It is all a waste of money; do you advertise your business on social media?

It is all a waste of money; do you advertise your business on social media?

Ok, sorry for the clickbait title there but this is a huge topic and one that has lots of opinions, so I thought in this week’s newsletter I’d break it down by experience from a software vendor perspective, that would be us ??

We all know that social media platforms including LinkedIn rely heavily on advert revenue to operate, and whatever social media platform you use you will see adverts in your different feeds.?So, is it all a big waste of money, or does it add any value when generating new business for you?

I have seen many many posts, discussions and some arguments that are both for and against ad spend on social.?The reality is we globally spend as businesses a fortune on adverts and here are some numbers for 2020.

In 2020 the following organisations generated the following amounts of revenue from selling adverts

1. Twitter circa 3.2 Billion $
2. LinkedIn circa 360 million $
3. Google circa 146 billion $
4. YouTube circa 15 billion $
5. Facebook circa 84 billion $
6. Instagram circa 17.4 billion $

I could not find any reported figures for TikTok but did find some interesting stats about anticipated costs and impression rates so watch this space as I’m sure data will come available eventually.

But you can see from above that some 265 + billion $ in 2020 was spent on social media and online advertising, so there must be some value in it right.

Well yes or by now we would have worked it out and no one would advertise, but it is not black or white it is not a do or don’t situation.

I’m sure you have heard people say things like

“There is no point unless you have got deep pockets”

“Advertising is just for the big brands”

“You will only get awareness; you will not drive any new business”

Obviously, me being me I tend to ignore what most people say and try ideas and then test and measure.?Yes, whatever you do in marketing your business, make sure you test and measure what it is you are doing, here at Mapsimise.com we track EVERYTHING! And not just by location.

But let’s break it down, as there is still the mantra of “Organic” verses “Paid” and the popular statement that “Ads Don’t Work”

And there maybe some truth in the statement that “Ads don’t work” but it depends on who you are, what your service, or product is and how you go about creating the ads, and more importantly the target audience you have in mind.

There are a few things you will really need to consider before throwing caution to the wind, adding your credit card to an advertising platform, and pressing go, because if you just do that then you may well see your hard-earned money disappear ??

Advert vs Content, which approach should I take?

Ok from my experience of using social there are two approaches you can take, there is the advert which is the typical “Buy My Thing” it is a great product, and you need it today, and if you buy it today there is 10% off blar blar blar.

Personally, I would AVOID creating this type of advert and posting on social, as it is two generic and shouts back to the original advertising approach of early TV promotions.?

That does not mean you should not do it; it just means I don’t sign off anything like that ??

So let’s enter the idea of an advert that is tailored content, and that is boosted and advertised to a wider audience

This is the approach I’d prefer to take creating unique content for a target subset of businesses or individuals.?This type of content can be video, blog, picture or a meaningful post, the one thing it is no is generic.

?Who is in your audience?

This one is critical, who are you actually trying to reach and why, what problem do you think you can solve and why does your customer have this problem.?This as a software company took a while for us to narrow, and once we had narrowed it down, we narrowed it some more.

Yes, if you love your product or service and you probably do if it is your business, then your default starting place is EVERYONE, I can help everyone.

If that is the case put the credit card away and stop and think, you can’t help everyone it is just not possible.

Define a sub section, because if you are setting keywords and audience size that is bigger than 100k then for you to be effective you will need a very big budget.

As humans we don’t remember or respond to the first advert we see especially if it is a new brand, so make sure your audience is small to start with.

Do you have a budget to spend?

I do need to caveat this with a warning as a budget for advertising is what works for you and not what someone else is spending, when we have done product launches in the past, we sometimes have spent between 3k and 7k in a month.?

This might seem like a huge amount of money to some and a tiny amount to others so whatever you do, do not set a budget on what you think your competitors are spending.?Set a small budget first and then make sure any content you use works and delivers the engagement you anticipate.

There is no hard and fast rule if you start small, and your content gains some traction you can then scale up and see if the results you get, get amplified in the right way.

Organic verses Paid, which is best?

I’m sure there will be some in my network that scream Organic Organic Organic, but hold that thought for a moment as I’m going to try and explain why using both approaches is better than just one.?

Please also remember we are not a service company and for Mapsimise.com to be successful we must address a global audience across 8 different countries as a minimum.

Ok let’s get down to the crux of the matter organic content reigns supreme you need this like you need the heart beating in your chest.

Paid content and promoting organic content using ad budget is far more effective than trying to win customers with a straight “Buy My Thing” advert, especially if you run a small business, which 80% of us do.

Personally, I’m not a fan of the ADVERT, but increasing awareness though paid traffic of your native content that your team have created will amplify your message, it will boost your listings in search engines, it will gain you more indexes and drive more traffic to you web site.?If you then have a good SEO web site strategy i.e., you are regularly adding content to your site then this will continue to build you organic reach.

Now for the hard truth and this is from experience, and it is just my opinion, if you think you can just run advert spend without organic content, and you are just running adverts, you are probably going to waste money and time, and end up disappointed.?

Yes 10 years ago you could do this, you could just run ads, and we did very effectively, but times have changed.?

Well, times have changed in our industry and our success has come from promoting what we do organically with our content, by using multiple channels and paid services.

Let’s put it like this you have a guitar, you learn to play it, then you plug it into an amplifier, and you increase the sound it makes, it really is that simple ??

So does advertising on social media work, yes it does if you take the right approach, and it suites your business model and offering, if you can win by not spending any money that is great, but as a software company it is far more cost effective for us to promote the content we create to a larger audience, instead of employing a small army of content creators.

In closing I would say this, any marketing activity you do, must be seen as an investment not a cost, if you think it is a cost in your business then you might need to review the strategy you are following.?

Here at Mapsimise.com we are, as mentioned above, a business technology software company.?We make software product that solves problems.?

We don’t run adverts that say “BUY OUR PRODUCT” because the reality is most people don’t care about a product, they care about solving a problem they have.?

The purpose of ours and your content is to make you potential customers aware of what you do in case a given problem arises for them.

So finally, to confirm our approach we do use ad spend to amplify the content that we create, and I’m happy to tell you it does not cost ￡1000’s to do, so if you are thinking about it, start first with your content and your website SEO, as these have to be the starting point, identify an suitable audience that might want to read your content and then design a campaign to run.

Next, I’m going to look at the different type of campaign we run and how we approach them, I do appreciate that these newsletters are not always just about the benefits of data and location, but having been around the block in business terms, I’m happy to share what I have learnt.?

Have a great week, and thanks for reading

Alistair

CEO Mapsimise.com

Also feel free to follow our company page here to get the latest updates https://www.dhirubhai.net/company/mapsimise/ ??