It’s no new phenomenon for businesses to create profiles on social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest in order to better interact with their customers from a grassroots level. 80% of surveyed marketers believe that social media has become a more important lead source for their business over the last six month according to a 2014-2015 report. If you’re taking the time to create, monitor, and post to social media channels you should also consider investing in social media paid advertising in order to increase maximum exposure to your company or brand.
You may wonder why you should invest in paid social ads when the alternative – posting to your account – is free. Why are 70% of marketers choosing to increase their social media advertising spends? Well, social ads can make all the difference when it comes to the performance of your social media campaign. It has become apparent that social media platforms have become pay-to-play zones for businesses, but why are social media ads the worth the investment? Let’s take a look at a few reasons.
What Audience Responds to Social Ads?
Do you know who is using social media nowadays? Everyone. Everyone from your sister’s two year old to your grandmother’s uncle. Okay, we’re exaggerating a tad; 1.9 billion people use social media as of 2014. Social ads are becoming seamlessly integrated with these users’ social media experiences, rather than perceived as an intrusion to their online browsing experience, in the way a pop-up is perceived. By investing in social media ads, your business is becoming a part of their experience – not an interruption to it.
By investing in social ads, you’re choosing to get in front of an audience of 1.9 billion and tell them, with confidence, “I exist and I have this awesome product that will make your life easier!”
Actually, we have a reason you would choose not to go down that route and it brings us to our next point.
Do You Want To Reach a Specific Audience?
Social ads are amazing at reaching exactly the type of people who would go to your business or buy your product. Whether you’re trying to reach a specific age group, a specific place, or someone with a specific interest, social ads lets you reach only your relevant audience.
Take a second to think about how cool it is that you can reach your exact target audience. In the cases of print, television, and radio ads, you paid for a space for your ad and hoped that the people tuning into what you had to say would find it relevant. With social ads, you can set the targeting for their exact interests and your ad will only be served to profiles that match those interests. Social ads let you weed out the people who don’t care about your product and instead nurture relationships with the people who do!
Are You Unsure Who Your Target Audience Is?
That’s fine too! Social ads let you cast a wide net and target a broad audience. Then, when you’re done running your campaign you can evaluate if your product appealed to a specific group and narrow down your targeting and your messaging to that group. Using this method, you can figure out a lot more about your business and make necessary adjustments to appeal to the people who want to hear more from you. Social ads make you more adaptable to change and able to address your customer’s concerns, making them more likely to come to you when they have a problem.
While finding out as much as possible about your audience is important for running your business successfully, social ads often let you cheat in finding your audience. For instance, Facebook allows you to track the people who visit your website or upload an existing email list and target ads to them. It then lets you build lookalike audiences that mirror the audience already looking at your website – this way you’re targeting people who look like your existing customers, making them more likely to become your customers. Similarly, Twitter lets you upload your email-marketing list, create a tailored audience based on conversions, or target specific @usernames and then target others with shared interests.
Test Your Messaging
Just like you can narrow down your target audience using social ads and their insights, you can also test your messaging for performance. Social ads allow you to accomplish this for a much lower cost than other online platforms, like Google Adwords. Testing your messaging with social ads can give you insight on the messaging you should be using across your other advertising methods – whether these are offline methods, your website, or other online advertising.
Just like narrowing your audience, testing your messaging will allow you to better address your customer’s needs and make them more likely to choose you!
Feeling Overwhelmed?
Social ads give you tons of control over your audience, but executing your social campaign can be overwhelming. Get in touch and we can help you execute powerful social campaigns!
