Social media advertising consists of running paid ads across various social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and more. This type of social media advertisement is referred to as “Paid Social”. Paid social is often charged on a basis of pay-per-click or pay per click which is a cost per impression basis.
Social media advertisements can be on a variety of platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and LinkedIn to name a few. Examples of social media ads include anything from a banner ad to boosted posts and campaigns. The ultimate goal of social media advertising is to help drive more traffic to your website and business.
Why You Should Invest in Social Media Advertising for Your Business
Creating a paid social media advertisement can help your business target your specific audience and future customers. This criteria helps target audiences by using age, gender, search history, location, interests, activities, employer and job title.
This effective targeting gets your business directly in front of customers who are looking for products or services like yours. Social media advertising weeds out the need to search for your target audience and instead gets the advertisements directly to them.
“Organic” Social Media vs. Social Media Advertising
There are also ways to use social media “organically” that doesn’t involve spending any money. The main difference between organic social media and social media advertising is simply that one is a paid use of social media.
While organic social media is always helpful it doesn’t have the same capability to reach specific groups. It’s much more difficult to get that same reach and engagement on organic posts due to it being harder to get your post to your target audience.
However, organic social media marketing is beneficial because consistently posting over time fosters an online community and builds relationships with current customers and potential customers. It gives your company a relatable voice that users can connect with and helps build your brand. Both paid and organic social media gets your businesses name, services and products in front of current and potential customers which is why it’s an essential tool for growing your business.
Benefits of social media advertisement
Audiences can be targeted precisely
- Say your target audience is women in their late 20’s who have dogs… with social media advertisements you can get your posts in front of this specific group.
Builds brand awareness
- Anyone can look up your company to learn about your services and what is important to you
Everything can be measured
- Metrics is the name of the game. You can track exactly how many people your message reached, content interaction, and more from social media metrics
Social media advertisements result in action
- Whether it’s a link to your site or your product, consumers can easily click the link to buy or check out what you have to offer
The Most Popular Social Media Platforms for Advertising
There is a difference between social media and social networking and both can be beneficial for your business. Social media allows the broadcasting of your message and brand while social networking focuses more on opening a dialogue and building relationships. Both are important components of advertising your brand and can be achieved using the social media platforms below.
Facebook/Meta
Facebook is a great option for an older target audience. It has 2.5 billion monthly users and spans many demographics. Facebooks paid social advertisements allows you to target potential customers and users relevant to your business. It is important to note that Generation Z does not use this platform.
Owned by Facebook this platform is popular with millennials, Generation X and is starting to grow amongst Generation Z. With similar capabilities to facebook it is easy to target a specific audience and potential customers.
TikTok
If your business wants to target younger generations this is the platform for you. This video sharing apps users are between 25-44 worldwide. In the United States in particular 69% of users on this app are from 13 to 24 years old. Use Tik Tok to get your brand in front of young content hungry eyes.
As professional networking sites use LinkedIn for business oriented endeavors. Much of this site is based on job title, seniority and professional qualifications which makes it excellent for social networking.
Reddit features niche communities and specific threads that make it extremely easy to get your company in front of your target audience. You have the ability to extremely hone in on who can see your content.
This platform should be used by female focused brands. A vast majority of Pinterest users are female making it a great place for brands that are targeted toward women.
Monaghan Media Group will help you boost your business through social media advertisements
Getting the hang of all the ins and outs of the expansive social platforms can feel confusing and frankly overwhelming. Monaghan Media Group has used social media advertisements to boost our business and we want to help you do the same with yours. We specialize in creating social media advertisements to draw in your target audience and forever keep your business growing. Contact us today to open the conversation about what social media can do for you. It’s proven and it’s worked for our business and we can’t wait for it to do the same for yours. We look forward to speaking with you!