Social Media Marketing: Part 1
With the increase in digital marketing, it’s easier than ever to reach out to potential customers in a way that they can be engaged in an interesting, new way. Now that internet advertising has gone mainstream, the types of online marketing that your business has access to has expanded.
Having this kind of access to vast kinds of marketing can be great because there is something for everyone, but it can also mean that the types of marketing available can get a little lost in the weeds. It might be difficult to figure out what types of digital marketing works best for your business if you don’t know what is available to you.
So, let’s discuss the various types of online marketing that your business can utilize, what they do, and which might work best for what you do. In this post we will focus on social media.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Social media isn’t just for sharing life updates or vacation photos! Among the top 10 reasons people use social media? To shop for products and services. When discussing their life events, 1 out of 3 people mention specific brands in their social media posts. Many people are spending a lot of their time on social media, which means that’s exactly where your business needs to be.
Social media advertising can be a great way to reach customers in ways that are personal and enjoyable for them. Getting your content in front of people who might actually have an interest in seeing what you have to sell is a great way to stay relevant when advertising on social media. Many social media platforms prefer for your ad to not look like an ad at all!
Aside from the benefit of advertising in a more appealing way, you only pay for your ad when someone clicks on it. So instead of paying for a spot on a traditional advertising platform like TV, you only pay for actual engagements, which is great news if your advertising on a budget!
Being visible to your target audience and reach for the following goals:
- Increasing your brand awareness
- Building an email subscriber list
- Building a social media following
- Increasing brand engagement
- Making faster sales
- Create customer loyalty
Where to run social media ads
There are many options available to you for social media advertising, regardless of your customer base, you will likely find them in the following places:
- Snapchat
- YouTube
In order to determine which places might be best for your business, you need to consider the following:
- Where is your target customer most active?
- Where does your target customer make their buying decisions?
- Where does your business have a presence?
- How does your target audience use the platform? Frequent uses will be able to see through your advertising tactics if you don’t understand the platform itself!
Pick two platforms that are the best for communicating with your target audience and focus on expanding your reach there. Then, you be consistent in maintaining those platforms and growing a loyal customer base.
TYPES OF ONLINE MARKETING ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Boost Posts
When you share something on you business page that gets lots of engagements, you can pay to have the people that don’t follow you see it.
Organic/Newsfeed Ads
Ads can be labeled “sponsored” or “suggested” to adhere to advertising rules, but they are made to appear only in a newsfeed. These types of ads look like something someone has posted or shared, so they are more likely to get attention.
These types of ads take a focus on being clever, entertaining and helpful with their presentation over direct selling. Often times people will unfollow or blacklist businesses that become overly promotional within their newsfeed.
Sidebar Ads
These types of ads don’t appear in feeds, but instead will show up below or beside.
Remarketing ads
Remarketing is showing ads to customers who’ve already visited your website or profile. This way of advertising is effective in re-engaging with customers and alerting them to a possible missed opportunity on your site.
TARGETING POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS ON SOCIAL MEDIA
There are many reasons to be actively advertising social media if you’re a business, but one of the main reasons is because of the ease of targeting your ideal customers. Paying to show your ad to millions who may not engage or even see the ad is no longer the best way to advertise for many businesses. Better to pay for you ad to be seen by 100,000 likely customers where you might be guaranteed at least 1,000 clicks.
You can target potential customers based on the following:
- Interests
- Buying behaviors
- Their location
- Industry/company/job
And much more!
Identify the best strategy for your business. If you’re a local window cleaning service, you’re going to want to target your local area in your ads, so you may get more social media engagements if you don’t geo-locate. With sites like Facebook and Instagram, they will cut your ad costs and get it in front of more potential customers if you use Ads Manager to target.
WHO SHOULD ADVERTISE ON SOCIAL MEDIA?
All businesses can benefit from effective online marketing. All it takes is an understanding of how people use various platforms and creating a strategy to align with that. For example if you’re a real estate agency, Yelp could be a great resource to target potential customers. Instagram could also be useful for more visually appealing ads, like showing possible clients their dream home.
