Social media advertising spending hit $41.5 billion in 2020. That was almost a third of all internet ad spending.
Countless articles and stories tout the benefits of social media ads.
Social media ads are powerful for so many reasons. You might be reluctant to spend money on social media advertising, but you could be missing out on an opportunity to grow your business.
If you’ve been on the fence about social media ads, keep reading. Find out what the benefits of social media ads are and how you can start your ad campaign.
1. Generate Brand Awareness and Recall Quickly
Brand awareness measures how well people recognize your brand.
Brand recall is the ability of someone to remember the name and/or logo of your company without prompting. It takes about 5-7 impressions for someone to recall your brand.
Social media advertising helps you achieve both.
Someone sees your sponsored post, and their first thought is, “That’s interesting, I’ll have to check that out later.”
They don’t save the post. They remember that they saw something they wanted to check out
They see your sponsored post in your feed again. They recognize it (brand awareness) and remember they wanted to learn more.
Again, they don’t save the post. They did commit the brand name to memory and they’re now visiting your website (brand recall).
It normally takes a company years to build up awareness and recall. You can do it in one or two social media ad campaigns.
2. Cost-Effective Marketing
For the price of lunch, you can advertise on social media. You can spend as little as $10 on an ad campaign.
That won’t get you very far, but there are some guidelines to use as you first start. If you’re running the ad campaign yourself, your budget should be between $150 and $350 per month.
Should you have someone else manage your ad campaign for you, you need to add their management costs to that.
It’s still the most cost-effective way to advertise. The costs are so low, it levels the playing field.
You’re able to compete with large corporations. Before social media, you’d have to spend money on magazine and TV ads just to get your brand out there.
Now, it’s much easier to start a company, run a good ad campaign, and build your business.
3. Hone Your Messaging
A marketing message is how you communicate with your audience. You tell them about the values of your company and the benefits of your products and services.
The messaging is meant to create an emotion. This is done through the voice of the brand, or the personality and style of the brand.
Social media is so cost-effective, you can work on your messaging to see what resonates the most with your customers.
4. Reach People Where They Spend the Most Time
The media landscape is fragmented. About 35 years ago, you could advertise on one of the main networks and reach millions of people.
There are so many TV channels now, you’re lucky if you reach 300,000 with a TV ad.
What’s great about social media advertising is that you reach people where they spend a lot of time. It’s no longer watching TV, but scrolling through news feeds.
The average person spends more than two hours a day on social media. Even if that number is split between social networks, you’re still reaching people where they’re at for pennies per impression.
5. Direct Interactions With Customers
How often do you interact with potential customers? They’d have to know about your brand, have an interest in it, and ask questions.
If you have a retail store, they’d have to visit it first. Someone might stumble upon your website and ask questions there.
The great thing about social media advertising is that you can interact with potential customers. With sponsored posts, people can make comments and ask questions.
These are often pre-sales questions about pricing or if the product or service meets their needs. You can take advantage of this by answering questions quickly.
It gives people a warm feeling to know that a brand listened and responded to them quickly. They’ll remember that and they may buy from you because of that.
However, if you ignore comments, people will think that’s how you run your business. Your ads won’t help you get sales.
You certainly can’t have that kind of interaction with a billboard or magazine ad.
6. Outstanding Targeting Methods
With most forms of traditional advertising, you’d have a spray and pray approach. The goal was to reach as many people as possible.
You’d pray that a small percentage of your target audience was within that reach. The reality is that you’d have a lot of wasted impressions.
Social media advertising was a revelation because you’re able to define your target audience on a detailed level.
You could reach people based on age, interests, life events, or you can use your own data to reach people.
It gives you so much more control over who sees your ad.
The high level of targeting is a double-edged sword. While targeting is one of the top benefits of social media ads, it depends on the collection of data.
It’s a balance between data privacy and creating the most effective social media advertising campaign.
7. Multiple Social Media Advertising Options
Social media advertising isn’t a singular type of ad. You have a broad range of options, from the social media network to the type of content.
For instance, you can create a video ad on YouTube and repurpose that content for a Facebook video ad.
It’s possible to cross-promote ads on Facebook and on sponsored Instagram posts.
You can use carousel posts, a single image, video, or text in the ad campaign.
8. Easy to Test Ads
There are so many social media advertising options, it’s not always easy to know what works and what doesn’t.
Fortunately, it’s easy to test elements of social media ads against each other. Facebook has this feature inside Ads Manager.
Test headlines, ad text, images, and other elements of your ads.
Note that when you test ads, only test one thing at a time. Let it run for three to five days to collect enough data.
9. In-depth Reporting
With social media advertising, you know exactly how your ads are performing. You can log in and see how much you spent, the number of impressions, conversions, and more.
You can see the demographics of people who interact with your ads. The reporting is so rich, it’s easy to get lost in the details.
When you run a social media advertising campaign, be clear about the metrics to track from the beginning.
That helps you stay focused on the right results throughout the campaign.
How to Make the Most of Social Media Ads
Do you want to advertise on social media now that you know the benefits of social media advertising? Here are a few tips to make your campaign work.
Start with your campaign goals. Do you want to get more website traffic? Do you want direct sales?
Write down what you want social media ads to do for your business.
The success of your advertising campaign hinges on your ability to connect with your target audience. You can’t do that if you don’t understand them.
Research your target audience. Find out what their pain points are and how your product or service can solve them.
There are usually deep unmet emotional needs. The more you understand this, the easier it is to create ads that work.
Be sure to choose the right social media channels. You don’t want to waste your ad budget reaching the wrong people.
If this is your first campaign, you might want to start with a small budget and see how the ads work. You can always increase your ad budget as you test ads and find success.
Provide a World-Class Experience
You can have the best social media ads with high conversions. You run the campaign, get sales, and grow your business.
The secret to a successful business is that they don’t focus on the one-time sale. They focus on the lifetime value of a customer.
They know that it’s much cheaper to get someone to buy repeatedly than to get new customers.
Once you get someone’s attention, provide a customer experience that’s so good, they fall in love with your business.
The Benefits of Social Media Ads
Social media ads can transform your business. Run the right ad campaign in the right places, and you can immediately capture the attention of new customers.
You’ll build a memorable brand and a sustainable business. Remember these benefits of social media ads and use the tips in this article for your social media advertising campaign.
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