5 Reasons Your Business Should Use Social Media for Advertising
These days, advertising and social media go hand in hand, but that wasn’t always the case. The social media impact on business has been tremendous—and it keeps growing. Before social media, communication between a business and customers was only one way. You put your message out there—and hoped it reached the right people. With social media, businesses have a dialogue with their customers—and the ability to target with undreamed specificity. And, in the almost 24 hours per week that the average American spends online every week, consumers are liking, following, commenting, researching, and buying. Let’s examine how social media helps small businesses.
Benefits of Advertising on Social Media
- Brand Awareness. Even when people aren’t actively interacting with your advertising on social media, they’re seeing it while they scroll—and it’s registering in their mind somewhere. In this way, you’re increasing awareness of your brand every time someone scrolls by your ad.
- Brand Loyalty. Advertising on social media has a human aspect that other advertising often doesn’t have. Customers love to interact with businesses on social media—and they love it even more when businesses interact back. Those interactions create a human connection that builds brand loyalty.
- Better Search Engine Rankings. While advertising on social media alone won’t significantly increase your search engine rankings, social media increases visibility and, paired with a strong SEO and paid media strategy, will help give you a boost.
- Reduced Marketing Costs. Social media marketing allows you to laser focus your targeting to reach exactly the audience you want. This means you have to spend far less money to reach more of the right potential customers.
- Customer Feedback. Consumers want to be heard. Social media allows you to receive and respond to customer feedback in real-time, increasing customer satisfaction and giving you a genuine understanding of what your customers want.
Types of Social Media Advertising
Now that you’re bought into the “why,” you’re ready to fire up your MySpace page and build some brand loyalty . . . or maybe we take a quick pause to think about social media platforms out there and which are most effective for your company—spoiler alert: not MySpace.
- YouTube: YouTube ads reach almost 3 million users and offer many different targeting and advertising options. It’s also the second most visited website in the world and reaches all ages.
- Facebook: It’s still the largest social media site in the world. While primarily a space for Millennials, all generations exist on the platform, and it’s widely considered a valuable place to market.
- Instagram: It’s an influencer paradise and offers incredible targeting options. Like Facebook, it’s a popular platform, although users tend to be younger than the Facebook demographic.
- LinkedIn: It’s considered the most serious and trustworthy social media platform. LinkedIn is where you’ll find college-educated young adults looking to network with money to spend.
- TikTok: A quarter of users are between 10 and 19. Because it skews young, you’ll find fewer users with disposable income, but with a higher population of teens, you find those who will go to parents or caregivers who can make purchasing decisions.
- Twitter: Twitter is a heavily male and urban platform. Similar to LinkedIn, you’ll find more people on Twitter with higher purchasing power.
While these aren’t the only options, they are some of the most popular and likely to get you results. And our team at Globe Runner has significant expertise in all those platforms and can help you turn social media into rocket fuel for your business. From remarketing to paid ads to testing and reporting, we do it all. Get in touch today to discuss how to take your advertising strategy to the next level.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why advertise on social media?
Because that’s where people are. These days, everyone is on at least one social media platform, if not more. An effective social media advertising strategy will build brand awareness and loyalty while creating a feedback loop that creates a true sense of human relationship with your customers.
Is social media effective for advertising?
Absolutely! However, the effectiveness of social media advertising depends on the thought and effort you put into your strategy. You need to think about your audience and who to target. Different subsections of people are more likely to use different social media platforms, so ensuring you’re advertising on the right platforms is key to your success. So is creating a social media brand persona appropriate for the platform and target audience.
