Are you exploiting the power of social media for your business’s growth and success?
Any effective, comprehensive marketing strategy is going to work as a symphony of many parts. This may include everything from exceptional website design to Google Ads, content marketing to SEO, email marketing to commercial videos, and much more.
A modern marketing campaign for almost all types of business should also seriously consider incorporating social media marketing and paid social media ads.
Maintaining and promoting a presence on the right social platform/s for your business, brand, niche, and target audience is a powerful way to genuinely connect with your ideal customers and get seen online.
What is Social Media Marketing?
It is simply the practice of using platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter to promote your brand and business, build relationships with consumers, generate new leads, and sell your product.
There are distinct types of social media marketing:
- Content Marketing – creating and sharing high-value content to attract and engage your target audience and build credibility and trust.
- Social Marketing for SEO – creating and sharing valuable, appealing posts that support and enhance your SEO campaign.
- Paid Social Advertising – via Paid Ads on social platforms, whereby you pay for ads on Facebook or other platforms to get seen when users enter specific search terms. This also includes Sponsored Posts on Instagram and Twitter.
- Influencer Marketing – where brands partner with high-value influencers that suit their niche, product, and target customers to have them promote their products on their personal social profiles.
- Social Engagement – brands personally interact with their customers, followers, and fans on social media to build a community and focus on relationships rather than the hard sell.
What is Paid Advertising?
Paid advertising is a specific type of digital marketing in which your business, brand, or other organisation pays to have your ads seen online. This extends from:
- Google Ads – sponsored content that appears in the first few places on a search engine results page, above or alongside the organic results – paid advertising is via a Pay per Click (PPC) basis – you only pay for ads that result in click-throughs…
to
- Social Media Ads – Facebook Ads, Sponsored Posts on Instagram or Twitter, and other similar types of advertising content.
The goal of paid advertising is to quickly, actively promote your brand’s products or services to your target audience right when they are searching for the solutions you offer – as opposed to the lengthier process it takes to generate optimal organic search engine results (which, incidentally, are of just as much importance in the big picture for your business).
How does it work? You pay a fee for your ads to be displayed, and the more you are willing and able to pay, the wider your ad’s reach. You can precisely target your audience for specific search terms and based on demographics for tailored campaigns.
Social Media Advertising
Social media advertising is a niche type of paid advertising method employed on social platforms. It is an extremely effective way to deliver your campaign to your target audience on the social channels they use, at a time when they are more relaxed and amendable to positively receiving your advertisements.
The potential reach of social media advertising can’t be understated:
- There are more than 3.6 billion social media users globally[1].
- Facebook is the third most-visited website in the world[2].
- More than two billion searches are conducted daily on Facebook alone[3].
- Almost 65% of online shoppers claim to have been directly influenced to purchase by a video they watched on a social media platform[4].
Social media advertising is a fast, direct way to reach your audience. While striving to improve and maximise your organic reach via search engine optimisation (SEO) will always have an important role and should not be ignored, social media ads can be an affordable, effective way for you to get seen NOW.
Different types of social media advertising include:
- Facebook Ads – sponsored posts that aim to generate leads, promote apps, trigger sales, increase traffic and awareness, and boost engagement. Facebook is widely used by everyone from Gen Z to Baby Boomers, however, it is most popular with Millennials and Gen X.
- Instagram Ads – with the same campaign objectives as Facebook, Instagram appeals to a generally younger demographic of Millennials, Gen Z and Gen X.
- Twitter Ads – help businesses maximise ad reach for greater brand awareness, trigger video views and web traffic, and convert. Its audience demographic is predominantly male and tends to be older.
- Snapchat Ads – are image-based and best suited for Gen Z and Millennial audiences.
- TikTok Ads – used to generate and encourage website visits, online sales, and app installs; these audiences are almost exclusively Millennials and Gen Z.
- Pinterest Ads – are great for building brand awareness, boosting loyalty, and triggering sales; this is a predominantly female audience of Millennials, Gen X, and Baby Boomers.
- YouTube Ads – video-based, these ads compel awareness, consideration, and action across a broad demographic range.
- LinkedIn Ads – suit professionals and corporate audiences to build brand and company awareness, generate leads and increase engagement, and drive conversions. It is a primarily B2B-oriented platform.
How to Maximise Your ROI with Social Media Advertising
You will want to get the utmost out of your social ad campaigns – so you need to:
- Define Your Objectives – Having clear objectives and goals for your ad campaign from the outset is critical. What do you wish to achieve? Generating more leads? Increasing sales? Gaining authentic followers? Building brand awareness? The answers will inform your campaign direction. You’ll also need to understand your budget and how to balance this with your goals.
- Know Your Target Audience – Who are you targeting? What kinds of ad content will they positively respond to? Which social platforms are they using? Creating customer personas is important for designing the right ads to resonate with your targets – and you need to know your target customer to achieve this.
- Compose Engaging Ad Creative – Your ad copy, graphics, videos – whatever form your ad takes, you need to craft and compose compelling, captivating, unique and creative content to appeal to and engage your target audience. It must be concise, clear, and deliver your message, highlighting the benefits of your offering. Visuals must be eye-catching.
- Implement Effective Ad Placement – How much can you afford to pay for your ads? Where (and when) will be most effective in terms of ad placement for your brand? When and where are your audiences most likely to see your ads, and also be open to actively receiving them? These will determine when you run ads, which platforms you’ll use, and how much you’ll spend on them.
- Understand How to Target and Retarget – Don’t waste funds targeting the wrong audiences at the wrong time or in the wrong place. Ads and their placement need to be aligned with the right audience. From building buyer personas to clever competitive intelligence to data on existing social demographics, social listening, polls and hashtag leverage – there are numerous ways to affect this. Savvy analysis of your ad campaigns will enable you to understand which ads resonate and you can retarget as needed to ensure you get the best possible ROI.
- Monitor and Optimise Performance (Analytics) – You must define your campaign objective/s and KPIs so that you can effectively monitor your campaign’s performance and then optimise to improve outcomes. You should be constantly, consistently monitoring and adjusting throughout your campaign.
- Test and Experiment – What works? What doesn’t? what could you be doing better? Take inspiration from what your competitors are doing – then do it better, in your own, unique way.
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[1] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-maximise-your-roi-paid-media-campaigns-digitag-dag/
[2] https://zephoria.com/top-15-valuable-facebook-statistics/#:~:text=Worldwide%2C%20there%20are%20over%202.6,billion%20MAUs%20for%20December%202019.
[3] https://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/40-unbelievable-seo-statistics-need-know.html#note-68961-34
[4] https://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/consumers-64-more-likely-purchase-product-after-watching-online-video-infographic
