SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING: GUIDE AND BENEFITS FOR YOUR BUSINESS

What is Social media advertising?

Social media advertising is a strategic and cost-effective tool for businesses, allowing for precise audience targeting, providing broad visibility, and ensuring a good return on investment!

Social media advertising refers to paid ads shown to targeted audiences on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. It aims to promote products or services, increase brand awareness and engage consumers through personalized content.

 

Some of the major objectives Social Media Advertising include:

• Promote a product or service;
• Distribute a promotional offer;
• Introduce a brand;
• Promote an event;
• Recruit...

 

The types of advertising

As we have seen, the choice of platform and format of advertising is a crucial decision in your strategy. Here are the options available to you for social ads.

 

Video advertising

The video advertising is on the rise, and has largely taken over in recent years. Video ads are thus responding to a trend, but they also have the advantage of allowing companies to say a lot, in a short time, unlike static images.

Social networks that support video advertising include: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok.

 

Static image advertising

Static image advertising remains in the classic and conventional social ads. For it to be appealing, you have to be creative, with an illustration, a photo or a powerful text, which conveys the message in the blink of an eye and bring consideration.

In image advertising you have to be concise, with the possibility of transmitting longer information.

All the social networks are good in static image advertising except TikTok and YouTube, which are betting their entire strategy on video.

 

Interactive advertising

Interactive advertising refers to all forms of advertising that encourage the user to take action. This can take the form of a poll, an open-ended question, an incentive for interaction...

The objective is to encourage the Internet user to become an actor, rather than passively watching the ad.

This type of social ads has the advantage of being fun, but it also makes it easy to analyze user engagement and profiles.

Which social networks for interactive advertising? Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Snapchat.

Social media advertising is a great way to improve your awareness and visibility online, and to promote a product or event. Inexpensive, it must be perfectly adapted to your expectations and your audience, to ensure an impactful campaign. Need help with your social media marketing strategy? Entrust your SMA strategy to Lemon Interactive's web marketing team.

 

The benefits of social media advertising

Generate traffic to a website

To generate traffic to a website, many companies use SEA (Search Engine Advertising), in order to position themselves punctually and quickly on specific keywords in the SERP thanks to Google Ads. Paid advertising on social networks has other advantages.

 

Precise audience targeting

If you compare paid advertising on social networks with a more traditional advertising medium, you immediately detect an interest in audience targeting. Indeed, when you advertise on television, in a newspaper or in the street, you very vaguely target the population, in a very global way, without being able to precisely reach a defined audience.

With social networks, it is possible to target very specific audiences, according to a lot of criteria (age, gender, interest, profession, etc.). Ads can then be delivered in a highly relevant way to the brand's needs, and reach your ideal customer much more effectively.

For example, Facebook advertising offers a range of powerful tools to fine-tune social ads targeting. These features help further optimize the relevance of each ad:

• Audience by Interest/Demographics: By analyzing the demographics, interests, and online behaviors of your current customers, Facebook identifies and targets new users who share similarities. So, you can expand your reach while maintaining increased relevance.
• Lookalike: By analyzing the demographics, interests, and online behaviors of your current customers, Facebook identifies and targets new users who share similarities. So, you can expand your reach while maintaining increased relevance.
• Audience Retargeting: Another effective strategy on Facebook is retargeting, which involves targeting users who have interacted with your website, app, or previous ads. By personalizing your ads based on past user behavior, you increase engagement and maximize the chances of conversion.

By leveraging these features, you can ensure that your ads are targeted to users who are most likely to be interested in your products or services, maximizing the ROI of your social media advertising strategy.

 

Wide reach and visibility

For a long time, traditional advertising was the only way to develop a marketing strategy. Today, paid advertising on social networks opens up opportunities for advertising campaigns, which can reach a wider audience, without any geographical limits, and without being limited to the subscribers of the professional account.

Unlike billboard advertising, for example, which can only be broadcast locally, SMA allows you to reach a national or even international audience.

 

Better return on investment (ROI)

Regardless of which social network you want to run your advertising campaign on, the cost of the project will most likely be cheaper than using the more traditional distribution channels.

We know, for example, that advertising on television costs a fortune, while on social networks, advertising is becoming accessible to many more companies, with extremely flexible budgets, and with a return on investment that is almost always guaranteed. Each brand can then set its advertising budget according to its objectives, needs and target audience.

 

Audience interaction

By advertising on social media, you also engage your audience. Indeed, on social media platforms, you are not only highlighting your product or service, you are also highlighting your brand and values. This will generate comments and shares, which will necessarily increase brand awareness.

Finally, advertising on social networks can also be part of a global communication strategy, which complements a process of running a professional account. Advertising gives a small boost to the account and the brand, which improves visibility and brand awareness, and also builds customer and community loyalty, building reputation and brand trust.

And let's not forget, of course, that every action on social networks has a potential for virality. You can then have a wider popularity with a well-conducted advertisement.

 

Adaptability of formats and multiple possibilities

Today, depending on the social network you choose, you have a multitude of possibilities for action available to you to create your ad. You can then adapt the format of your ads according to your expectations, your products and services, and your audience: video, image, text, carousel, story, reel... All these formats allow you to get as close as possible to the sensitivities of your audience, to be sure to reach them and encourage them to take action.

In addition, following trends is also an excellent way to seduce both social network algorithms and Internet users, and thus obtain very good results.

 

Direct measurement of results

With an advertisement in a magazine, it is not so easy to know its impact on sales or on brand awareness.

On social networks, there are very advanced analysis tools that allow you to have precise figures on the success of an advertising campaign. You can find out the number of views, shares, likes, clicks, but you can also find out who the people are who have been reached and interested.

This allows you to have a precise view of the results of your advertising, but also to see what can be modified, to do even better in your next marketing strategies.

 

 

Some tips for creating effective social media advertising

As with any marketing strategy, an advertisement only works if it is well thought out and smoothly executed. Here are some tips for a successful social media advertising campaign.

 

Have clear goals

First and foremost, it's essential to know why you're running a social media ad. The format and message will not be the same if you want to generate sales, generate notoriety, promote an event, recruit...

 

Know your audience

The second essential point is to be able to define your audience as precisely as possible, in order to be able to use the full potential of the targeting tools offered by the platforms. You must therefore define your persona, or ideal customer, by giving as much information as possible about their profile.

 

Choosing the right platform

Even if we can reach all audiences on social networks, and we can target the audience very precisely, not all platforms have the same types of audience profiles. Depending on what you offer and the content you want to offer, you will have to choose the most suitable platform.

 

Choosing the right ad format

Just like the choice of platform, the choice of advertising format is important. You need to make sure that you offer an ad format that will resonate with your audience. In the same way, you should also choose the type of advertising based on what you have to promote. The video remains the most attractive, while the text must be extremely well thought out to be able to convey all its power and the main idea in a few words.

 

Use quality images or videos

Advertising on social networks is now very competitive, and Internet users, who are used to consuming a lot of short content, have an easy "swipe". If you can't capture their attention from the first second, they'll move on without going back. It is therefore essential to offer very high-quality content, where creativity and originality are required. It is also recommended to keep an eye on trends, to always be up to date with what works best.

 

Write a clear and concise message

Social media, whether it's TikTok, Instagram advertising or even Facebook, bases all its interest on very short and easily consumable content. So, if you choose to place your marketing strategy on social networks, you will have to go straight to the point, with a concise and very clear message, understandable at first glance.

 

Add a clear and incentivizing call to action

Have you caught the attention of your audience? We must now encourage them to act, by offering a clear and encouraging call to action. This is one of the big advantages over traditional advertising: you can convert your audience as soon as you finish watching your ad. You can do this by integrating a call-to-action (CTA) button, which will lead to a sales page or your website, for example.

 

What are the 3 types of advertising?

1) Informational advertising that aims to educate the consumer about the product.

2) Persuasive advertising intended to influence the purchase decision and

3) Recall advertising which aims to maintain brand awareness among consumers.

How to advertise on social networks?

To advertise on social media effectively, create engaging content that mixes a catchy title, an attractive visual, and a clear description. Use targeting tools to reach your audience and optimize your campaigns with A/B testing to find the winning combination that resonates with your subscribers.

What are the goals of social media advertising?

The goals of social media advertising include increasing visibility, accurately targeting audiences, improving conversion rates, and detailed ROI (Return on Investment) tracking. It also helps to strengthen customer engagement and optimize marketing costs.