If you have a growing business and finally have the resources to invest in marketing, you’ll want to ensure that you advertise in a way that maximizes your budget and ROI using optimal advertising channels.
For most businesses, the must natural advertising channel is social media, and rightfully so. Experts believe that by the end of 2019, over 2.77 billion people will be on social media networks, and by 2021 that number will exceed 3 billion. In the U.S alone, almost 80% of the entire population is on social media.
Small businesses can use social media advertising to increase brand awareness and connect with potential customers, making it an effective marketing channel.
The decision to invest in social media advertising is not so simple; there are multiple platforms, each of which has its own pros and cons for small businesses, depending on their industry, goals and budget.
Over 92% of small businesses plan to grow their social media advertising budget in the upcoming years. Most companies (58%) plan on increasing investment in Facebook, followed by YouTube (39%) and Instagram (39%).
When examining social media channels to advertise on, remember the following questions:
Knowing the answer to these questions will help you understand what channel will help you optimize your advertising budget to get the results you want.
For example, if you are a design agency looking to increase brand awareness and showcase your work, you might want to invest in Instagram, which is the most popular visual-based social media platform. If you have a software agency and are looking to establish yourself as an industry expert to appeal to businesses abroad, consider investing in video creation and distributing them on YouTube.
If you want to reach quantifiable goals, paid social media advertisement campaigns are the way to go. Paid social media campaigns can be launched to generate leads, increase likes, boost engagement, drive to your website or even convert. Because of this, it is the most powerful tool for small businesses looking to meet goals.
Paid social media advertising is the best way to expand reach, especially internationally. Paid campaigns let you control the target audience and location of campaigns, giving you the ability to instantly reach your precise audience at the exact place where you think they are. This is because paid advertisements guarantee feed visibility, so you know your potential customer will see your campaign.
Paid social media campaigns can be launched at any budget, making them an excellent solution for small businesses of all sizes. Most social media channels offer a pay-per-click model that can be used to ensure that your spending limit is never exceeded. The average price per click on Facebook is $1.72, and on Instagram, the average cost per click is $6.70.
If you are looking to spend less, this makes Facebook the clear winner. However, if you are looking for increased engagement, you may still want to consider Instagram since the social media channel tends to yield higher engagement.
If you invest in creating content for your customers, paid social media advertising is a great way to maximize the effectiveness of your content marketing. This is because you can push a particular content piece (such as an eBook or article) to relevant audiences based on their interests. Doing so will increase your brand visibility and content marketing effectiveness.
When you have an advertising budget, you can use that budget to learn even more about your audience thanks to paid social media campaigns. Campaign results can provide your business with valuable market insight about your industry and your audience. Facebook, for example, provides insight into ad performance, including results over time. You can use this information to see engagement across different locations, age brackets and interests. As a result, you’ll be able to create hyper-segmented marketing content for your exact audience.
While paid advertisements dominate the social media scene, and even though only 4% of organic posts are seen, unpaid advertising still has a lot of benefits for small businesses, namely that it’s free – or mostly free.
When building an organic advertising strategy, it’s important to remember that just because you are not investing actual funds into the advertising, it will cost you in time and resources.
Successful organic advertising strategies involve multiple organic posts a week of high value to their audience. Posting for the sake of posting won’t help build your brand and will not be an effective growth strategy.
Perhaps one of the most important benefits of organic social media advertising is the ability to showcase your brand value. Since paid advertising campaigns often focus on a quantifiable goal (such as clicks, leads, conversions, etc.), organic campaigns can be value-focused. As a result, they can strengthen your customers’ connection to your business by explaining your brand value more effectively.
If you are looking to grow your team alongside your business, organic social media campaigns can be a great way to do so. By showcasing your team and highlighting in-office activities, you will be able to show potential employees the type of work culture your business has.
Potential customers should be able to get a clear understanding of your unique brand style just by visiting your social media page. This is a powerful way to showcase your key differentiators in an organic (and cost-effective way). Organic advertising on social media lets you express your brands creative and fun side without sacrificing resources.
Small businesses looking to build a community will benefit from organic social media advertising. As you share content on your social media channels, engagement will increase. By interacting with your followers, addressing any concerns they may voice, and continually sharing added value content you will be able to build more than followers – you will be able to create a community. Not only will this strengthen brand loyalty, but it will increase trustworthiness and establish validity for potential clients, making it a clear win-win.
Trick question – you need both. Organic campaigns are a great way to nurture relationships and build brand awareness; however, paid social media campaigns are the way to go if you are looking for quantifiable results.
That is why growing businesses looking to continue in the right direction need to have a social media advertising strategy that includes both organic and paid campaigns.
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