When you think of advertising, it’s not hard to immediately think of billboards, TV adverts and movie trailers. But what you may not be thinking is that you’re already being targeted – on Social Media!
With social media networks the biggest source of inspiration for consumer purchases (37% of users look to social media), it’s no surprise that more and more businesses are taking a serious look at social media to add to their digital marketing strategy. Who would want to miss out on the goldmine that is being used by an extra 100 million people every year since 2014?
So why do you need to add paid social media to your digital marketing strategy? We’ll explore the benefits and the reasons, and hopefully we’ll start to see you pop up on our news feed!
What are the Benefits of Paid Social Media Advertising?
Listed below are just some of the main reasons we recommend adding paid social media to your digital marketing strategy. You may think “I don’t have time for this” and give up on the idea, but our team of experienced social media marketers can help steer you in the right direction, or take the reins for you.
1. Advanced Targeting
When someone decides they’re going to show a TV advert at a certain time between a show, they know that the majority of their audience is going to be interested. However, there isn’t a complete guarantee because it’s TV – anyone could be watching. It can make the experience very expensive with very little to yield from it.
With social media marketing however, you can guarantee you’ll be targeting exactly who you want to target. This is because you can set the most detailed of parameters. You can narrow down your audience down to their job title, their relationship status, age, gender, location, language they speak, if they’ve visited your website (you’ll need to have a Facebook Pixel installed for this), their interests, the amount of engagement they have with your brand, their mobile device etc – we could go on.
By making sure you’re targeting the right people, your budget will stretch further and you’ll see much better results.
2. Relatively Cheaper Cost per Click
Once you’ve got your audience in place, you can start pushing to the relevant people. Because you’ll be doing that, social networking platforms will reward you with a lower cost per Click (CPC). Consider it a reward for your valiant efforts in making sure the correct people see and engage with your ad.
The average CPC (when done right) on social media is considerably lower than on places such as Google and Bing ads. It’s definitely worth exploring as an option if that’s where your target audience is.
It’s also worth noting that while social media platforms are necessarily the most converting of platforms (we’re looking at you Google Ads), it’s still a great way to show off your brand and make people aware of who you are. The Facebook pixel even allows you to see how many of those conversions were associated and assisted by the Facebook ad, making it even easier for you to track its worth.
3. Be Where Most Users Are
With statistics showing that social media is the most relevant advertising channel for 50% of Gen Z and 42% of millennials, and non-customers are three times more likely than customers to visit retailers from social media ads, it’s not hard to see why more and more businesses are turning to social media for sales.
Organic social media’s reach is still being decreased by the likes of Facebook and Instagram compared to Paid social media, and so why bother competing and get in the game! Whatever the size of your budget, you can be certain to see progress.
4. Learn More about your Audience
Audience targeting is a fine art, and so finally finding the right demographic and creating bespoke ad content for them can seem like a mission. But what if you’re missing out on something, or the ads don’t generate the result you were expecting? The best (and first) place you should look is your audiences.
When looking into your audiences and why they aren’t performing the way you want them to with your ad can have one of two outcomes:
- You discover more about your existing audience, and tailor the ads to them. You may find out that they only view your ads on mobile, or that those that engage more will buy more. This kind of data is essential if you want to progress your brand’s presence and make your ads even more successful.
- You learn that maybe you aren’t targeting the right people, and you discover a whole new branch of people to target. For example, you could be a men’s sportswear brand, but realise that your highest converting audience is women who are buying for their partners – now there’s a whole new market to discover!
5. Get Going Very Quickly
As long as you have a card to pay on, a campaign that you’ve created, some audiences and meet the advertorial guidelines set out by each social media platform, you can get going. You can spend as much or as little as you like, but getting a campaign going on social media is one of the fastest ways to get seen.
Here at Ricemedia, our social media team can generate ad content, schedule it and upload it within a couple of hours, which may be a couple of hours ahead of your competitors. You need to make sure you are taking advantage of every opportunity!
