Social media advertising has become increasingly popular amongst marketers in recent years. For good reason, too – it helps businesses get results.
Is it expected to make an impact in 2020 as well? Absolutely.
In fact, social media marketing and advertising are imperative to just about every business. It doesn’t matter if you’re solely an online business or if you’re a brick-and-mortar store. Social media can have a humongous impact on the success of your marketing efforts.
In order to use this tool wisely, you need to know exactly what it is. Once you understand the different types of social media advertising, then you’ll be able to start working on your strategy.
What Is Social Media Advertising?
According to Social Sprout, organic searches are down across all social media platforms. People on social media are inundated by posts from friends, family members, and companies. You can tweet about something but, within a few seconds, dozens of other tweets have buried yours.
How, then, are potential customers supposed to find you?
The answer is social media advertising.
This type of advertising is an important part of your overall social media marketing strategy. Social media advertising can effectively help you to be seen through all of the “noise” on social media.
How so? When you invest in an advertising plan, you create content that will be put directly in front of your target audience. You don’t have to worry about your audience never seeing you. Your brand will be front and center.
Over time, with the right strategy in place, you’ll start to see conversions. People will go from engaging with you on social media to visiting your website. When they visit your site they’ll have the opportunity to become paying customers.
Your social media ads will cater to your target audience. Therefore, you can create and control their journey with your brand.
Investing in ads on social media platforms will save you a lot of time and money, as well. Your efforts will be more focused, thereby providing you with a better ROI.
5 Social Media Advertising Tips and Trends to Start Implementing Right Away
You don’t want to get lost in a jumble of tweets and Facebook posts. That’s simply not good for your brand or your bottom line.
In the past, you could rely more easily on organic searches. These days, if you want to be found and avoid missing out on some big opportunities, you need to invest in ads.
But where should you start?
Here are six advertising tips that will improve your social media for business results. Make sure to find the one(s) that work best for you. Then, add them to your social media marketing plan and budget.
1. Facebook Advertising – Still One of the Best Ways to Present Your Brand
One of the first social media platforms to jump on the business advertising bandwagon was Facebook. The powers-that-be at Facebook recognized that their platform was ripe for businesses.
Thus began the first wave of social media advertising.
Is this the ideal platform for you to advertise your business? It very well could be.
Facebook is still popular with most consumers, with 80% of internet users utilizing Facebook on a daily basis. That means that your target audience is very likely on Facebook regularly.
Facebook advertising can provide a high ROI for your company for a few reasons.
First, they offer a very targeted form of advertising, which will help you reach your ideal customer more easily.
Second, this is one of the cheapest types of social media advertising. If you’re like 99% of businesses in the world, you’ve got a strict social media marketing budget to stick to. Fortunately, you’ll get a lot for your money with this platform.
Finally, Facebook has a proven track record when it comes to effectiveness. Many companies have had success with Facebook advertising that quickly turned into profitable conversions.
2. Instagram Advertising Is Perfect for Visual Learners
Images are powerful. They capture your attention. They can move you to tears or to laughter.
One of your social media marketing strategy objectives should be to offer value to your customer. Most companies do this by writing white papers or “how-to” blog posts.
This is helpful to a lot of people, but not to everyone.
People who are visual learners won’t get the same high value from a blog post as other people might. However, if you add images into the mix, the value level soars for people who do better with visual cues.
If you want to provide your customers with value, post some captivating images on Instagram. Or, better yet, invest in Instagram advertising.
Your sponsored posts will be directed toward your target audience in a stunning way. Even if your audience isn’t full of visual learners, you can still benefit from advertising on this platform. Why is that? It’s because over 800 million people frequent Instagram daily.
Like Facebook, there’s a lot of noise on Instagram. Advertising will cut through all of the chatter and help you get noticed.
Many people tend to dismiss Instagram as a viable way to advertise. There’s a good reason behind this. Not every business is going to have an audience that uses Instagram.
But if your audience is made up of any of the following, there’s a good chance they’re on Instagram.
- Female
- Between the ages of 18 and 29,
- Lives in an urban area.
If you’re still not sure if this is a good choice for you, consider this. Instagram uses the same demographic data that Facebook uses. That means that there’s a better chance of your ads being seen by your ideal market on Instagram than on other platforms.
3. Make Sure to Try LinkedIn Sponsored Content
As of December 2018, there are nearly 600 million LinkedIn users worldwide. Of those, 61 million are senior-level influencers. Another 40 million are the decision makers for their company.
If those are the type of people you want to attract to your brand, you need to be on LinkedIn.
In order to reach your target LinkedIn audience, you can:
- Reach out to potential contacts
- Write articles to be posted on this platform
- Invest in LinkedIn sponsored content.
The professionals on LinkedIn want quality content that they can sink their teeth into. They want content without fluff that will make them think, and that will help them improve themselves professionally.
You can write that sort of content and hope it reaches the professionals within your target market. Or, you can invest in LinkedIn sponsored content.
When you do this, you’ll start off by creating a page specifically for your company.
Then, you enter your target audience information.
- Where are they located?
- What age are they?
- What’s their gender?
- What industry do they work in?
- What position do they have in that company?
- What are their skills?
Getting as specific as possible will ensure that your content gets in front of your target market.
Once all of this information has been entered, you can then “boost” your content. This means that the content you’ve created specifically for your audience will be placed in front of them.
Your potential clients will see ads for your content on their newsfeed. This exposure will help:
- Raise awareness for your brand
- Build relationships with potential customers
- Create leads and increase website traffic.
4. Always Utilize Your Storytelling Skills in Your Social Media Marketing Strategy
One of the most important social media advertising tips you’ll ever hear is this: always utilize storytelling.
Whether you’re writing copy for an ad or a blog post or recording a video, storytelling is key.
People don’t have very long attention spans. You need to capture their interest as soon as possible. The best way to do that is to engage them, to appeal to their imaginations.
Storytelling helps you accomplish this.
When you tell a story, you create a connection with your audience. They feel like they know you. When you share your struggles, they can empathize. Sharing your story allows them to see how well-equipped you are to help them with their struggles.
You may have seen this put into practice lately, especially on Facebook.
One popular and successful business owner who has done this is Melyssa Griffin. She’s a blogger-turned-business coach.
If you find her ad on Facebook, you’ll get to see part of her story. She talks about how she struggled to put herself out there because she was so introverted. She also tells about how overwhelming it became trying to run her own business.
When people read her ads, they see how she’s struggled. Her pain points and similar – if not the same – as the pain points of her potential customer.
And through her storytelling, she explains that she’s turned things around and is more successful than ever. When her audience reads this, they’re curious about what action she took to make such huge changes. They’re interested because they want to experience this type of success, too.
5. SEO Is Still Important – Make Sure You Make Room for It in Your Social Media Marketing Plan
There’s been a rumor going around for a number of years now that’s confused a lot of people. The rumor is the SEO is dead, but is this really the case?
No, it’s not. SEO is alive and well, and just as relevant today as it was a few years ago.
Evidence suggests that the more engagement you have on social media, the better your Google ranking will be.
You definitely want people to find you on social media via your Facebook advertising or LinkedIn boosts, but you want them to find you via Google, too.
You can make sure this happens by:
- Implementing SEO best practices when writing content
- Optimize your website
- Getting more engagement on social media.
Start Implementing Social Media Marketing Strategies Now for a Successful 2020
Do you want to make 2020 your most successful year ever?
Of course you do! And it’s entirely possible when you focus on the best social media advertising and marketing strategies for your business.
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution. You’ll need to determine what works best for you through some trial and error. Try a strategy, and then see if it works for you. If not, make adjustments or move along to another type of advertising endeavor.
The biggest mistake you can make is not taking any action at all. You can be successful on social media – but only if you give some of the above advertising tips a try.
Before you know it, you’ll start seeing results from the right advertising methods, and then, you’ll be well on your way to your best year yet!
How has social media advertising and marketing impacted your business?
Share with us in the comments below!
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