Using social media to promote your business organically could be going very well for you. You could be building a genuine, authentic following at a progressive pace. Perhaps you have high engagement rates, generated from your effective, high-quality content. We hope this is the case.
But, as well as you may be doing from your organic social media efforts, did you know that running paid campaigns on social media can take your business to catastrophic heights beyond your previous social media successes, at little cost? Let us tell you more.
Paid social media advertising vs organic social media marketing
Social media advertising is a paid-for form of marketing. You are paying for your advert to be shown to new potential customers who have previously not engaged with your business online. There are different models of which you pay – you can pay every time your advert is clicked on, or each time a conversion is produced as a result of your advertisement.
If you’re wondering which social media platforms to advertise on, all social media channels offer paid social media advertising, so it’s best that you utilise the network(s) you want to grow your presence on, or the channels the largest amount of your target customers are using.
When designing ads for social media, there are different creative formats you can use, from video to slideshows to simple imagery, and a variety of advertising placements you can opt for, such as adverts within direct messages, on stories, or in feed. You have the freedom to choose to use all ad placements, or be specific and choose a few, and the range of advertising formats gives you creative freedom and the option to explore which ad formats work best in promoting your company.
Still not convinced? Read on.
Benefits of social media advertising
Let’s look at the benefits of advertising on your business social media that you can’t achieve from organic social media marketing and advertising alone.
- You can target specific, detailed audience segments who are likelier to convert – rather than just anybody
That’s right – when running social media ads, you can choose the demographics, interests, and behaviours of the online social users you want your adverts served to. You can even exclude certain audiences, so you’re not wasting any money serving your ad to the wrong people! By using social targeting, you are more likely to grow an audience who are likely to buy from you, rather than a passive or unengaged following. You can be extremely specific – even targeting by job title! – so your likelihood of accumulating conversions is much higher.
2. You will increase your reach (much) more than you could organically
Social media marketing is hard – it’s competitive, saturated, and constant – there’s a reason many small businesses compare running their social media accounts to a third job. With a paid social media advertising strategy, the work is basically done for you in increasing your brand awareness.
An advertising campaign places your business in front of new leads and potential customers who not only match your target audience but have never actually interacted with or seen your business before. Your account will go from reaching your usual figures (be that in the tens, hundreds or thousands) to reaching that amount multiplied several times. This is great for growing your followers – you have to meet your customer; they aren’t responsible for finding you.
3. You can set and achieve specific, defined business goals from your advertisements
Online social media advertising offers businesses the capability to set a business objective they want their advertisements to achieve – whether that’s to drive leads businesses can nurture, generate website clicks, boost engagement, expand reach, or increase conversions. The social advertising platforms will then optimise to achieve this goal for your business.
Having these goal options means you can set up advertising campaigns to reach your potential customers at different consumer touchpoints within the consumer journey funnel.
4. You can retarget online users who did not convert
Ever added something to a basket online, abandoned the cart, only to be followed around the internet by it? Retargeting on social media is a powerful paid advertising and remarketing strategy that reaches online users who interacted with your adverts previously but did not complete your defined business goal e.g. web click. The more times a potential customer sees your advertisement or has a touchpoint with your business, the more familiar they become with your brand, and the closer they come to being a conversion.
5. Gain marketing insights by measuring and tracking your results
Social advertising has taken off for a multitude of reasons, but mostly because of the in-depth social media advertising analytics provided with social advertising, which gives businesses a thorough insight on how their marketing campaigns performed, as well as the online shopping habits of their leads and customers. If you can’t see the results and data from your marketing, how do you know what’s working?
Each social ad platforms have their own insights and reportage tools to determine how your paid social media advertising campaign performed.
6. Control the lifetime of your content
With organic content, you have a short time of which it is seen within feed before it disappears into the abyss of social media forever. Social media stories typically have a 24-hour life span, and most social users usually will only be displayed content in feed from the past 0-3 days at most, depending on how often they use a social network individually.
When running social media ads, you can set a duration for how long you want your advert to be served, whether that’s a day, a week, or a month. This gives you a consistent presence on your chosen social media advertising channels.
7. Build better business recognition
Using social media to advertise your business is incredibly efficient because the more you’re seen, the more you’re recognised, meaning audiences will build a relationship with you more quickly and are likelier to become conversions. Think about how many businesses you wouldn’t know about if you hadn’t seen them advertised on television countless times growing up.
8. Extremely effective for less cost – utilising your marketing budget more effectively
The cost for advertising on social media is very low when compared to traditional – and often less effective – marketing methods. You can spend a minimum amount and generate return. Your CPC and CPA costs are measured, so you can calculate the ROI generated from your social advertising campaigns. Can you do that from an outdoor billboard? Probably not.
9. Improved conversion rates
Because you’re only targeting online social media users who match your target customer segments, not only is your marketing budget is being used more effectively, but you’re going to get more conversions. Think of it as a glass of blackcurrant cordial – your audience are more highly concentrated and less diluted down than they are organically.
Talk to us about our social media advertising packages and solutions today or follow us on social media for daily social media insights @LOCALiQ_UK.
