Social media advertising can be crucial in achieving business objectives, but how can businesses get the most out of their advertising budgets? When looking to reach new audiences, larger audiences, or even specific targeted audiences, social media is one of the most effective tools available for making direct contact with customers.
Reaching consumers physically or even organically has become increasingly difficult, if not impossible, as is making contact of any kind without a targeted social media boost.
But is spending money on social media outreach a good investment?
Will it achieve your brand’s marketing goals?
Understanding social media advertising options is essential to getting the best results for your money. Marketing is an investment not an expense. The main objective is to earn money by investing it through attracting more traffic and increasing your brand’s exposure.
To do this, however, your money must be invested strategically.
Is Social Media Marketing Important?
Absolutely! Social media advertising allows companies and individuals to reach large audiences at a relatively low cost. Social media marketing facilitates reaching the ideal audience based on demographics, interests, and reliable data. More importantly, social media marketing can be tailored to a specific advertising budget whether great or small.
Social Media Advertising and Targeted Coupon Codes
Advertising on social media means digital advertising or investing your marketing budget to deliver your brand content to a targeted group on a specific social media platform. When advertising on social media, you can use what is known as “organic reach” or free advertising.
Algorithms will distribute your advertising at no cost to your company. But to reach a specific target audience where you have a greater possibility of sales, you’ll need “paid reach”. When using paid reach, brands have a greater possibility of connecting with people most likely to purchase their products.
Social media is probably the quickest and most effective way to reach your preferred audience. You simply pay to ensure that the right people see your brand’s content, and it’s an effective way to reach both returning and new customers with novel products.
You can also use an affordable VPN services to bypass geographic restrictions and target your advertising to audiences in different regions, maximizing your reach and increasing the chances of connecting with people who are most likely to purchase your product.
How to create targeted coupons and discount codes
This can allow you to create targeted coupon codes and discounts tailored to the needs of specific audiences, with offers adjusted in line with research into each unique demographic.
For example, if one of your products is underperforming in a certain geographic location, you can create targeted discounts sent only to customers registered within that particular region.
Using modern services like Couponblend.com, brands and businesses of any size are able to create customized digital coupons and discount codes for their products, with these offers added to the site’s sizable directory and able to be emailed directly to your target audience.
Targeted advertising best practices
Targeted advertising will require a financial investment, but fortunately, most social media platforms have a variety of advertising plans and predetermined costs built into their available services, meaning there’s usually something for every kind of advertising budget.
Be flexible and reevaluate your social media marketing regularly. Use strategies together that complement one another rather than individual marketing campaigns like investing in product catalogs and videos and avoid viewing every marketing ploy as a separate pursuit.
If you have developed your marketing budget to cover more than one campaign or strategy, get rid of the one that produces the least return for you. Do not continue an investment with more money that isn’t reliably producing stellar results.
Be prepared to repurpose your brand’s core content and successful headlines. Creating new content for every new product will place heavy demands on creativity and budgets. At the same time, do not become complacent with a marketing strategy just because there is a positive return. Experiment with new tactics like promo codes and discounts, different content styles, or by targeting new audiences. Also, keep your eye on new technology that may offer new marketing tools.
Social Media Advertising and Discount Options
All the principal social media platforms have advertising options available, but not every option may be ideal for your brand. When you decide where to show your ads, you’ll need to know beforehand which platform is the most popular with the audience you are targeting. Which social media network engages your preferred audience the most? If you are targeting adults and parents you may want to use Facebook, while for a teen audience, TikTok may be a better choice.
What kind of discounts do your audience respond well to? Do some research into campaigns run by similar businesses that have been successful with your target demographics. Try running a few short promotional offers like buy one get one free deals, site-wide discounts for specific social media subscribers or grouping less popular products with best-sellers and use this data to help develop long-term marketing strategies for the future.
Is there a social media network that already provides your brand with some results using free advertising? If so, this may be the obvious selection for hosting a paid campaign. When you have identified which social media networks best serve your target audience, you can concentrate on the type of advertising to use to achieve your goals.
Advertising on Facebook
Facebook includes ads throughout its app including options like Marketplace, Messenger, Stories, and Feeds. These ads appear to be normal posts but have an “ad” or sponsored label and will usually include more features than a normal post such as links or catalogs. Facebook ads will support marketing campaigns aimed at engagement, traffic, and sales.
Facebook reaches a large demographic audience with almost 3 billion monthly users that include millennials, seniors, Gen Xers, and even teens. This is an enormous audience for social media advertising. Facebook offers a variety of advertising options including:
- Image
- Video
- Mobile-only vertical Stories ads
- Carousel (up to ten videos or images to browse)
- Collection ads of brand window shopping
- Slide shows of three to ten images
- Playable ads which are interactive
- Messenger ads inserted among conversations
Budgets vary and Facebook is no exception. The cost of marketing on Facebook will depend on the duration and placement of your ads, targeting the audience, the season, location, time of day, and how competitive your particular sector is.
Advertising on Instagram
Instagram is a favorite of millennials although generations X and Z are active on this platform. Seniors are less so, as they tend to prefer Fb according to Hootsuite’s Digital 2022 Global Overview report. On the Instagram platform ads are inserted among stories and feeds that users follow. Here again, ads feature a “sponsored” label so viewers know the insert is an ad. Some ads will include a CTA button (call-to-action). This social media platform is optimal for traffic, sales, engagement, and app promotion.
Instagram offers:
- Boosted posts that appear to be regular but with the ad label
- Carousel ads encompassing several images
- Instagram stories that may include videos or photos as long as 120 seconds
- Reels that favor videos and can last up to 30 seconds. These also can be shared or chalked up as “likes”.
- Instagram shop
There is no average advertising price for Instagram ad campaigns. Demographic targets, your industry, and the season will all influence costs. You can set up a draft advertising campaign in Ads Manager to verify if your proposed budget is sufficient to reach your target audience and make adjustments as needed.
Advertising on Twitter
The Twitter audience is predominantly male, so if you are marketing products for males, Twitter merits consideration. If your marketing strategy includes web traffic, video views, followers, engagement, and app installs, Twitter has something to offer.
The Twitter platform features promoted ads that were originally known as promoted tweets. Ads can include photos, videos, text, carousels, and moments. By paying for advertising on Twitter you will be paying to advertise your brand to Twitter members who do not follow you. Twitter offers the possibility for likes, comments, and retweeting. Ads are labeled as promotional and will continue to be when retweeted. Follower ads promote the brand’s complete Twitter account and can aid in growing your brand’s number of followers.
Twitter advertising offers
- Follower ads
- Amplify or Pre-roll advertising where your ads are placed before the videos of brand-safe publishers
- Trend takeover with sponsored ads in the “What’s Happening” section
- Timeline Takeover where ads are placed as the opener when Twitter is opened for the first time daily
- Twitter Live (it’s free, but when paid it reaches a greater audience)
- Hashtags
Twitter allows you to spend as you like, but the final cost is not entirely your call. Twitter uses an auction system for its ads, so you enter a bid of how much you will pay for action and your daily budget. A higher bid has a better chance of reaching a target audience. Twitter also factors in the quality of your ad, so focusing on the ad’s creative quality might be a better use of financial resources.
Advertising on TikTok
TikTok advertising targets sales, website visits, or app installations. The majority of TikTok users are quite young. Although this platform suggests “don’t make ads, make TikTok” they do host paid advertising. Their options include:
- In-feed ads included in streams
- Hashtag challenges
- Branded effects that are interactive for user-generated content
- TopView options so your brand’s ads are played first on the “For You” page
TikTok bases its marketing costs on a bidding format, but daily budgets generally run in the neighborhood of $50.
Advertising on YouTube
Advertising on Youtube can increase brand awareness. More males than females tend to use YouTube however the age groups are pretty evenly distributed. The Tube offers several ad formats:
- In-stream ads, either skippable or non-skippable of up to 15 seconds
- Bumper ads of six seconds that appear before, after, or during videos
- In-feed thumbnail video ads
- Masthead Ads lasting up to 30 seconds must be reserved through a Google sales representative
Just like other social media platforms, ad costs vary. YouTube states “You’re in charge of how much you spend:” When planning, you will set your limit for cost-per-click, but clicks may in the end cost less depending on your targeted audience.
Advertising on Snapchat
If you are just beginning a social media ad campaign, Snapchat offers an Instant Create option so you can post a photo or video in less than five minutes. For more developed ad campaigns, Snapchat has Advanced Create for larger advertising budgets and increased optimization. Snapchat is particularly popular with younger social media users belonging to Gen Z.
Snapchat offers:
- Photo ads
- Video ads
- Collection ads for product catalogs
- Story ads for three to twenty ads in sequence
- Commercial ads that offer guaranteed views in the first six seconds of Stories content. They cannot be skipped.
- AR lens ads or sponsored camera filters
- Filter ads that can be placed over user snaps
Snapchat charges a minimum of $5 but costs will vary based on goals, targeted audiences, formats, and more.
Other Social Media Marketing Alternatives
There are numerous platforms out there, but Linkedin and Pinterest networks are worth considering. Linkedin is a more business-oriented platform so it tends to target audiences based on professions. Pinterest, in contrast to Twitter or YouTube, tends to host more female users.
Both offer an impressive variety of advertising options from videos to text ads to images. Pinterest is very straightforward. You pay to advertise and ads are labeled as such. Linkedin offers standout dynamic ads that are automatically personalized for whoever views them thanks to Artificial Intelligence that uses personal data from a viewer’s profile and tailors it into the ad.
Is There a Best Social Media Platform for Marketing?
There is no simple answer to this. It depends on which network is the most effective for your specific brand. Your brand’s goals together with a properly targeted audience will determine which social media platforms will bring the best results. Reaching the most people is not synonymous with marketing strategies being effective.
Measure your results after marketing your ads to see if the results match or exceed your goals. You can verify if your marketing strategy is working for you. The principal social media platforms offer analytics so you can evaluate the effects your ads have had.
How to use coupons to track your social media campaigns performance
To help your marketing team better understand how well any of their social media marketing campaigns have actually performed, it can be a good idea to track their reach using bespoke coupon codes and promotional offers. By creating unique coupons for each social media site it will be easy to see which campaign has actually converted the highest number of sales.
For a fair test, it’s best to apply the same offer to each set of coupons but name the codes in relation to each platform. This information can then be fed into a data analysis program and used to visualize which marketing campaigns have had the most success generating sales.
Maximizing Your Social Media Marketing Budget Investment
The single most important factor in maximizing your marketing budget is targeting the right audience. Attempting to reach as many people as possible does not necessarily translate into a successful return on your investment. You may get more visitors, but not necessarily more customers. Marketing messages need to be relevant to attract interest and no one message is going to resonate with everyone. High visitor numbers won’t matter if customer numbers do not increase as well. Target your brand’s marketing to a specific audience.
If you are a newcomer, hiring an expert in social media marketing can be a wise investment. Professionals have access to more resources and contacts than newcomers do. Experience should translate into more efficiency and when you are paying you can hold them accountable for meeting goals and objectives.
Be vigilant and follow the money. Increasing a marketing budget isn’t always necessary or a sound business move. It’s much better to optimize your initial expenditure to achieve your desired results and increase your brand’s cash flow.