It can be hard work, gradually chipping away at building your social media community, working to grow your reach and engagement organically.
Social media, like most other digital communication platforms out there, is a tool you should be using consistently and regularly, to interact with people who are already engaged with your brand.
However, to grow, you need to reach beyond your existing customers. This is more important now than ever before, as 80% of your customers are ‘non and light buyers’ who, despite purchasing infrequently, are responsible for about 50% of sales. And this is where the size and scope of social media can work in your favour! Investing in social media advertising will enable you to reach beyond your immediate ‘community’, increasing brand awareness and allowing your brand to grow.
Don’t believe us? Then read on. Here are our top three reasons why you should jump on that social media ads train and start your first advertising campaign, if you have not already.
Connect with New, Targeted, and Existing Customers
With the sheer volume of content on social media these days, it can feel nearly impossible to make your business visible to your target audience, let alone convert your social media activity into sales!
But with paid social media advertising, you can flip that on its head! You have the power to drown out the noise and ensure your content is visible by giving it priority place in the feeds of your potential customers. It allows you to select your audience based on age, gender, and location, as well as psychographic factors including interests, personality, and previous activity.
You can determine who sees your ad and specifically target those most likely to be interested in your product or service. You can be super specific with ad targeting to drive leads, website traffic and sales, or use broader targeting to create brand awareness and reach a larger potential customer base depending on your objectives.
Make Your Budget Work Even Harder For You
Social media is what we like to call ‘biddable media’, which means you choose your budget to align with your marketing objectives.
As the most popular social media platform, Facebook allows you to set ‘lifetime budgets’ by simply choosing how much you’re willing to spend over the duration of your campaign. Alternatively, you can set average daily budgets where Facebook will push your campaign out to more and more people until your daily budget has been met.
The way Facebook determines how much to spend each day is dependent on the objective of the ad. It means that you only pay if a user takes the desired action, making for an effective return on investment (ROI) as your only paying for genuine leads. For example, if your goal is to build brand awareness, you will incur a cost per impression, or if it is to increase website traffic, you will incur a cost-per-click. The best part is that you get to choose your budget, so it gives you full control to start small and then invest where you are seeing the best results.
Achieve Quantifiable Results
Last but certainly not least, paid ads are easily measured to determine their success using quantifiable metrics. These include performance metrics which help measure the impressions (number of times ad was shown), reach (number of people who saw your ad), and frequency (number of times visitors go through your ad). It also measures the number of times specific actions such as page likes, posting comments, share etc. are taken by visitors.
The best part is that these insights can help you clearly identify which ads are working best, as well as how your audience are interacting with your ads and your brand. These insights mean you can optimise the current ads, as well as future ads to target your audience more effectively and generate your desired results!
While the many benefits of paid social media advertising cannot be narrowed down into one short blog post, you see what we mean when we say that this form of advertisement really does give you complete control. The power of Facebook is essentially at your fingertips!
However, even with the use of paid social media advertising, it is still most effective when used in conjunction with other forms of marketing and advertising. And in this case, it is particularly important to have a solid strategy for your organic social media posting to help strengthen the impact and credibility of your paid advertisements. It’s like diet and exercise. Sure, one works fine on its own, but when paired together, the duo makes sure you reach your goals much faster.
Social media, when used to its full potential, gives you the opportunity to tell your story, build your brand, engage with customers and direct potential customers to your website, essentially moving them further down your sales funnel.
Need help understanding how social media advertising could benefit your business and how to implement it into your digital marketing strategy? Get in contact to see how we can assist and help build your brand!
Comments