What is Social Media Advertising?

Over the years, social media advertising has become one of the fastest growing ways to market your business or products due to the ever growing popularity of social media platforms. Most forms of social media allow for marketers to focus on different interests, hobbies, life events, and other demographics to better target their ads towards consumers. 

As a result of being able to hyperfocus your audience, it’s easier to reach consumers who are more likely to be interested in the products or services you offer.

Social ads are also relatively easy to set up and run, making them a great tool for any business looking to grow their online presence. The ads themselves have a degree of flexibility in the way of design and content which gives you the chance to showcase your brand in a creative manner. 

What Social Platforms can you advertise on?

When it comes to choosing what social media platforms you want to advertise on it’s important to consider what your target audience is using. Additionally, these platforms update almost constantly creating new trends, interests, channels, and algorithm updates. This means that there isn’t a “one size fits all” approach to advertising on social media. 

Some popular platforms to advertise on are:

Facebook

Roughly 70% of adults use Facebook everyday, with 25-34 year olds making up the greatest number of users. Still, Facebook has the widest age range of users than any other platform and holds the most users around the world. Facebook is also a great tool because you can more easily target people’s interests and hobbies.

Instagram

Instagram is an excellent tool if you plan to target the younger demographic due to the fact that 75% of 18-24 year olds are using the platform and 57% of 25-30 year olds are using it. Additionally, running ads through Facebook allows you to run your ads through instagram simultaneously.

Twitter

Twitter is a great option if your target audience is young to middle-aged adults. 38% of users on the platform are between 18-30 years old, while 26% of users are between the ages of 31-50 years old. Twitter is also a great platform due to the level of interaction among users, it’s a great way to improve brand engagement. 

Snapchat

Snapchat is the best platform to use if you’re looking to target a very young crowd. The platform has roughly 210 million daily users – of those 210 million, about 90% of these users are between the ages of 13-24 years old. The type of ads that typically do best on Snapchat are video ads that are no longer than 7-10 seconds.

 

Where Do I Begin?

Social media advertising, like any other kind of advertising, is going to require a large amount of research and dedication to find out how to best reach your target audience. When you are first starting out you’ll want to know what age you’re targeting, their interests, household income, location, and communities. Knowing who your audience is before you try to advertise to them is going to make your job much easier. Once you have identified all of these and created a strong visual for your audience you’ll be able to reach your target audience almost immediately. 

Additionally, social media advertising uses a pay-per-click (PPC) bidding strategy which means you only pay the social platform when someone clicks the link on your ad. Since you’re only paying for people who show interest in your products or services, social media PPC bidding offers a great return on investment. So long as you know what group of people you want to target, and have done ample research, you’ll be well on your way to setting up a stellar social media ad campaign.

 

written by Jonah Ericksen