Social media is a game-changer. It was first introduced in 1996, and since then, the world has experienced a major shift in every aspect including business. Currently, up to 4.48 billion people use social media worldwide. In the eyes of a businessman, this is a wide range of customers.
Internet communities have brought about a productive and efficient medium of advertising. So, it’s no wonder that social media advertising budgets have doubled worldwide, from $16 billion in 2014 to $31 billion in 2016.
To help you benefit from the goody bag that is social media advertising, this article will explore the most effective social platforms for marketing and brand promotion.
But first, you should check out brand design tips for your business.
What Is Social Media Advertising?
Social media advertising, also called social media targeting, simply encapsulates making products and services known to a target audience via social media.
The awesome thing about social media is that every kind of business can benefit from it. Small businesses, medium and large businesses can all have a piece of the pie. Social media has a great potential to generate leads and convert them to sales. And if you know your onions well enough, you’ll be able to build your social media empire fast.
Why You Should Use Social Media Advertising
Social media advertising is popular for many reasons. These reasons include:
- It supports small budgets
If you are running a small business and want good results, then hiring the best social media advertising agencies is a good option that can help to generate automated leads. On most social platforms, you don’t need a huge budget to succeed.
- It allows for a wide customer base
Social media gives you the chance to connect with millions of people. Even with a wide audience, your ads will be specifically targeted at people who have an interest in products and services in your industry.
- Helps your increase brand awareness
Social media has helped to bring many brands to the limelight. It can do the same for your brand. When you run ads or consistently put out content on your page, you’ll reach a large audience who will know that your brand exists.
- Provides analytics
With social media marketing tools, you can track and analyze your brand performance. This is invaluable for brands who always look to evaluate and re-strategize for consistent growth.
- Gives a high return on investment (ROI)
Running a business comes with risks. Still, with social media, chances are that you’d g spend less and gain more.
- Allows for Flexibility
Social media is flexible enough to accommodate your needs. For example, many social platforms allow you to make ads that are best suited for your brand and goals.
The 5 Most Effective Types Of Social Media Advertising
You need to put some things into consideration before choosing a social media platform for advertising your brand. Think of your target audience, the campaign you want to run, and the goals you aim to achieve from the ads.
Here are the most effective types of social media advertising:
1. Facebook Advertising
Facebook is unarguably the biggest social media platform with about 2.91 million monthly active users in 2022. In 2007, Facebook officially launched its advertising program and has since topped the charts of the most effective social media advertising. It’s one of the most effective and here’s why:
- Facebook is the most popular social network and includes users of all demographics.
- It is highly targeted and will show your ads to your target audience. Facebook offers targeted adoptions that include Saved, Custom and Lookalike audiences to reach the right people.
- Facebook advertising is cost-effective with the average cost per click across all campaigns being between $0.97 and $1.01.
- You can assess your performance using the Facebook insight tool and calculate your ROI.
Before running a Facebook ad, you should set your objectives. For most people, their Facebook ad objectives include:
- Awareness:
- Brand Awareness
- Reach
- Consideration objectives:
- Traffic
- Engagement
- App Installs
- Video Views
- Lead Generation
- Messages
- Conversions:
- Conversions
- Catalog Sales
- Store Traffic
Types of Facebook Ads
- Single image ads
- Photo ads
- Video ads
- Carousel ads
- Canvas ads
2. Instagram Advertising
In October 2013, Instagram announced its introduction of sponsored posts and videos. With over a billion monthly active users, Instagram is a great place to showcase your products and services. It is one of the most effective social media advertising for the following reasons:
- Enormous user growth drives brand awareness, gives more Instagram likes and increases conversions.
- Targeting options (just like Facebook’s) to reach your ideal audience
- Availability of marketing tools like Instagram shopping features, video features and check out to boost sales.
- High engagement rates on Instagram ads.
- Instagram ads have an average cost per click between $0.20 and $2.00.
The Instagram ad objectives are pretty much the same as those of Facebook because Facebook owns Instagram.
Types of Instagram ads
- Photo ads
- Video ads
- Carousel ads
- Stories ads
- Collection ads.
- Explore ads.
- IGTV ads.
- Shopping ads.
3. Twitter Advertising
Introduced in 2010, Twitter ads have been helpful in driving awareness and engagement for businesses via promoted tweets. Twitter ads will single out your post in a sea of tweets. We consider Twitter ads effective for these reasons:
- There’s no minimum budget for Twitter ads. You can spend as much or as little as you like.
- Twitter also helps you save costs because you only pay for performance. For instance, if you run a follower campaign, you will only pay for the number of followers you gained.
- Twitter has a wide range of demographics that you can benefit from.
- It has excellent targeting options as we will see later.
Just like Facebook and Instagram, Twitter, too, uses the ads feature to help brands achieve success. People run Twitter ads with objectives like:
- Awareness:
- Reach
- In-stream video views
- Consideration:
- Video views
- Pre-roll views
- App installs
- Website traffic
- Engagements
- Followers
- Conversion
- App re-engagements
Twitter campaign targeting options are highly advanced to reach the right people. Here are the targeting options.
- Demographics
- Audience features
- Conversation targeting
- Event targeting
- Tweet Engager targeting
- Keyword targeting
- Movies and TV shows targeting
- Interest and follower look-alikes targeting
- Your audiences
- Custom Audiences
- Do Not Reach Lists
Types of Twitter ads
The types of Twitter ads include:
- Single Image ads
- Video ads
- Carousel ads
- Takeover ads
- Text ads
- Moment ads
- Amplify ads
4. YouTube Advertising
YouTube, the biggest video-sharing social platform, first introduced advertising in 2006. With a variety of video ad formats, the platform is effectively able to lead businesses to the doorstep of success. Youtube advertising is a great option because:
- YouTube will expand your audience reach with its 2 billion account holders.
- It is cost-effective with an average click per view of $0.026.
- There are advanced targeting options to reach the right audience.
YouTube ads objectives include:
- Sales
- Leads
- Website traffic
- Product
- Brand consideration
- Brand awareness
- Reach.
The available targeting options for YouTube campaigns are:
- Audience targeting methods:
- Demographic groups
- Detailed demographics
- Interests
- Your data segments
- Customer Match
- Similar segments
- Content Targeting
- Placements
- Topics
- Keywords
- Devices
Types of YouTube Ads
- Skippable in-stream ads.
- Non-skippable in-stream ads.
- In-feed video ads.
- Bumper ads.
- Outstream ads.
- Masthead ads.
5. Pinterest Advertising
Pinterest, an image-based social network is another effective channel for telling the world about your brand. Beauty and fashion brands have benefited from Pinterest and you should not be left out. With over 400 million monthly active users, Pinterest can help with the discovery of your products.
Here is why Pinterest advertising is effective:
- Pinterest’s image-based feature makes it easy for customers to appreciate products and make purchases. In fact, every week, 83% of US Pinners have made a buying decision based on Pins from brands.
- According to Hootsuite, Pinterest’s quarterly advertising reach is growing at 6.2%. This is way more than other social media advertising.
- The platform offers ads that are highly targeted with targeting options such as Audience, Act alike audience, Interest, Keywords, Demographics etc.
Brand’s Pinterest ad objectives are:
- Brand awareness
- Video views
- Consideration
- Conversion
- Catalog sales.
Types of Pinterest ads
- Idea Pins
- Try on product Pins
- Pinterest collection ads
- Pinterest carousel ads
- Promoted Pins
- Shopping ads
Final Words
It’s 2022 and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t try out one or even all of these social media advertisements platforms.
Depending on your goals, any of the social spaces mentioned in this post will help shift your business positively. But before you start advertising, make sure to be clear on your goals and learn how to maximize your chosen platform for results.
