Have you ever been scrolling through Facebook or Instagram and noticed a ‘sponsored’ or ‘promoted’ tag on a post? If so, you’ve likely seen an example of paid social media advertising. This digital marketing strategy leverages the power of popular social media platforms to achieve your marketing goals by sharing your content with audiences most interested in your product or service.
With over 3.6 billion people using social media worldwide, brands that don’t take advantage of paid social media marketing risk falling behind their competitors. Whether you are interested in retargeting lost leads, engaging with existing customers, increasing awareness of your brand, or selling a service, paid social media advertising has the potential for it all.
Keep reading to learn more about the benefits of including paid social ads in your digital marketing strategy.
Increase engagement with existing and potential customers
With social media marketing for small businesses, you can pay to have your business appear in front of highly targeted users who are likely to engage with your brand. Almost every business wants to increase engagement on social media channels – and for a good reason. Creating an engaging social media strategy is essential for long-term customer satisfaction.
Consumers expect brands with a social media presence and to interact with their customers in meaningful ways. A survey conducted by The Harris Poll revealed that, as a result of positive social media interactions with a brand, consumers are more willing to:
• Buy from a brand (78%)
• Choose a brand over its competition (77%)
• Recommend a brand (76%)
• Increase their spending with that brand (72%)
• Develop a stronger bond with a brand (70%)
Social media is conversational by nature. Customers aren’t coming to your page to be talked at; they want to spark a dialogue. And great conversations can have a positive impact on sales.
Target specific audiences based on key demographics
Adding to the previous benefit, social media platforms allow you to target your ads to specific groups of users
. Targeting is based on demographic and behavioral data, like age ranges or life events. With Facebook ads, for example, you can segment your ads based on:
• Gender
• Age
• Interests
• Relationship status
• Location
• Occupation
• Connections
Your ads will be shown to a group of users most aligned to your business instead of a broad audience that may not be interested in your content.
Additionally, Facebook offers retargeting, meaning you can deliver ads to people who have previously visited your website. Retargeting is an effective advertising tactic because it lets you send content to people who have already shown interest in your product or service. As a result, retargeting helps reinforce your brand awareness and increases conversions on your website.
Elevated brand awareness
Paid social media advertising is a cost-effective way to create exposure for your brand. Brand awareness is simply how familiar your target audience is with your brand and how quick they are to think of you in relation to a particular product or service. If your business regularly appears in their social media news feed, people will start to recognize you. Recognition will enhance your credibility and drive engagement and purchasing behavior.
If you use paid social ads wisely, you have great potential for increasing brand awareness. Be sure to create ads that are both informative and memorable. The most common types of content are:
• Images (80%)
• Videos (63%)
• Blogs (60%)
• Live video (35%)
Consider this when determining how to appeal to your audience, stand out from your competitors, and connect with your target audience.
Higher website and in-person traffic
Although the purpose of paid social media advertising is to adapt to the digital needs of consumers, there is still value in real-time selling. Maintaining face-to-face relationships with your customers is important to building a strong bond. Paid social ads can lead new and existing customers directly to your physical storefront.
As more people view your ads and learn about your brand, you will begin to see an increase in your website’s inbound traffic. This traffic will also be of higher quality, as it will mostly be from a highly targeted audience.
Once you secure high-quality traffic, you can focus more on converting them and less on piquing their interest in your brand. As a result, your conversion rate has the potential to grow since you have a higher percentage of consumers interested in the type of product or service you’re offering.
Assess and modify ads based on performance data
When you invest time and money into a digital marketing campaign, it’s crucial to know how well those campaigns are doing.
Paid social media advertising provides insights about your content that you may not otherwise have collected. It’s easy to assess and refine the performance of your advertising campaign by measuring clicks, comments, and profile visits to determine if your ads are creating an impact.
With this data, you can see how well your campaigns perform and how past campaigns performed. This allows you to tailor your future campaigns to ensure optimal success.
The takeaway
Regardless of size or niche, every business can benefit from paid social media advertising. If you’re wondering whether paid social ads could benefit your business, consider this: the average person spends 147 minutes per day on social media. At this very moment, your future customers are swiping through Instagram, scrolling on Facebook, and browsing on LinkedIn.
When you invest in paid social media marketing – and execute it at a high level – you can achieve positive results in a relatively short period of time. The social media experts at Hyport Digital can work with you and your business to develop a comprehensive social media advertising strategy and take advantage of the latest tools and technology for continued success. In addition, we’ll help you identify the future customers you want and the ones you didn’t know existed!
Reach out to our team today to get started.
