You may have heard the phrase social advertising or social media advertising or social marketing, but they all refer to the same thing. Those phrases mean advertising on social media.
It probably seems it should be more complicated than that, but social advertising simply refers to the media used for advertising. Advertising on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or any other social media platform falls into this category.
What makes social advertising special?
Placing ads on social media lets you reach a specifically targeted audience that actively uses the platform. That means they actively use the Internet.
About 69 percent of the population shops online. Of those individuals, 77 percent make impulse purchases. That means you have a super chance of making a sale so long as you can get your ad in front of the target audience for your product. Even if the individual was not actively shopping for the item or researching it, so long as your product solves their problem, you have a three in four chance of making a sale.
Did I hear a “Wow”?
Moving that many people through your sales funnel would make your sales figures go through the proverbial roof. You just need to hone your audience and your message.
Researching and Defining Your Target Audience
You should already have your market research sitting in front of you. Your marketing plan and your customer data as well as your customer persona help you quickly target your social media advertising audience.
Each social media platform offers a different targeting method. Some work better than others. Facebook lets you craft an extremely focused target audience that lets you spend less while reaching those most likely to purchase. You can hone-in on a specific town, income level, hobbies, career, age group, etc. This lets you target the one or two thousand people likely to shop at your local antique store or hire you to pet sit without spending much money. You could run an ad to reach that number of people for four days for less than $5. That kind of smart spending of advertising dollars helps you reach more potential customers for less money.
Twitter offers a similar tool for creating target audiences, but lets you hone it to a less specific audience. You might address a state-wide audience or metropolitan area, but the Twitter platform focuses on a broader audience that helps you brand build. This platform offers no short-term advertising campaign option. You must subscribe to a monthly advertising plan with a minimum cost of $99 per month. This promotes your account as a whole, but you will need to choose specific posts from which to create the ads. Every person within your target audience sees the post in their feed. Of course, you miss the individuals using feed integrating platforms like Hootsuite.
While most social media platforms only allow in-house advertising options, Twitter differs. You can promote your Twitter account using the British firm Twiends. You purchase a subscription of weekly ad impressions or a one-off package of impressions. The Twiends site lists your Twitter account in its searchable database by name,location, and interest. The ad impressions you purchase feature your account and its profile photo on multiple site pages using a number of ad types. The database on the site features a mini profile of your Twitter with tweets you select. This allows its many users who also want to find people by interest to build their own followings. Impression plans begin at 1,000 ads per week.
Instagram uses a similar system since the mega-platform purchased it. You can hone your target audience to nearly the same specificity as with a Facebook post. The two platforms cross-list ads, so your ads show up on both platforms whether you use either a photo or video in your advertisement.
YouTube provides multiple ad types. You can insert a video ad at various playback points – pre-roll, post-roll, or during the show’s playback. YouTube also sells static ads in various banner sizes.
Advertising Types
Targeting aside, your advertising design varies by platform. On Twitter, you can use text combined with a photo or video. Despite its ability to let you add text to posts, the only promotable posts on the platform are those with only one line of text. Since they merged their advertising with Instagram’s, they favored the photo-centric posts of the graphic site. You may love the post you already made on-site, but if you wrote more than a line of text to accompany it, the platform will not let you spend the money to promote it.
While on the desktop version of either Mark Zuckerberg property, you could see the first four lines of text, you cannot on the mobile app of either platform. The mobile version shows only one line of text and users do not click on the “read more” link that blogs typically offer.
Pinterest works vastly differently. Your content draws people, but you cannot promote your existing account unless you originally created a business account. That means most of the pinners who open small businesses cannot promote their small businesses from their existing account without altering it from a personal account to a business account. It may have a superb following or engagement, but you either lose your personal account or you must open a business account on Pinterest by visiting its ads page to buy ads.
So, why open two Pinterest accounts, one for business, one for personal use? These branded business accounts let you buy advertising to reach the ready to purchase customers base of Pinterest. How ready? US pinners buy from Pinterest posts in droves – 89 percent of US users of the platform use it to research purchases. More than four out of five US pinner who visit the site weekly has purchased a product based on its pins – 83 percent. Pinterest users essentially foam at the mouth to buy products from its advertisers.
Avoid the Social Media Advertising Confusion with Help
Bake More Pies does not want you to pull your hair out trying to navigate social media advertising. In order to advertise on all of the major social media platforms, you need a diverse set of ads. Users of both Zuckerberg platforms like photos with little text. Its story-style video ads do well, too. Pinterest also likes photos, but you can attach more text to a promoted post. Twitter lets you promote any tweet whether all text or combined with a photo or video although the latter performs better.
Contact Us
Contact Bake More Pies for help with social advertising or questions you have about what is social media advertising. We can integrate your social media ads into your existing campaigns. Our advertising and marketing savvy lets you re-use existing ads with little change. We can also help you customize your social media posts to best fit those suitable for promotion. The Zuckerberg properties provide the greatest challenge since the sites refuse graphics with text or text of more than one line accompanying it. This means your photo or video must engage the user and encourage them to buy without text except for the link to your product. Most ads include ad copy.
With our educations, experience, and marketing talents, Bake More Pies remains ready to help you create the campaigns that will cross-promote your products and social media accounts. Call us today to learn how we can help you and how easily you can start with social media advertising.
