In recent years, social media platforms have become an integral and entwined part of modern life, serving as a way to stay in touch and keep up to date with the activities of friends and family.
However, as the social platforms have grown, they have also become an important source of promotion and marketing for companies looking to expand their reach with highly targeted advertising.
While posting content to your company’s profile pages is essential for keeping clients informed of your company’s developments, the ability to produce adverts aimed at specific users sorted by criteria like age, gender, interest, or previous web use offers unrivaled opportunities for companies looking to focus in on particular demographics in ways never before possible.
Social media companies know their users intimately
Industry experts suggest the predominant social channel, Facebook, knows more about its users than their nearest and dearest do and this kind of intimate knowledge can be tapped into by advertisers with dramatic effect. Moreover, if your company partners with a specialized PPC consultancy, you will be able to devise a marketing strategy tailored precisely to your demographic, then monitor the campaign’s success with pinpoint precision.
Primary reasons companies use social media advertising
There are multiple reasons why many companies have embraced advertising on social platforms and made it an intrinsic component of their overall promotion and marketing arsenal, including:
Activity and user base: Facebook, the world’s most dominant social media company, has around 2.7 billion active monthly users and, in January 2021, was also the world’s seventh most popular website (although it is worth remembering a huge percentage of users access the service through the mobile app). As discussed later herein, the other platforms have lower user numbers but taken as whole social platforms offer incredible reach and penetration.
Incredible campaign accuracy: While social platforms all vary in terms of the user information they collate and store, depending on which service you choose to advertise with, you could target your audience by age, gender, income, location, parental status, company (specific name or sector), level of education, interests (anything from music to sports), previous online activity (including whether they have visited your site before) or even life events like moving homes or going on holiday. Social media companies store vast amounts of data on their users, improving the accuracy of marketing campaigns and giving far higher Returns on Investment (ROI) than any other medium.
Ad flexibility: Not all ad formats work for all companies, but with social advertising, the options are almost limitless in how you can deliver your message ranging from simple image ads to carousels, interactive presentations, and creating videos.
Social site prioritizing content: With the huge rise in marketing content on social pages, the major players have started prioritizing content from family and friends over posts made by companies. This means that many of the posts you make simply will not be seen by clients – unless they take the time to visit your profile pages.
Keeping up with competitors: Last (but by no means, least), if you find your competitors are using social media advertising, there is likely a good reason – namely, it must be working. If you want to keep up with your rivals, you may well need to think about improving your social presence, and that, more than likely, means investing in advertising.
