“Brands must go where the people are”, and 64.4% of the global population is on social media – encountering advertisements. While the large market available is enticing, the evidence is also stacked to show that your audience is ready to scroll, click and convert.
Recent research by Adobe Analytics identified a 378% rise in e-commerce traffic from TikTok content. This huge demand has led to the creation of ‘Tiktok Shop’, generating another platform for brands to sell on.
Meanwhile, according to Visual Objects, 81% of people visit a brand website through social media channels. In other words, social media has your audience in the palm of its hand.
Here, we look at some other advantages social media advertising offers.
1. Hyper-Target Customers
A key reason social media marketing is extremely effective is the ability to target and specify your exact audience demographic.
In addition to the usual suspects – age, gender, location – you can set preferences on their interests, behaviours, postcode, website visits, and more, narrowing your aim to every last niche. Tools like Facebook Audience Insights allow you to discover more about your ideal audience.
Hyper-targeting improves your content, allowing you to create more relevant and relatable messaging that resonates with your audience.
2. Track ROI on Social Media
Social media return on investment (ROI) measures the value you receive from your social media advertising, paid campaigns and resources you invest in social media marketing.
This provides treasured insights that enable you to continue to improve your ad performance – after all, your next ad will only be as good as your last unless you examine the data.
Social media platforms allow you to track directly, as they have this information built into their Ads Manager platform. That way, you can analyse the return on Ad spend (ROAS), cost per website purchase and cost per lead, with an overview highlighting which campaign is succeeding and which is not performing well.
3. Retargeting Campaigns
If your insights inform you of high engagement but low conversion rates, you may have several ‘warm leads’ that can be retargeted.
Social media retargeting works by using data from a pixel installed on your website – a service Webbiz offers – from a social media platform you want to use to retarget.
This allows you to hit those exact users who visited your site with an alternative Ad. This time, with simplified content that may entice them further with a discount offer or remind them of their abandoned shopping cart.
It’s important to remember that due to GDPR, this will only work if website visitors have agreed to tracking; this can be through a cookie consent pop-up.
At Webbiz, we use smart tracking software to monitor and analyse retargeting campaigns to improve performance for warm leads to convert.
4. Low-Cost Advertising
For many businesses, social media advertising may seem like a financial abyss. The mindset could be that the audience is not suitable for your company, or it’s another expense you can do without.
But PPC’s ethos is that you only pay per click or pay per view (PPV). Therefore, you pay for the action. Compared to traditional marketing – a billboard, for example, with no real control over the audience – this solution already encourages engagement. It creates a first point of interaction between your business and the user.
Regardless of whether that action did not follow through as a conversion, it still got your ad seen by a new user, increasing your brand awareness.
5. Community Trust
When advertising on social media, the primary focus will likely be leads and conversions. But on the other side of the screen, it’s subsequently building a rapport with the user, increasing brand awareness and attracting new eyes to your social channel. Several bonuses your business could benefit from.
How does it do this? Social media platforms are a direct connection between you and your customers. If they see an ad, check your profile and leave a question in the comments, you can immediately reply. This solves their query and builds trust between you and them, along with fellow users who may later see how you handled their issue.
Ultimately, this creates transparency and authenticity. Trust is built when a user can see genuine messaging, quick responses and pellucidity. According to Adobe, 7 in 10 customers will buy more from brands they trust and abandon those they don’t.
6. Strategic Purposes
The beauty of social media is that multiple platforms offer various opportunities. First of all, they attract different types of users. Stereotypically, older generations will be on Facebook, younger demographics will likely be on TikTok, and LinkedIn is your answer if you wish to target companies directly.
Depending on your audience, you can better decide your platform based on your sole purpose. Shoppable features on both TikTok and Instagram make both platforms a suitable option for e-commerce businesses – and Tiktok Advertising offers two Ad formats – Topview and In-Feed – to really go after your audience.
If your purpose is brand awareness or to drive traffic to your website, Facebook and Instagram combined have a large user base, and Meta Business Suite will allow you to control all in one place. For direct B2C targeting, LinkedIn offers a Sales Navigator to generate leads or share your company culture through LinkedIn Life.
Successful Advertising
The hard part of social media advertising is producing campaigns that do all of the above. While social media advertising has a lot of growth opportunities, it can also provide a large scope for error when not used strategically.
At Webbiz, we drive campaigns that are backed by strategy and data. We handle the auditing, content-creation, tracking and reporting so you can focus your expertise on your company’s key operations, confidently knowing that your social presence is doing its bit to bring in leads.
Ask us a question or send your enquiry. Contact us today.