Considering nearly 4 billion people use social media, businesses have the potential to reach more people now than ever before through paid social media advertising.
Unlike organic posts and marketing efforts that require navigating platform algorithms to show up in your audience’s newsfeeds, paid social media ads better guarantee your audience will see your ad.
Although guaranteed reach is a boon for any business, that doesn’t necessarily mean your brand should go all in on paid social media advertising.
Paid social media ads are not always the most effective marketing tool for every business.
These ads can be costly and require data tracking and management. If your messages aren’t on point or targeting your desired audience, you will end up wasting a lot of time, energy and money without reaping many benefits.
Before you start using paid social media ads for your business, you should consider these factors:
Your budget
Depending on the platform and your specific goals, social media advertising campaigns can cost anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars.
To give you a rough idea of how much you may have to spend, here are the average costs per click and per impression for some major social media platforms:
|
Average Cost Per
Click
|
Average Cost Per 1000
Impressions
|
|
|
LinkedIn
|
$5.26
|
$6.59
|
|
Twitter
|
$0.21
|
$6.46
|
|
Facebook
|
$0.97
|
$7.19
|
|
Instagram
|
$3.56
|
$7.91
|
|
YouTube
|
$3.21
|
$9.68
|
While some platforms are more costly than others, you will have to budget a decent amount of money to advertise on each platform.
Does your business have the marketing budget to accommodate this paid advertising? If not, you should focus on organic social media marketing for the time being.
Your target audience
Even if your business has the money for paid social media ads, these advertisements will not be helpful if your target audience isn’t able to see them.
Sure, paid ads guarantee reach, but if your target audience does not typically spend time on a specific social media platform or on social media sites in general, then paid advertising will be a waste of money and give you a poor return on your investment.
Before you incorporate paid social media advertising, figure out:
- Your target audience.
- The platforms where they spend most of their time.
- Why they use these platforms.
- The type of content they want to see on these platforms.
Maybe your target audience uses Instagram and Twitter frequently, but never logs onto Facebook.
Maybe they are fans of short, quippy advertisements instead of long-form content.
Maybe they only check social media on a weekly basis.
Considering your target audience will help you determine which platforms, if any, you should focus on when creating paid social media advertising campaigns.
Your key metrics
What do you want your business to gain from paid social media ads, and how will you determine whether advertising is successful?
Before you spend time and money launching paid ads, you need to have some sort of system or software in place to track key metrics like clicks, views, likes, impressions and conversions.
Tracking and analyzing key metrics will let you know if you’re on the right track with your paid ads.
If you don’t have the time to dedicate to tracking these metrics or the money to buy software to analyze this information for you, then you won’t know if you are getting a good return on investment for your paid ads. This means you might end up wasting money on ineffective marketing without even realizing it.
Before you consider using paid social media ads for your business, make sure you have a plan for determining and measuring key metrics.
Your messaging
If you had 30 seconds to tell a captive audience about your business, you would spend a lot of time thinking about exactly what to say.
The same idea applies to paid social media advertising. Paid ads give you a guaranteed audience, so it is critical you make the most of this opportunity and share information that is relevant, interesting and valuable.
Prior to implementing paid social media ads, you should do market research, keyword research, and audience research to determine what you should say to your audience and how you should get your message across in an effective ad.
If your brand doesn’t have a consistent voice or a message that you want to share with your audience, you should hold off on paid social media ads for the time being.
When you consider these factors above, it will help you determine whether you will be able to get good mileage from your paid social media ads before you spend hundreds of dollars and hours on an advertising campaign.
Still have questions about how paid social media can work for your business? Schedule a call with our team and let’s talk about how to get the most ROI for your social media efforts.
