Social media advertising has been growing in popularity over the past few years. Digital marketing tactics have been facing a rise in demand over the entire past decade. Still, most businesses are beginning to realize now that social media is the fastest, most efficient, and the most cost-effective in getting results among all kinds of digital media.
Most of the social media platforms have even reduced the minimum cost per day that’s required to be set as the advertising budget. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram are aware that these sites are primarily used for running advertisements by small businesses and new brands. These small and medium enterprises do not have sufficient funds to spend thousands of dollars on advertising. That’s why they have reduced the minimum amount required to be spent daily to just $1.
On the other hand, large businesses can run ads on social media for a long time. They set the budget to just a few dollars a day and continue running the ads for months until almost everyone in their target audience has at least heard about the brand. These large businesses with a big marketing budget usually run social media ads in conjunction with other advertisements, including television ads, radio ads, billboard ads, and even digital banner ads.
In this post, we will discuss the benefits of advertising on social media and give you some social media advertising tips. To begin with, let’s define what social media advertising is.
What is Social Media Advertising?
Social media advertising is a kind or category of online advertising done by running paid ads to show to your target audience through different social media platforms. The most popular among such platforms include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.
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Social media ads are a way of pushing marketing content in the face of consumers without making them feel like they are being pursued to buy something. Since the ads on social media can be shared as easily as any other social media posts, businesses that do advertising on social media have a greater chance of getting their messages viral than those running ads elsewhere.
When individuals start a freelancing business, social media ads are an excellent way to promote their services at very low marketing expenses. These individuals rely on social media ads more than anything else. They first start promoting their business through organic social media content and slowly start running paid ads on social media. In other words, they gradually transition from organic social media marketing to social media advertising.
Benefits of Social Media Advertising
There are numerous benefits for businesses running ads on social media. Some of them are described below.
1. Increased Brand Awareness
People usually browse social media sites through apps on their mobile phones. That means having a presence on social media is like having a spot in people’s most precious assets that they carry with them everywhere. Whether or not your ads can influence the target audience, the least social media ads do is build brand awareness. When someone is repeatedly shown your ads on social media, whether or not they share them further, they will start getting familiar with your brand name and identifying with the products you sell.
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2. Ability to Reach a Vast Audience
There are many different types of social media advertising that businesses can benefit from. There are also so many other social media sites where these ads can be created and run. Therefore, the audience reached through social media ads is almost as large as being limitless. Nearly everyone in the world is on social media. When a business uses social media advertising as part of their marketing plan, they often include multiple and the most relevant social media platforms for their business. Thus if a particular customer does not see an ad on Facebook because he does not use Facebook regularly, he will view it on Instagram if the business is running the ad on both these platforms. In other words, social media advertising allows businesses to reach massive audiences.
3. Rise in Conversions
If a viewer of social media ads takes any desired action, it will be counted as a conversion for the business. Due to the effectiveness of advertising on social media, the conversion rates are often higher than those for other forms of advertising, such as creating a call to action button on a landing page. Many businesses receive queries about their products through social media ads, which is also counted as a conversion if that was the goal. Others can make sales directly from their website, where traffic is drawn in from their social media page.
4. Easy Integration With Other Marketing Platforms
Social media ads can be integrated easily with other marketing platforms, especially with websites. For instance, if your website is built on Strikingly, you can easily add social media icons on the footer. These icons will direct your site visitors to your social media pages, where you have all the advertised or promoted posts published. When users see your brand name on multiple platforms, they will be inclined to trust your brand. Thus moving one step closer towards making a purchase.
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5. Low Marketing Expenses
As mentioned above, social media advertising is cheaper than any other form of advertising. One reason for this is that social media ads can get picked and spread organically if many users admire the ad content you create. Users inspired by your ads would willingly start sharing your videos and images with their friends and peers, which will turn out to be free marketing for your business.
6. Effective Means of Getting Customer Feedback
People are usually frank and honest, and even blunt, in their comments on social media. When you do advertising on social media, users can comment on your ads. In these comments, they often give their opinion or feedback, either about your marketing content or the products or services you are promoting. You can make constructive use of this feedback if you do not take it as an offense and start taking corrective measures if a defect or lacking in your product is exposed.
7. High Customer Engagement With the Brand
It is straightforward for users to interact with each other on social media. Similarly, it is easy for them to interact and engage with your social media ads. For example, anyone shown an ad on Facebook can post a comment on it, put a reaction to it, share it, or even hide it. These features of Facebook make it a superb platform for businesses to build customer engagement. Suppose you run social media ads on a Facebook page or group regularly. In that case, that could become an active online community that has high customer engagement in it and represents your brand or services.
8. Access to Detailed Social Media Analytics
If you do social media advertising on any platform, you get access to detailed ad analytics. For example, Facebook has its own Facebook ads metrics. These give you insights into the categories of your target audience that are the most active in engaging with your ads. These also give you information on the return you are getting and will likely get in the future on your advertising expenses.
Social Media Advertising Tips
Here are some tips that will make your social media advertising more effective.
1. Advertise on Relevant Platforms
The platforms that you choose to run your social media ads should be relevant to the products or services you are offering. For example, if you are selling physical products with many photos, you can run your ads on Instagram or Facebook. If you are offering recruitment services, you can advertise most effectively on LinkedIn.
2. Keep Your Ads Precise
People rarely, if ever, watch very long marketing videos or read lengthy social media posts. Keep your social media ads short and precise. When lengthy marketing content reaches the audience on their social media newsfeed, they can simply scroll through it. This is going to waste your budget.
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3. Promote Your Brand Website
For all online businesses, the ultimate goal of social media advertising should be to drive traffic to your brand website. Even if you are running your business through brick-and-mortar outlets, you must still have a professional website, and run ads on social media to promote the website.
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At Strikingly, we make it easier for you to build a professional website all on your own. If you are running any kind of business or planning to start one, you definitely need a website for your brand, which serves as a one-stop platform for all your marketing efforts.
The good thing about building a website on Strikingly is that you won’t have to spend tons of money hiring a web developer. You can use our templates as ready-made website themes and edit anything you want at any time, all by yourself. Our customer support team is available to help you out during any hour of the day.
