If you’re reading this, there are high chances that you are on at least any one of the major social media platforms. Be it mindlessly scrolling through the Instagram feed or turning to Pinterest for inspiration or keeping an eye on Twitter for the latest updates and information. And the more you use social media, the more ads you’ll see.
Social media has now transcended beyond being just a medium where you can connect with your long-lost friends and family. It has come to a point where it serves highly relevant, focused, and persuasive ads and the reach is unparalleled in comparison to other traditional mediums.
That being said, in case you’ve noticed a dip in your organic social media efforts, and you’re interested in adding paid social as a new marketing avenue, you first need to consider which social media would be the most appropriate for your business.
In this blog, let’s explore in detail as to what the big players in the social media landscape have to offer in terms of advertising and how you can capitalize the same to your advantage.
What is Paid Social or Social Media Advertising?
To cut a long story short, paid social or social media advertising denotes the various advertising that can be run on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.
Ranging from static image or video ads, and sponsored posts to carousels, there are innumerable formats that these social platforms offer that advertisers can dabble with.
Getting started with paid social media is simple. However, if you do not know as to what ad formats and objectives will work best for your specific target audience, it can be a challenge to achieve success instantaneously. So, before getting started with your paid advertising journey, it is advisable to get your facts straight and be in the know regarding what kind of advertising avenues are available in the social media scene.
Let’s jump right into it!
Facebook Advertising
There is no overruling Facebook when it comes to Paid Social; Facebook is a giant. In fact, according to Economic Times, Facebook’s gross ad revenue grew to 9,326 crores, recording year-on-year growth of 41%. And needless to say about the audience size that you can reach.
Additionally, if you choose to run your ads on Facebook ad manager, you can run your ads beyond the various placements (from feeds to search, instant articles, marketplace, and much more). Plus, you can also run them on Instagram, Messenger and Facebook’s ad network.
So, if you are a retailer or own an eCommerce business with a range of target audiences, Facebook is the perfect platform for you to get started in terms of paid social advertising. On the plus side, Facebook advertising isn’t very pricey either! So, if you’re a budding small business, Facebook offers a plethora of options and tools for guided, relevant and much-focused advertising.
Instagram Advertising
Currently, a part of the Meta universe with the number of active users rapidly growing year after year, Instagram houses over 1 Billion users with a vast majority of the audience being under the below 35 age bracket. So, this crucial information makes the platform the perfect fit for businesses whose target audience falls under the younger demographic groups.
As discussed earlier, you can use the Facebook Ads manager to run ads on Instagram. However, you do not need to follow it as a mandate, because Instagram also offers its advertising features. So, you have the power to decide whether you want to run your campaigns simultaneously on both platforms or devise different agendas tailored to suit the mediums.
However, it is advisable to run different campaigns on the two social media platforms as both caters to a diverse audience. And here are some pro tips in case you’re running Instagram ads for the first time.
Being a highly visual medium, it is highly imperative that you have superior quality images and videos for your ads to be noticed and achieve paid social success on Instagram. The platform also supports different ad formats ranging from a single image to carousels and story ads. So, if you’re in the B2C space in the fashion, health & beauty, food, or travel industry, Instagram is your go-to platform to garner leads and eventually make them potential repeat customers.
LinkedIn Advertising
If Instagram is for B2C, LinkedIn is the go-to platform for B2B marketers. LinkedIn ads can work phenomenally well irrespective of what your end goal is. Be it generating quality leads or attracting top talents to join your business or just raising awareness about a specific service or product, LinkedIn has more potential to reach your audience than you can imagine.
The size of the LinkedIn community is smaller in comparison to Facebook or Instagram, and you will need to have a bigger budget available to run ad campaigns. However, once you’re into it, you will feel that it’s definitely worth the time, money and effort.
As far as the ad formats are concerned, you have your sponsored content that you see on your LinkedIn feed, the sponsored InMail, Text Ads and also the more advanced and dynamic ads for better personalization.
However, that is not only why B2B marketers love to promote on LinkedIn. It’s because of its highly focused and detailed targeting options. Of course, you’ll have the usual targeting options such as age, location, etc. However, what makes it stand out is that you can also segment your target audience based on a specific company or industry, company size, company name, company followers, the field of study, job seniority, degrees, member schools, job function, job title, member skills, member groups, member interests and these are just a scratch on the surface.
This gives you the power to build highly relevant and focused ad campaigns and you can be sure that you send out the right message to the right people at the right time.
Twitter Advertising
When you look at the audience size, Twitter has way more catching up to do as it is home to just over 300 million monthly active users. However, in case you’re organically active on this platform, Twitter ads can actually aid you in improving your reach, drive more brand awareness and enhance the engagement rate with your audience.
Additionally, you can also leverage Twitter’s advertising solutions to garner more quality traffic to your website and also promote your mobile app. As far as the targeting is concerned, you can segment your audience basis their language, gender, interest, device, behavior, keyword, demography and much more.
All that considered, given the smaller audience size on the platform, it is recommended that you have Twitter as an additional paid media platform rather than resorting to being the only paid social activity that your brand is doing.
Pinterest Advertising
Pinterest boasts a similar audience size to Twitter with just over 400 million monthly active users. When it comes to Pinterest, people generally don’t go to the platform to buy. On the contrary, they just go on the platform when they want something new, but do not have a specific idea in their minds. Rather, look at Pinterest as a Visual Google which guides people to ideas that are just about right for them.
That being said, according to data that’s shared by Pinterest, almost 83% of their weekly users have made a purchase based on the Pins they saw from brands.
However, due to its size restrictions, it also poses as a more complementary paid social channel that you can add to your marketing mix. That being said, this medium can be a behemoth, especially for fashion, beauty, Food and Beverage, and home retailers. This is because the nature of the platform revolves around seasonal content, life moments, and daily decisions, and the verticals mentioned above can leverage Pinterest to their advantage.
We hope that this quick guide will give you an overview of paid social advertising so you can make an informed decision when it boils down to deciding which social media platforms are the best for advertising your business.
In case you want to discuss further regarding your social media needs or take your advertising campaigns to a new high, get in touch with our experts today!
