“Target specific audiences with relevant adverts.”
Social media advertising involves creating contextual content for a specific audience and then paying a fee to have that content appear in the feed of your chosen audience. The goal of advertising on social media is to increase sales and brand awareness.
A brand must first understand its target audience thoroughly. This is done using analytics, combined with experienced intuition. Once a brand has defined different segments of consumers based on their interests and demographics, they must then choose the platform that is most relevant to their chosen demographics.
The creative team in a social media marketing agency will then brainstorm different content ideas and choose the ones that they think will resonate most with each consumer segment. Choosing the right form of content for each platform must also be considered. For example, video content on Instagram is getting higher engagement rates but is frequently listened to without sound. This means the creative team must produce video content that still conveys its message without sound.
The type of content that gets the highest engagement rates are not only different for each platform but are also constantly changing. This is why it is important to use analytics to keep track of how your content is performing, as well as keeping an eye on macro trends within your industry.
Once your advertising content has been produced, a social media agency will use a small portion of the advertising budget to test how it performs in each consumer segment. The best performing adverts will then be run again using a larger portion of the marketing budget.
Organic content that performs unusually well on your platform should be taken full advantage of. This content could become an effective advert, knowing that it will resonate with your consumer.
Benefits of Paid Social Media Advertising
Increase sales and brand awareness
Paid social media advertising done properly will increase your sales and brand awareness – there is no doubt about this. Statista research group have shown a steady increase in the ad spend on social media along with the unsurprising increase in revenue.
Skilfully implementing a successful social media advert depends on the past experience of the marketer, how well the target customer is understood and the quality of the creative content.
Fit any budget
The amount of money a business needs to spend to get access to social media advertising is very flexible. This makes it a viable option for both small and large businesses to test and run paid social media adverts.
Adaptable adverts
A significant benefit of paid social media advertising is your ability to change the target audience even while the advert is running. You may want to do this because of new insights gained from another paid advert or your organic content. A business also has the ability to stop an advert at any point without having to spend the full budget that was initially proposed. The adaptability of social media advertising allows businesses to save money from poorly performing adverts and capitalise on the adverts that are performing well.
Access to the market
The Global Digital Report 2019 stated that 40% of the South African population was using social media in January 2019, this is a 9% increase from 2018. Actively advertising on social media allows a business to access this portion of the South African market. This figure is expected to annually increase.
Cost-Effective
Paid social media can be a lot more cost-effective than traditional advertising.
Like all products and services, supply and demand determine the cost. When you are paying for social media advertising you are paying for the consumer’s attention. Luckily for social media marketers the current demand for consumers attention still low enough to make this form of advertising cost-effective.
With social media advertising, you pay for the number of people that view your advert. The ability to reduce the number of people who see your advert into a highly specific audience makes this form of advertising highly cost-effective.
Gain insights
With social media advertising, you not only increase sales but also gain the added benefit of receiving valuable consumer insights which can be used to generate more relevant content in the future. Businesses have access to real-time data related to how the audience is engaging with the adverts. This data is measured using metrics like cost per click, cost per impression, click through rates and of course conversion rates.
Brand awareness
When running a social media paid advert there is always the added benefit of increasing your brand’s awareness. Even if a consumer doesn’t end up purchasing your product your brand will still make an impression that could lead to a sale in the future.
Frequently Asked Questions about Paid Social Media Advertising
What is social media advertising?
Social media advertising is creating contextual content for a specific audience and then paying a fee to have that content appear in the feed of your chosen audience.
How much does social media advertising cost?
This depends on how much you choose to spend. You are paying for an audience’s attention so the more you spend the more frequently your advert will be seen. The cost per impression will vary for each social media.
What type of social media, advertising is best?
What type of content and which platform that you choose to advertise on, is determined by the nature of the platform and the demographics and interests of the audience.
Is social Is media advertising cost-effective?
If implemented correctly, social media advertising is very cost-effective. This is due to the fact that you don’t have to pay for the attention of irrelevant consumers who don’t have any purchase intent. With social media advertising, you pay only for the views of a customised audience.
Does social media advertising affect sales?
Yes, in fact, global trends show that businesses are increasing their ad spend on social media due to the increase in revenue from previous social media advertising campaigns.
Why does social media advertising work?
In the past businesses would have to make an advert that was relevant to a very broad audience using television, radio etc. The advantage of social media advertising is the ability to target highly specific audiences. This gives a business the opportunity to make adverts that are more relevant to the audience, which in turn improves conversion rates.
How do you know if your social media adverts are working?
Most businesses will run social media adverts with the goal of increasing sales, therefore measuring conversion rates is the main indicator of success. There are also metrics such as engagement and click-through rates, that will give a business insight into how the well the audience is reacting to the advert.
What makes is a good social media advert?
A good social media advert will increase a business’s sales at a lower cost than other forms of advertising would. In other words, the cost per conversion would be lower.
What is CPC?
CPC stands for cost per click. This metric determines how effective your advert is. If your cost per click is low, it tells you that your advert is compelling many users to click through to find out more information. If your CPC is high, you are paying for many people to see your advert, with only a small percentage being interested enough to click on it.
What is CPM?
CPM stands for cost per mille or more commonly known as cost per thousand. It is a marketing term that denotes the cost of having your advert seen by 1000 people. It is the metric used to compare the cost of advertising on different social media platforms.
What is the most important metric to look at when running a social media advert?
Increasing revenue is obviously the main goal that a business has so ultimately the conversion rate of an advert would be the most important metric. Other important metrics to look at are cost per click, which can help the marketing team determine whether or not an advert is successful and cost per thousand which determines which social media platform is the most cost-effective to advertise on.
What is retargeting when running a social media advert?
Retargeting is a highly effective tactic for social media advertising. Retargeting allows a business to target an audience based on their previous online interactions with their brand. For example, an advert could be run to retarget consumers who have clicked on a previous advert but did not complete the purchase.