3 Reasons Brands Can No Longer Ignore Social Media Ads
Almost every brand knows they can no longer ignore social media. The likes of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn have revolutionised two way communication between brands and consumers. This is not a secret.
However, in the past, it occurred naturally. No money was put behind posts to get them in front of people’s eyes. In the very beginning, no ‘advertising’ per se was occuring. Then, slowly but surely, it crept in to the platforms and became the norm. But not everyone jumped straight onto the advertising train on social media. Now, you can’t afford NOT to jump on that train, because if you don’t, you’re going to get left behind.
Here are three main reasons why brands can no longer ignore social media ads.
1. Organic Reach Is Dead (Nearly)
The problem with organic social media nowadays, is that most social media algorithms are working against you. Platforms like Facebook know that brands will (and can afford to) spend money on advertising, so they’ve made it harder for you to reach your consumers organically. Of course, this is also in an attempt to serve Facebook users with more relevant content and things that they want to see, rather than seeing everything that’s posted to the platform. So naturally, paid advertising came in to play.
But just because effective organic content is (almost) dead, doesn’t necessarily mean this is a bad thing. To get your brand in front of the right consumers, you need to invest in some paid social media ads. The perks of this is that you get access to a realm of targeting options, allowing you to specifically choose the right audience for your brand, product, or the specific ad. For this reason, a social media marketing strategy and implementation plan is essential.
2. It’s affordable advertising (not to mention, it works)
With specific targeting and the right campaign, social media advertising can be extremely affordable to gain the results you’re after. Any media buying agency will know that the numbers speak for themselves. Booking for print advertising in newspapers or magazines, or a television commercial, used to be extremely expensive, even without the cost of creating the content itself. And some of it still is.
With social media, you choose your own budgets, and if you’re targeting to the right people with the right message, you’ll find that your costs per acquisition are fairly cheap and cost effective. With the added bonus that you can create some rather great content for social media at a relatively low cost (when compared with other media), this is a form of advertising that can no longer be ignored by brands.
3. Trackability and Visibility
Now, with things like the Facebook pixel, and the use of further in-depth analytics tools such as the likes of Google Analytics and other social media tools, advertising on social media can be accurately tracked. What does this mean?
Well, this is particularly great if you have a website that you’re directing consumers to, because you are able to attribute your social media ads towards your specific objectives. Whether these are simply website visits and increased traffic, plays of a video hosted on your site, or actual purchases made, it can all be tracked and you have a greater level of online visibility than ever before.
This means that, unlike many other forms of media, you can actually see the outcome of your social campaigns, and learn from these results and other insights to optimise future campaigns. With social media now bringing more website traffic than most other forms of advertising, brands would be pretty crazy to ignore the need for social media ads.
Start thinking about your social media presence, and whether an increase in campaigns or stand alone ads would be beneficial to your business.