Where should I advertise and why?
As follow up to the article titled ' I've got my website... now what?. Sheri Pais guides you further on advertising on social media
After being able to understand the basic concepts that are involved in social media marketing, the next step is to make use of these features in a way that can be profitable to your business. Today, the methods of advertising your business and its content to be seen by your desired target audience are numerous.
The most common forms of advertising on social media are through Google Ads and Instagram and Facebook Ads. Let us go through each of them in further detail.
Google Ads
Google ads acts as an extremely detailed tool to use for a particular target base. It allows your ads to target customers based on specific categories such as age, gender, interests and other demographics, thereby reaching a very specific group of relevant people who will benefit from coming across your brand's advertisements. Along with this, using Google Ads allows companies to identify what key words relating to your nature of business are being used by customers online.
An important factor to be noted with Google Ads is that it uses a Pay Per Click (PPC) system model wherein advertisers only pay when their advertisements get clicked on.
Facebook Ads
Facebook has become one of the biggest social media sites with over 2.89 billion monthly active users. Along with such a wide reach, it has become one of the most popular marketing platforms. Missing an opportunity to advertise on this platform may limit the scope of the amount of people an advertiser may be able to reach. Facebook uses the interests of their consumers to show them ads relevant to them. This form of advertising happens to be even more specific with its targeting capacity of its consumers.
Some of the other advantages of using Facebook to advertise are that it is the cheapest form of advertising, the time taken to reach people is extremely swift. This in turn helps to reach new markets quickly and thus begin their exploration into these new markets at their own pace.
Instagram Ads
Created for the purpose of sharing photos and videos- personal or professional, this app continues to grow as one of the major social media platforms today. Advertising through this application immediately has an obvious advantage of using visually compelling media to attract more consumers. What makes this more favorable to consumers is that the ads that are shown are not less intrusive, which helps maintain the visitor’s experience on the app rather than making them turn away from your products. Being a mobile app where users are active for a fair amount of time on the daily, this makes it an excellent platform for engagement.
For a small business, there are some constraints that need to be kept in mind before selecting the most ideal platform to advertise through. Being a new business there is the possibility of the target audience being unaware of the brand and the product that is being tried to sell them.
Hence, here it becomes key for them to gain some brand awareness. Facebook ads and Instagram ads will be the most effective forms of advertising in this case since there is scope for more precise targeting of consumers and the speed at which it may reach them.
Similarly Google ads can be used when the brand owner’s main objective is to attract more traffic or more visits to their particular website. Unlike social media platforms which may be closed, Google ads has a much wider reach in this aspect.
Another factor to consider when deciding the right medium to advertise would be the budget of the brand owner. As a startup brand owner, it must be noted that Google ads may be comparatively more expensive however there are campaigns that fit different budgets.
Facebook and Instagram ads in comparison offer much cheaper and budget friendly options that may help brands get their products to the relevant people in a much more efficient manner.
While all three above methods of online advertising are recommended to be used simultaneously to get the best results, it may not be the most realistic or even the most profitable course of action to choose.
Opting for the best route to take would depend on the goals that each business owner may have for their own businesses - be it simply updating consumers on the brand’s latest news and products, be it to encourage and promote sales through online advertising or be it to convince a group of people to trade with your business.
Various combinations can come together and like every successful business, having a well thought out strategy goes a long way.
