Advertising on Social Media
At a minimum, your business should have a professional account on the major social media platforms your customers use regularly. However, organic traffic on your social media accounts may not be enough to make your social media efforts worthwhile.
Advertising on social media provides you with additional ways to reach new and existing customers and strengthen your digital presence.
When done correctly, running ads on social media can provide numerous benefits, including:
- Increasing brand awareness
- Attracting new followers and potential customers
- Improving engagement on your social media accounts
- Bolstering conversions or sales
Top social media advertising platforms
It’s important to be smart about selecting the right platforms and ad types when leveraging social media advertising. Almost every social media platform offers a paid advertising option. However, the social media channels you choose to advertise on should align with your overall marketing goals and performance thus far. Think about which platforms your organic content performs well on. If you’re not getting a lot of engagement on a platform, it might not make sense for your business to have a paid voice there.
Advertising looks a little different across each of the major social media platforms your business uses to spread the word. Social media channels have designed their ad platforms to integrate almost seamlessly with their platform’s organic content. This prevents harsh disruptions to their users’ experiences while allowing businesses to send messages and reach people who haven’t heard of their brands.
- Facebook: Advertising on Facebook is a cost-effective option that is great for reaching lots of people. The platform has very specific targeting options, allowing you to reach the right audience. There are also lots of ad type options, including photo and video ads that feature a headline and description, stories ads, carousel ads, slideshows, collections and messenger ads.
- Instagram: Ads on Instagram, let businesses push eye-catching content to new viewers. Audience targeting on Instagram ads is similar to Facebook’s targeting options, only simpler. Instagram offers five major ad types: photo, video, carousel, collection and stories.
- Twitter: Twitter ads are good for attracting followers and bolstering engagement on your content. The platform’s Promote Mode pushes your first 10 organic tweets of the day to a target audience. This option is good for getting your normal tweets seen by new people. Twitter ad campaigns lets you set up your own ads and targeting options for more specific campaigns.
- LinkedIn: The advertising options on LinkedIn are ideal for generating B2B connections. Its targeting options allow you to reach high-quality business leads by advertising to people with a specific job title or in a specific industry. LinkedIn ads generally get high conversion rates and lead quality, but for a slightly higher cost. The platform has multiple ad formats: Sponsored content, text ads and sponsored InMail messages.
- Pinterest: Advertising on Pinterest uses promoted pins, which look just like regular pins but show up in your target audience’s feeds. These promoted pins have options to include a video or a carousel of up to five images. You can pay to promote your existing pins or create pins specifically for your ad campaigns.
- Snapchat: Snapchat ads come in numerous formats. Businesses can create full-screen photos or videos that play between users’ friends’ stories, story ads that show up on the Discover page, collection ads and geofilters.
Social Media Advertising Tips
Social media advertising will look different for every company based on their audience, budget, preferred platform and products and services. However, there are a few basic things advertisers should know when setting up their social media ad campaigns in order to get the most out of their dollars:
- Create campaign goals: Every time you create a new ad campaign, you’ll want to set specific and measurable goals that will drive your ad creation and methods. Most platforms allow you to specify an ad campaign objective, such as improve brand awareness or maximize conversions. You’ll want to align this objective to your advertising goals for the best results.
- Set your budget: Most advertising platforms are run in a cost per click (CPC) or cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM) format. You can set a maximum CPC or CPM for your ad or set a maximum budget per day and let the platform’s algorithm and auction do the rest. However, you need to be aware of how much you’re willing to spend on ads to determine your maximum budgets from the start.
- Know your audiences: Social media platforms sit on a wealth of user information, from their ages and locations to their careers, interests and hobbies. Using social media advertising, businesses can use this information to target very specific groups of people. For example, Facebook might allow you to target women aged 35 to 45 who have liked pages pertaining to HBO, Showtime and Game of Thrones. Snapchat’s audience specifications might help you target men aged 18 to 26 who frequently view content related to sports. However, having access to specific audience targeting options doesn’t do anything for your business if you can’t use it to your advantage. Before embarking on a social media advertising campaign on any platform, you’ll want to identify your target audiences (and it can’t be everyone). Tailor your ads and settings to these particular groups for the best results.
Once it’s time to create your social media ads, remember to let your organic posts inform your advertisements. Users like ads that fit in with the rest of the content they see on social media. It’s your job to find the balance between grabbing a user’s attention and sharing quality content that you already offer organically. As your ad campaigns run, adjust your ads as necessary to achieve the highest engagement and return on investment possible.