising on other social platforms but it can be more targeted if you are wanting to reach certain businesses or professions.
Social Advertising on Pinterest
Pinterest is a visual-first, search engine giant that can be a great way for your business to reach new consumers. It is cost-effective and can have a high return on investment for most retail brands. One of the key factors to consider when deciding whether you should advertise on Pinterest is “Is your target audience currently utilizing Pinterest?” If the answer is yes, you should more than likely be putting your advertising dollars on this platform. Another key factor to consider is the visual appeal of your product or service. As we mentioned, Pinterest is a visual-first platform and the ads that perform best have great visuals.
The different advertising types and goals on Pinterest are similar to other social media platforms and include awareness, consideration, conversations, and offline sales. Pinterest also allows you to target your ads based on demographics such as age, gender, location, keywords, and interests. Pinterest also has the unique feature where users can save their Promoted Pin and return to it at a later time. This is especially important for products that have a longer consideration period like flooring.
Changes in Social Advertising
The landscape of social media advertising is continually changing from ads manager updates to audience targeting and much more. One of the most significant changes was the iOS 14 privacy policy that prohibited certain data tracking unless iOS users opted in. Google and Android are also implementing similar options on their operating systems which reduce the amount of data you can collect, report on, and leverage for audiences such as remarketing and user behaviors.
Thankfully, there are steps that you can take to still target ads to the right consumers and mitigate the effects of these changes through domain verification, getting a pixel set up on your website, and testing different audience parameters to find what works best for you business.
What Social Advertising is Best for Your Business?
As you can see, there are several different social media platforms that you can advertise your business on and recent changes in privacy and data collection have made it difficult for companies to navigate where to spend their advertising dollars. If you are feeling overwhelmed with the information, we recommend listing out your goals, the unique attributes of your product or service, and your target audience. All of these factors will help you determine where your advertising dollars will be best spent as well as what type of ads you will need to run. It is also important to remember that social advertising is a piece of your overall marketing strategy. When executed correctly in sync with your other marketing strategies, it can increase brand awareness, broaden your customer base, drive website traffic, and much more.
At White Label Studio, we have extensive experience with social media advertising and can help you develop a strategy to accomplish your goals. We also offer many other digital marketing services including marketing strategy, SEO, PPC, website design, graphics, social media management, influencer marketing, content creation, and public relations. We would love to learn more about your business and how we can support you in your digital marketing efforts. Contact us today at hello@whitelabelstudio.com to set up a meeting to discuss more.
Recent Comments