In today’s world, you can get a lot of things with a snap of your fingers.

Unfortunately, a successful social media presence for your business is not like that.

There’s a lot of noise in the social media world, and sites like Facebook and Instagram are increasingly favoring personal accounts and content rather than business content.

As a result, trying to build up an audience organically has become an extremely difficult and slow process. This has caused many companies to resort to social media advertising, and you should too! Here’s why.

What is social media advertising?

There are two kinds of tactics when it comes to social media marketing: organic and paid. Social media advertising falls under the latter of the two categories, as it involves paying for your ads to be featured on any social media platform.

Unlike organic social media marketing, social media advertising delivers fast results because you pay for your content to reach new audiences. It allows you to speak to relevant users that you wouldn’t be able to reach with organic efforts.

Social media ads can target surprisingly narrow demographics. Depending on the platform, you can narrow in on someone’s age, gender, industry, and interests. You can also reach those who have recently searched for your services or have liked business pages similar to yours. The way it works varies based on the social media channel you use.

Where can you advertise?

There are many social media platforms you can advertise on, but the four largest social media channels right now are:

Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, YouTube Ads, and Twitter Ads are appealing platforms to marketers because of their popularity to the masses. Facebook alone has 2.41 billion monthly active users, while Instagram has 1 billion monthly active users, Youtube has 1.9 billion monthly active users, and Twitter has 330 million monthly active users.

You won’t need to reach billions of users with your ad, but the more people on the platform, the higher chance you have to target at a micro level.

Where should you advertise?

Deciding where you should advertise depends on your market. You have to know your market and figure out which social media platform they’re on.

To make it easier, we’ve provided an infographic and a few questions you should answer to help you figure out which platform to advertise on.

QUESTIONS:

• Where is your target audience located?
• What is the age group and gender of your target market?
• What is their average income?
• What are their hobbies, likes, dislikes, etc.?
• What industry do they work in?

Try to answer these questions and fit them with the description in the infographic above.

Measuring Results With Social Media Advertising

The success of your social media advertising campaigns depends on the goals you want to achieve. Although the end goal of all advertising is to make more sales or get more clients, individual advertising campaigns can have different goals. Those short-term goals may include awareness, engagement, or traffic. Measuring each of those looks different:

• Awareness – Measure brand awareness by using metrics like impressions, reach, minutes watched, etc.
• Engagement – Look for metrics that show your shares, comments, reactions, amount of people you’re engaging with, how often they engage, and in what forms they participate.
• Traffic – Track your URL clicks, bounce rate, conversions, etc.

There are many tools and resources you can use online to help you track your metrics. Some examples are Google Analytics, SproutSocial, BuzzSumo, and Keyhole.

Benefits of Hiring a Social Media Advertising Agency

Many companies are relying on social media advertising agencies for their social media advertising campaigns, and here’s why you should too:

• Expertise – Social media advertising agencies have worked with many businesses across different industries, so they know which strategies work and which ones don’t. Plus, they already know how to maximize your budget to get you the results you want.
• New Perspective – Hiring an agency means you get an outsider’s perspective. There won’t be any biased opinions, and they can help you step outside of your box. You’ll also get fresh ideas from people who have been doing it for years. Having this kind of perspective will add value to your ads because it has a more consumer-minded approach.
• Better Resources – Agencies are bound to have better resources than you. Aside from tools like Photoshop and digital asset subscriptions, they also have a full team that maintains your social media ads around the clock.
• Cost-Effective – It’s really easy to waste a lot of money on ads that don’t work. Yes, you have to pay for creative advertising agencies, but their job is to ensure that you get a good ROI. You just can’t guarantee that if you do your ads yourself.

Conclusion

Social media advertising is extremely beneficial to businesses who want to grow their brand online. Although organic is “free,” if it’s not getting your content in front of more people and making sales, it’s just a waste of time. Maximizing your social media marketing strategy means finding a balance of both paid and organic marketing.

If you haven’t dabbled in social media ads, we don’t recommend trying it out without the help of a social media advertising agency. Send us a message today to talk to one of our advertising experts!

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