Social Media Ads – The role of social media in marketing!
Content
- What is social media marketing & social media advertising?
- Some types of social media advertising?
- How social media ads are effective
- Some social media statistics that prove their importance
What is social media marketing & social media advertising?
Social media marketing initially started with publishing. Businesses share their content on social media to generate traffic that leads to sales. Nowadays social media has matured a lot, apart from being just a place for content transmission.
Today, businesses use social media in many different ways.
Some companies use social media to increase their brand awareness, others use them to increase traffic and sales. Social media also help businesses build loyalty around their brand name, build a community and as well they are used as a customer support channel.
Some types of social media advertising?
All major social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Pinterest, Twitter, Youtube, etc. offer advertising options. That does not mean that you have to use them all.
When you choose where to place your advertisement, is also very usefull to know which networks are more popular to your target-audience. Where is active the most dedicated, most focused and most accessible target-group.
Below are the most popular social media networks for advertisement:
Facebook Ads
Facebook ads help you achieve one of the three general types of campaign goals:
- Awareness: Create brand recognition or increase user reach.
- Consideration: Send traffic to your website, increase loyalty, encourage app installations or video views, generate leads, or encourage people to connect with you on Facebook Messenger.
- Conversion: Increase purchases or potential customers, through your website/ app or drive traffic to offline stores.
Instagram Ads
Facebook also owns Instagram. So it’s no surprise that Instagram ads support the same three major campaign target categories as Facebook ads:
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Conversion
As with Facebook ads, you can target your ideal viewer with custom targeting options. Create similar types of audiences, identifing behaviors & activities, interests & demographics of your audience.
You can create any type of ad for either mainstream Instagram or Instagram Stories. Placing ads on IG TV also offers unique ways to reach your audience.
LinkedIn Ads
As in the previous two social media ads, LinkedIn ads help businesses with two different marketing goals:
- Awareness: Make your company or brand more recognizable.
- Consideration: Increase website traffic & loyalty or encourage video views.
- Conversion: Gather potential customers and increase website conversions.
LinkedIn is much more professional than other social networks. It offers targeting options based on professional qualifications, such as job title and company.
Sponsored Content ads appear in the news feed on both desktops and mobiles. They are used to promote your content to a larger audience and showcase your company’s know-how.
Pinterest Ads
Pinterest ads work with five types of marketing goals:
- Brand awareness
- Website traffic
- App Installs
- Product traffic
- Video impressions
Pinterest is a tool for storing ideas. This means that the network naturally leads to purchases, but these purchases may not take place immediately.
Pinterest ads are called Promoted Pins. They look and behave like normal pins. The only difference is that they become visible to a wider audience through payment.
In addition to the basic photo pins, you can create advanced video pins or a carousel of up to five images.
How social media ads are effective
If you want social media advertising to be effective, whatever platform you choose, you need to take a step back and pay attention to what you need to achieve for your business. The basic steps are:
Define your business goal
Understanding your business goals is crucial. Ensures that you choose the right social network to advertise and helps you choose the right advertising solution on this platform. It also guides the creative strategy.
Choose the social media platforms you want to advertise
The main social media platforms are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube and Snapchat. There are also smaller and up-coming platforms such as Tumblr, Tik Tok, Anchor and as well social networking platforms such as Messenger, WhatsApp and WeChat. When you start, it is better to choose some platforms on you think your target-audience is located, than to be on all platforms.
Define the content you want to share
What type of content will best reach your target audience? Are they images, videos or links? Is it educational or entertaining content? A good start is to create a marketing persona that will help you answer these questions. And this does not have to be permanent. You can always change your strategy depending on the performance of your social media posts.
Schedule and publish content
Advertising on social media is like posting a blog, an image or a video on a social media platform. But it is much better to plan your content in advance than to create and publish content spontaneously. Also, to ensure that you maximize your impact on social media, you need to post great content at the right time and frequency.
Listen and interact with your audience
As your business and social media followers increase, so will the discussions about your brand. Users will comment on your social media posts, tag you in their own posts, or email you directly.
Therefore, you want to follow the social media conversations about your brand. If you have a positive comment, you have the opportunity to surprise and thank them. Alternatively, you can offer support and rectify a situation before it gets worse.
Some social media statistics that prove their importance
- The latest statistics show that there are 3.78 billion social media users worldwide in 2021. (Statista)
- With more than 2.32 billion monthly active users, Facebook remains the most widely used social networking platform. (Pewinternet)
- 84% of U.S. adults, between ages of 18 and 29, are active social media users. (Pew Research Center)
- The latest social media statistics for 2021, show that on average 2 hours and 25 minutes a day are spent per person on social media. (DataReportal)
In conclusion
If you want to grow your business marketing, one area you can invest in is social media advertising. Social media ads allow you to reach a wider audience than those who already follow you.
Social media advertising platforms are so powerful nowadays that you can determine exactly who to show your ads to. You can target your audience based on their demographics, interests, behaviors and more.
