Introduction
Social media usage has experienced exponential growth, and businesses can no longer afford to exclude it from their internet marketing strategy. According to statistics provided by Datareportal there are around 4.74 billion social media users worldwide, equating to 60% of the world’s population. If we look at the last 12 months, 190 million new users joined social media. To put that in perspective, that means, on average, there are 6 new users every second.
Although these are impressive numbers, you need to consider that most social media users aren’t using the platform to engage with brands. Rather they are there to socialise and have fun. And as an advertiser, you will be interrupting their experience, making it crucial to ensure that your advertising strategy doesn’t detract from their experience. You need to ensure it is equally as enjoyable.
In other words, your brand needs to form an authentic and fund relationship with your audience, making them want to interact with you. As Neil Patel says, “Once you can bridge the gap between “marketer” and “trusted friend,” you can accomplish just about anything on social media. But it takes time and effort to build up that reputation.”
Benefits of social media advertising
Increased brand awareness
As the numbers reflect, social media platforms have a huge audience making it one of the easiest ways to extend your reach. Increasing brand awareness through social media is key to letting potential customers know that your brand exists, which could result in new leads and conversions.
Social media is by far the best way to establish your brand’s online presence, especially for small to medium-sized businesses. It is one of the easiest ways to establish a direct link between your brand and customers.
When people interact with your brand and share your content, it significantly improves your brand recognition and also helps build credibility and trust,
Improved brand loyalty
Social media advertising provides you with the ability to humanise your brand. Your social media advertisements give your brand a personality and make it far more relatable; in other words, you can form connections with your target audience.
Higher lead generation and conversion rates
Social media ads can also help you generate leads and increase your conversion rates. As discussed in our previous article, platforms like Facebook are a great way to reach your niche market through targeted ad campaigns.
Retargeting campaigns are another way to boost your conversion rates, as you can target customers who have shown interest in your brand, for example, customers who abandoned their carts. Your objective is to encourage them to re-engage with your business.
Cost-effective advertising
Most social media platforms are free – all you need to do is create a profile, and off you go. However, that doesn’t necessarily guarantee success.
Social media platforms generally allow you to control your budget by setting specific limits. The biggest advantage is that the majority work on a PPC (pay-per-click) or PPV (pay-per-view) basis. You are, therefore, only paying for people who are interested in discovering more about your product.
Market Insights
Social media advertising provides important analysis giving you an in-depth understanding of how well your ads are performing. These insights help you tailor future ad campaigns or adjust existing ones accordingly. Most platforms also allow you to develop A/B tests, which go a long way toward refining your social media advertising strategy.
In addition, you will have a good indication of brand sentiment and what interests your customers. This is exceptionally useful when deciding what type of organic content you should create to keep your audience engaged.
But when it comes to social media, you don’t necessarily need any analytical tools to determine whether or not your engagement is successful. Social media users never hesitate to share their views through likes, comments, and messaging.
Social media platforms
Deciding which social media platform is the best fit for your business can be overwhelming; therefore, it’s important to understand what type of users are on each platform. It would be pointless advertising on TikTok if your target market is pensioners – knowing what your audience wants and is looking for is crucial when choosing your platform.
The most popular social media platforms include the following:
- TikTok
- YouTube
LinkedIn was historically a professional networking and recruiting platform. But LinkedIn has evolved and become the perfect platform to promote your business through sharing informative posts, articles, and promotional material.
With around 830 million members and over 58 million registered companies from over 200 countries, LinkedIn is the ideal platform to network, connect and grow your business. LinkedIn is filled with regular users leading to an impressive 1 billion interactions each month.
The biggest advantage for anyone wanting to network and generate leads with LinkedIn is that you are not just reaching a general audience, but you are able to target an audience on a more focused level, including their location, industry, current company, etc. which should lead to better opportunities with higher conversion rates.
This is more of a value-add platform where you can generate leads, improve brand awareness and drive traffic back to your website. It is also the ideal platform to build credibility through high-quality content that users can like and repost. It is a great combination of individuals and companies and is probably best suited to the B2B space or products aimed at specific professionals.
LinkedIn also offers the ability to run ad campaigns and has plenty of resources to assist your business. You can target what they refer to as “high-value accounts” or prospects featuring in their feeds, as well as message them directly. And finally, from a budget perspective, there are marketing options for just about all budgets!
TikTok
TikTok is the latest trend in social media, and with over a billion active monthly users, its become extremely popular. TikTok is all about videos ranging from 15 to 60 seconds; initially starting as a video creation app, it has now become a marketing paradise.
When TikTok first started, its users were mainly teenagers, but the demographics have changed significantly. Research shows that a quarter of their users are under 19; 22.4% are in their 20s, 21.7% are in their 30’s, 20.3% are in their 40s, and 11% are over 50.
TikTok’s key differentiator is the recommendation algorithm behind TikTok’s For You page. TikTok doesn’t mainly show users from accounts they follow but rather shows recommendations based on their behaviour, for example, the content they have posted, liked, and swiped past.
TikTok’s Ads Manager allows you to target specific customers and their tools are easy to use. You don’t need to have a huge following for a post to go viral. It’s all about creating engaging and entertaining content. Another advantage to TikTok is its relationship with eCommerce partners like Shopify, Ecwid, WooCommerce, etc., making your life much easier.
Instagram is another widely used platform with over a billion monthly active users. That is a staggering number of users, and you only need to capture a fraction of that.
The interesting thing about Instagram is how its users behave. Instagrammers want to feel a connection with a brand which is reflected in the numbers – 90% of Instagram users follow a brand. A report in 2019 showed that around 54% of people purchasing products through Facebook did so after first having seen the product on Instagram.
Instagram is the perfect marketing tool, as it helps you grow your customer base for free! You basically need a camera and a bit of imagination to get going. And the best thing about Instagram is that users love using it and use it all the time.
Instagram is a visual platform; as a business, you need to focus more on creating eye-catching and visually appealing content. It’s all about high-quality photos, unique designs, and live videos which engage directly with your audience.
Instagram is a great platform for generating leads, and for e-commerce stores, it is ideal as it has an easy-to-use check-out feature that allows your customers to view your products and make purchases without leaving their accounts.
We often think of Pinterest as just another social media platform but in reality, it is also a powerful visual search engine used by millions of people every day. Pinterest has over 400 million active monthly users and its monthly searches are in excess of 2 billion.
Users of this platform are generally looking for inspiration, they want to try new things and discover new ideas. Another key difference is that you can specifically target products. Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram are brand-focused but Pinterest allows its users to follow specific products or services that they are interested in. Users enjoy this targeted approach for a number of reasons, but it also helps them avoid receiving information about things they aren’t interested in.
Pinterest users love to share content and its worthwhile noting that most of them are female, so promoting lawnmowers is probably not your best idea.
As we all know, Facebook is the world’s largest social media platform, with over 2.5 billion active users. As discussed in our previous article, On the other hand, Facebook is a social media platform, and users aren’t actively searching to buy a product or service. Their main objective is to interact with friends and have fun; if we’re honest, your advert is probably interrupting their experience.
Facebook has an incredible amount of information about each of its users, allowing advertisers to target their audience on a granular level. This platform is ideal for creating connections with your potential customers, increasing brand awareness, as well as being a great lead generator. And as with all social media platforms, capturing your user’s attention is all about creating interactive and engaging content.
Their targeted ad campaigns can be tailored to your specific needs and budget. And the in-depth insights provided by their analytical tools can be invaluable when it comes to improving your marketing strategy.
YouTube
YouTube is renowned for being one of the best places to share informative and entertaining videos. It can be a huge value-add to your marketing strategy, where you can create quality video tutorials, educational videos, or reviews about your products.
According to Engaiodigital, “Youtube itself has over two billion monthly logged-in users, with 500 hours of video content uploaded every minute to the platform. Each visitor, on average, spends 11 minutes and 24 seconds on Youtube every day, and every visit to Youtube on average leads to 6.5 pageviews.”
When it comes to advertising, YouTube is cost-effective as it works on a PPC (pay-per-click) basis and similar to Facebook, it allows you to target your audience on a granular level. In addition, there are a variety of ad formats to choose from.
It is the ideal platform to connect with your audience through video advertisements, making your content far more memorable and engaging.
Social Media Strategy
As with any aspect of business, research and defining your goals are key to success. Your goal will determine which platform will provide the most success and which strategy will be most effective.
Your first step should be to identify your target audience and be very clear as to why you want to be on social media. The most common goals are increasing brand awareness, driving traffic to your website, offering customer service, and obviously improving those important conversion rates.
Understanding your target audience’s behavior is another major factor to take into consideration – although a potential customer has a Facebook account, you find that they are more active on Instagram.
Your brand’s personality, products or services will play an important role in determining which platform you use. In addition, each social network also has a unique personality. Knowing how each platform works significantly determines the right social media platform for your business.
Social media is all about capturing your audience’s attention through great visuals, then copy. Images are powerful and you only have a few seconds to grab their interest before they move on. And finally, if you are unsure which platform is the right fit for your business, your best bet is to look at where your competition is focussing their efforts!
Conclusion
Remember to take your time before deciding on which platform to use; it’s all about research, planning and implementing your strategy.
Before you rush in, make sure you know your target audience and where they are most active, be clear on your objectives and understand how the various platforms work.
Once you have identified your key criteria, you’re ready to go ahead and market your brand and reach new customers.
And finally, create engaging, eye-capturing and original content which you post regularly. Start off small and pick one platform and then work your way up. This gives you the time to master one platform at a time. Managing more than one platform can be overwhelming and time-consuming, as you will need to tweak your content for each platform.
