The Benefits of Social Media Advertising

Social Ads have become a highly effective method for making conversions and in 2021, businesses have no excuse for not using them.

The benefits of social media marketing far outweigh any of the disadvantages. Social ads are highly targeted, linked to your company's profile, and can be used to satisfy a variety of different marketing goals, like generating brand recognition or increasing sales.

Perhaps you or your company are interested in advertising on these platforms or perhaps you still have doubts about whether or not you actually need to? Either way, reading on to learn about the benefits of social media marketing!

What Are Social Ads?

Social Ads are advertisements on a social media platforms or networks. Generally speaking, they contain a title, a description, and are accompanied by some sort of multimedia element (a picture, video, clickable product item, etc.). Effective social media ads also contain a “call to action” which grabs a user’s attention and invites them to interact with the ad, business, product, or service.

Depending on the social media platform in which an ad is posted, a Social Ad can be published in many different formats. Even though there are many different ways to create an ad, social media advertising isn't too different from ads found on search engines like Google Ads. The primary difference is that social media marketing can be much more targeted, is more visually dynamic, and can be done on a variety of different platforms with different methods and tactics for each.

9 Benefits of Social Media Advertising

The number of business and entrepreneurs who implement social media marketing strategies rises every year. However, there are still some companies who resist. This is likely due to the fact that these business don’t realize the advantages of social media. Some of the benefits of social media advertising include the following:

Price

The cost of social ads is relatively low in comparison to other advertising methods. You can also set your budget to be as low or high as you want. This means a portion of your budget could go towards social ads without breaking the bank.

Reach

Advertising on social media allows you to reach a lot of people. This means you can reach a large number of potential clients and increasing your conversion rate.

Segmentation

Social Ads allow you access to highly targeted audiences. This means if you are selling a very specific product or service, you can advertise to specific users with predetermined characteristics, such as sex, age, socioeconomic situation, language, use of a specific website, personal interests and hobbies. These are just some of the variables which allow you to accurately identify your target audience. You can then combine these characteristics to get even more specific.

Brand Visibility

Let's be real, the entire world is on social media. If a business utilizes social media to advertise, their brand awareness and overall market visibility will increase considerably.

User Experience and Loyalty

Social media ads allow you connect with your followers and potential customers in a new medium. By creating new content or targeted discounts and offers, you can create a positive customer experience on an entirely new platform. Additionally, a company can create a dedicated customer service account, thus bettering the public’s opinion of the brand and making themselves more available to the customers and potential customers who have questions.

Brand Recognition

Thanks to the large number of users on social media, social media advertising is a great way to get users familiar with your brand and offerings. This can be especially useful for ecommerce sites, as they can use Product Catalog ads to display their products.

Connectivity

Another advantage of social media is that it lets a company create a channel designated specifically for customer interaction, allowing clients to feel a sense of connection with the business. This way, social ads can help a business strengthen the bond between clients, and/or establish new ties within the target market.

Increase Sales, Signups, and Leads

Whether in the form of sales, signups and/or leads, Social Ads are another ideal method for getting conversions. If a user is given what they’re looking for and they choose the right call to action, it’s quite the effective method!

Creation and Knowledge of the Target Audience

Another benefit of social media advertising is that it helps you understand your current target audience and can help you create new ones. Social media lets you segment ads as much as possible so that they are seen by the desired (potential) clients. This also leads you to understand new details about your audience, which can end up being interesting segments for the company in the future.

Most Popular Social Media Marketing Platforms

Even if you already are familiar with paid ads on social media, the way an ad is publicized greatly depends on the social network you select for a campaign. To better understand the benefits of social media, let's delve into the most popular platforms.

Facebook: advertising on Facebook allows you to reach a large community of online users. Right now, there are approximately 2.5 billion active Facebook profiles. Although the basic requirements are just a title and the ad itself, the possibilities are endless. You can post to your web page or Facebook page. You can post on Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, or in third party apps and websites. There are various types of ads you can implement depending on your company's objectives. You can also establish different metrics for measuring the efficiency of campaigns (i.e. clicks, interactions, conversions, sales, etc.)
Instagram: Instagram ads are actually quite simple, since the network is owned by Facebook. Ads on Facebook can be easily adapted and shared on Instagram, all from the same advertising platform. Each ad is clearly labeled as “Sponsored” in order to tell users that a given post is paid advertising. At the same time, the option of clicking on “Learn More” is plainly visible. By tapping on this call to action, users can directly access the advertiser’s website. A company that advertises on Instagram can also make ads visible to certain audiences based on the accounts they follow on social media, in relation to a device’s search history, or based on Facebook page “likes." At the moment, there are around a billion Instagram users.
TikTok: Though TikTok is the new kid on the block in the social media world, it's a forced to be reckoned with, especially if your target audience is Gen Z. With over 680 million active users, advertising on TikTok is a great option. Because advertising on the platform is still relatively new, the only self-service style ads are biddable ads. However, if you have the budget, you can work with a TikTok Account Manager to create other advertisements, including Brand Takeovers, official Hashtag Challenges, Branded Lenses, and more.
LinkedIn: LinkedIn offers the ability to publish ads (either text or multimedia) and/or to disseminate promotional content and news. In order to reach your target audience, a solid title is crucial here. You can also indicate if you want users to visit your business’s website or your business’s LinkedIn profile.
Twitter: Businesses take advantage of advertising on Twitter in order to help extend the reach of a their tweets and to get better 'tweet interaction'. Companies who use Twitter pay using a system called “cost per interaction” (CPI). This means that you are only billed if/when a user effectively interacts with a tweet through a share, a RT, a favorite, etc. Within this social network there are many different types of campaigns depending on the objectives a business has.

Advantages of Social Media Ads vs Other Ads

Micro-segmentations: social media users connect with many different people, posts, and businesses each day. Those specific connections create micro-segmentations which allow you to launch advertising campaigns based on these concrete actions. This achieves a more effective reach.
Organic diffusion: Social Ads often allow more actions than conventional online advertising. Not only can people click on something, they can also “like” or “share” something with their personal network. These “likes” and “shares” can organically diffuse an ad without costing the advertiser anything.
Familiarity: another benefit of social media is that it notifies a user when one of their contacts has liked their post. With this method, click rates increase and readers will consider an ad to be less intrusive.

Now that you have acquired a solid base of knowledge, we encourage you to take the plunge and create your own social ads campaign! If you’ve already done so, make sure to put the above advice into practice so that you can increase your conversion rate!