In today’s world, where approximately 5 million people are using social media, neglecting to use its advertising mediums can cost businesses a lot of potential revenue. Social media advertising is a form of digital advertising that uses social media platforms to promote its products and services so that it can reach a targeted audience.
Instead of completely relying on organic reach, companies have started using paid advertising, which helps them to easily connect with their targeted audience, secure more leads, and get some more loyal customers. Social media advertising is something that is used by every business in today’s world, irrespective of its size.
These advertisements can be created using texts, images, videos, and stories and are displayed on different social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and many more. It is an advanced form of advertising since the companies connect with a specified audience based on their search history, the location they are staying in, their age group, and many other factors.
Here is a blog through which you will get complete information about social media advertising, its benefits and types, and the top social media channels and their costs.
Key Components Of Social Media Advertising
1. Setting A Predefined Objective
The most important step in social media advertising is to clearly define the objectives and goals of your campaigns. Whether you are planning to increase brand awareness, enhance your website traffic, generate leads, or try to boost sales, clearing the objective can help you increase the success rate of the campaign. This approach will also help you calculate the ROI of your campaign.
2. Targeting The Audience
You always need to be specific about the type of audience you are planning to target through your campaign. Choosing the right audience will give you enhanced and justified results since the audience will be able to relate to the post and react to it. Different social media platforms are available that give businesses a chance to set the audience they are looking for based on locations, interests, and many more.
3. Creating Creative Ads
It is always advised to make eye-catching creatives for your campaigns so that a large audience gets attracted to them. Advertisements should always be made in such a way that the message is clearly defined. It should always be a combination of text, images, audio, and videos. These ads should be made in a very sophisticated manner, keeping the targeted audience in mind; hence, the creatives should not look messed up.
4. Defining The Social Media Platform
Each social media platform has a specific audience to cover, and the structure of each platform is different. Defining the social media platform for which you are going to run the campaign is very important since there are a lot of platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and many more, that use specific predefined formats under which the advertisements should be made.
5. Focus On Budgeting
Budgeting refers to the amount that the business will pay to the platform to run a specific ad campaign. Whether you are a beginner or someone who has run many campaigns, budgeting is something that needs to be taken very seriously since, along with the budget, you also need to pay the social media advertising agency and third-party individuals, which include graphic designers, content writers, video editors, and a lot more.
6. Measuring Success Metrics
After running a campaign, it is very important to continuously track your campaign and check whether you have achieved the objectives that were defined at the beginning of the campaign. You can also check the reach, engagement, likes, follows, shares, profile clicks, and many more through the campaign. Based on this data, you can check the ROI of the campaign and calculate the overall performance of the campaign.
Benefits Of Social Media Advertising
1. Helps In Reaching A Large Audience
Social media has different platforms where you will find millions of active users. It is one of the most effective ways in which a business can reach a large audience and, hence, increase the traffic on the website by simply running their ads on different social media platforms. In a large audience, there are better chances that you will find most people who show some interest in your products and services.
2. Gives You Higher Conversion Rates
Social media advertising has helped a lot of businesses generate conversions. There are a lot of ways in which conversion rates are increased, like using Facebook Ads Manager and LinkedIn Campaigns Manager. These platforms allow you to easily track your audience and determine whether it is being delivered to the right people or not. Another way to increase your conversion rate is by remarketing social media campaigns.
3. Cost Effective Way
Social media advertisements are the cheapest and most affordable way in which any business can invest and get good outcomes. The cost required to run campaigns and ads on different social media platforms is relatively low compared to Google ads. Although the cost per click varies for different social media platforms, on average, it is between $0.20 and $2.00 per click.
4. Enhance Your Brand Awareness
Once a large audience views your advertisement, it helps you build brand awareness and take your business to new heights. Social media advertising helps a company build trust, authority, loyalty, and awareness among its audience. Increased brand awareness has a lot of benefits since it will help your business create new leads and increase its conversion rate.
5. Provides You with Measurable Results
Through social media advertisements, a business can easily track the results to increase traffic and engagement on the website. There are a lot of social media platforms that work in collaboration with Google Analytics so that the business can easily measure the pre-defined goal and, based on the achieved goal, make the best decisions for their business and take it to new heights.
Types Of Social Media Advertising
One of the most powerful tools used by businesses to reach a large audience and achieve their goals is social media advertising. Different types of social media advertisements are available that have their own advantages. Some of the common types of social media ads are:
1. Image Ads
Image ads are the most common type of social media ads that use images or graphics, a small amount of text, and some captions. Image ads are an excellent way to attract audience attention and increase brand awareness. LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest are some of the best platforms where image ads are displayed.
2. Video Ads
Video ads are proven to be more effective than image ads since they capture the audience by showing the ad in the form of a short video that tells a story. These videos are more eye-catching than static posts and are used to promote products and services to increase engagement. Facebook and YouTube are good platforms for video sharing.
3. Carousel Ads
Carousel ads help a business display up to 10 images or videos in a single ad. This is usually done to show the different features of a product or tell a complex story to the audience. The users usually scroll through to get detailed information about the ad displayed. You will see these ads on Instagram and Facebook.
4. Story Ads
Story ads are those ads that appear in the story section of different social media platforms, usually for 24 hours. It is one of the most effective ways to reach a younger audience and helps businesses get more traffic to their website. Story ads are usually displayed on Snapchat and Instagram.
5. Message Ads
Message ads are one of the most effective ways to directly come in contact with those audiences who show some interest in your products and services. The ads in this are sent directly to the inboxes of the targeted users. These types of ads will be commonly seen on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Top Social Media Channels For Advertising
1. Facebook
Facebook has approximately 3.03 billion active users, and it is one of the most common platforms used for social media advertisements. To advertise on Facebook, you need to run ads through the Facebook Ads Manager. In this, you first need to set an objective for which you are running a campaign, like creating brand awareness, increasing your website traffic, building engagement, and many more.
Then you need to decide on a budget under which you want to run your ad, and the best thing about this is that you target your audience based on criteria such as age, location, income groups, interests, work or profession, and so on. On Facebook, you will mostly find an audience between the ages of 25 and 34, whereas the limit can go up to the age of 65.
The ad formats that are available on Facebook are photos, videos, carousels, collections, and story ads. The length of the video ads on Facebook can be up to 240 minutes, but businesses usually create short videos since they are more effective. Facebook has predefined algorithms that help businesses get the maximum ROI from their campaigns.
2. Instagram
On average, there are around 1.628 billion active users on Instagram, which is around 20% of the world’s population. Therefore, running ads on this platform can give businesses good results. To run ads on Instagram, you can either use Instagram Ads Manager or Facebook Ad Manager. You can also use Meta Ads Manager, which will help you create your advertisements for both Instagram and Facebook at the same time.
When running a campaign on Instagram, you need to choose an objective like brand awareness, lead generation, sales, and many more. The next important thing is to target your audience, which can be based on location, age, language, and so on. The group of people that mostly use Instagram is between 18 and 34, so giving your Instagram ads priority can help your business grow.
The types of ads that a business can run on Instagram include photos, videos, carousels, reels, and story ads. The advertisements made on Instagram use graphics and audio, which make them more appealing and eye-catching and hence attract a large audience as compared to traditional text-based ads. It is a platform where you will find an audience that usually follows and engages with brands.
3. LinkedIn
There are approximately 900 million active users on LinkedIn, and it is one of the best professional social media platforms to advertise on. This is a completely professional site where you will find people from all over the world. To begin, you first need to decide the objective for which you are planning to run the campaign. After that, you can select your targeted audience from the 20 categories defined on LinkedIn.
The targeting audience under this platform is based on professional criteria like education, organisation size, sector, job title, etc. After deciding on the audience, select the ad format type and the budget under which you want to run the campaign. On this social media platform, you will find individuals belonging to a professional background and in the age group of 25 to 34.
The format this platform uses is very simple and precise since it only uses message ads, sponsored content, and sponsored InMail. This site is a business-oriented platform, and hence it allows all businessmen to promote their services and brands by inboxing people who belong to the same interest group. This platform is expensive, so it is always advised that a business should first set a small budget and test the results from that.
4. YouTube
YouTube is a platform that has 2.7 billion active users, and it has one of the highest number of advertising audiences as compared to other platforms. On YouTube, you will usually find long video content. Running a YouTube ad is a bit different since you first need to select the format you need for your ads, such as skippable in-stream ads, non-skippable in-stream ads, masthead ads, or video discovery ads.
After defining your format, you need to select your bidding strategy, which can either be Maximum CPV (cost per view) or Target CPM (cost per thousand impressions). Now you can go to the inventory type option and choose from expanded inventory, standard inventory, or limited inventory, whichever suits your business. At last, you need to select the type of audience you want to target based on location, age, gender, etc.
On YouTube, you will find audiences ranging from 15 to 35 years old. It is a platform where you will find a variety of video ad formats, such as skippable in-stream videos, non-skippable in-stream videos, and overlay video ads. YouTube is a good medium to increase your brand awareness since there are a lot of content creators and influencers that can reach a wide audience.
5. X (Twitter)
You will approximately find 528.3 million active users on X (Twitter), and it is renowned for its microblogging capabilities and real-time updates. To run a campaign, you first need to select the objective, which can be to create awareness, increase website clicks or conversions, promote video views, and many more. After this, you need to fill in the complete details of your campaign.
Now select your ad group for bidding, which can be done in three ways: automatic bid, maximum bid, or target bid. If you have selected more than one ad group, then you can select creatives separately for each ad group. Creatives are usually tweets that you want to promote. Now you can select the type of audience you want to target based on their age, location, language, etc.
On average, the age group that you will find on X is between 18 and 29 years old. Twitter is a platform where you will usually find message ads and image ads. One of the best advantages of running ads on Twitter is that it uses the latest subjects and participates in real-time conversations. On this platform, marketing is done based on ongoing trends, which helps raise brand awareness.
6. Pinterest
Pinterest is a platform that focuses on visuals and has approximately 465 million active users. To advertise on Pinterest, you need to set a Pinterest tag that can help you track your conversion rate and optimise your ads. Then, you need to select the object for your campaign, which is to create brand awareness, increase conversions, promote videos, increase sales, and many more.
Now you need to select the audience you want to show your ads to, which can be based on location, gender, language, interests, and keywords. After this, select the ad formats from the given options, such as promoted pins, videos, carousel ads, idea ads, and more. Then select the bidding strategy for your campaign. The age group that mostly uses Pinterest is between 23 and 34 years old.
Pinterest usually chooses from two layouts: image ads and video ads. It is mainly used by fashion brands and interior designers since they use visual content to reach their targeted audience. On Pinterest, the audience is quite limited compared to other social media platforms, so it is always beneficial to focus on the niche and use high-quality, engaging content.
7. Snapchat
Snapchat is among the most downloaded apps in the world, and it has around 383 million active users. To advertise on Snapchat, you need to first select your ad type from the Snapchat Ads Manager. If you want to run a single ad, then you can use the instant create option, but if you are looking for some complex campaigns, then you need to use the Advanced Create option to get complete control over your campaign.
The next thing is to set goals for your campaign, such as increasing website visits, promoting a local business, getting leads, and many more. Now choose your audience based on location, gender, age range, or whatever best suits your campaign. After this, you simply need to decide the budget for your campaign. You will usually find people in the age group between 15 and 25 years old using Snapchat.
The ad formats that are used on Snapchat are image ads, video ads, carousel ads, and story ads. You will usually find brands showcasing their products and services using story ads. Along with this, you will also find sponsored lenses in the form of AR ads, which look very interactive and eye-catching. Snapchat ads are quite expensive, and they take a longer time to show significant changes in return on investment.
Costs Of Social Media Advertising
To define the cost of ads on social media, every business needs to focus on some factors like the bidding strategy used for budgeting, the audience they will be targeting, and so on. Listed below are the costs of some social media advertising platforms:
1. Facebook
| Cost Per Click | $0.26 – $0.30 |
|---|---|
| Cost Per 1000 Impressions | $1.01 – $3.00 |
| Cost Per Like | $0.00 – $0.25 |
| Cost Per Download | $0.00 – $5.00 |
| Cost Per Engagement (CPE) | $0.03 – $0.08 |
| Cost Per Month | $1.00 – $500.00 |