Paid Social Media Advertising: The Inside Track

Social media marketing is evolving at break-neck speed. When it first started out, cutting-edge businesses took to the trend of stepping onto the ledge to take advantage over their competition.

However, once the results became evident, more platforms were born and social media marketing became a must-have strategy for each and every business. It was free advertising and therefore every one wanted a piece of the pie. However, social media marketing has turned over a new leave, and you have the option to be part of it: paid social media advertising.

Why Paid Social Media Advertising?

Experts have recognised the power for their own access to information and they have the prominence and brand recognition to take advantage of that. Some platforms offer diverse payment options for targeted advertising, and where you place your ads will significantly impact your outcomes. But how do you choose which option is best for your company?

Organic vs. Paid Social Media Advertising

How does organic SMM compare to social media advertising? In short, the conventional method enables you to share updates and content and it is still effective. However, it requires more effort to build a sizable audience that results in web traffic and conversions.

On the other hand, the social platforms have started demoting the prominence of organic posts in order to promote paid advertising plans. Organic post reach for a page with a million likes has amounted to 2.25% by the third quarter of 2015.

Paid advertising, on the contrary, continues to become more sophisticated and offers a range of targeting options with much more reach potential. While it requires payment, it is still relatively inexpensive, starting at as little as $5 a day.

Comparing Paid Social Media Advertising Platforms

Which platform to choose? Let’s take a look at each of them in more detail.

Facebook Paid Advertising

• More than 1 billion people are active on Facebook every day.
  Choose from creative and flexible formats (carousel / video ads) that work well on mobile.
  Inexpensive and easy to tweak on Facebook Ads Manager.
  In-depth analytics complete with impressions, engagement, reach and audience demographics on Facebook Insights.
  Audience targeting makes it easy to reach out to your ideal market.

Youtube Paid Advertising

• Video advertising is the new big thing in advertising.
  Platform has an active audience of over 1 billion.
  Offers both static and video ads.
  Youtube advertising has been said to convert better than others.

LinkedIn

• Ideal for business-to-business advertising.
  Perfect for content marketing thanks to Sponsored Updates.
  Highly sophisticated audience targeting capabilities.

Twitter

• Large audience
  3 Options: Promoted Tweets, Promoted Accounts, or Promoted Trends
  Promoted Tweets offers more exposure on one status update.
  Promoted Accounts gives your profile more exposure to build follower base.
  Promoted Trends is used for context- and event-sensitive promotions.
  It is not only for established brands – anyone can use it.

Which Paid Social Media Advertising Platform is Best for Me?

With so many options to choose from, how do you choose the best one for your needs? Basically, it comes down to asking yourself the following questions:

• Where does my audience congregate? If your audience is on Facebook, there’s no point advertising on LinkedIn.
  Would your audience better respond to video or traditional ads?
  Do I have the time and resources to tweak and customise my ads to reach more users?
  Do I have an actual strategy, or do I just want to advertise?

Based on your answers, you can choose the best platform for your paid social media advertising. Remember that it doesn’t end with placing and paying for an ad, but analysing your results is also crucial to ensuring whether or not your ad has been a success. Based on the results, you should tweak your ads, test out new methods and connect with your audience.