Effectively advertise your business on social media
Find out how you can use social media to make the most of your advertising dollar
Social media channels have made it easier for small businesses to take charge of their own advertising. These channels allow for businesses to create campaigns that reach the right audience. Different platforms attract different demographics, which influences what type of advertising works best with your business goals.
Facebook is a great place to experiment with paid advertising without investing a lot of time and money. You can create ads targeted to different audiences, defined by categories such as location, age, language spoken and interests.
You can use Facebook's Help Center to help you create a Facebook Marketing Campaign. You will need to define the following parts of your campaign:
- Campaign type – what are you advertising? Are you directing people to your website, a Facebook page, promoting an event, or to watch a video?
- Advertising goal – select options based on your campaign type. e.g if you are driving people to a Facebook page you would select ‘Get More Likes.’
- Designing your ad – write your content based on the needs of you target market.
- Targeting the ad – the ad should target to your audience based on the parameters that Facebook provides.
- Name, pricing & schedule – make sure the name is distinctive. Pricing can be either a daily budget or a lump sum. Payment is on a pay-per-click or every time 1000 people see the ad.
You can use Facebook's Ads Manager tool and dashboard to gain insights on how your campaign is tracking.
You can learn more about using Facebook to grow your business by visiting their online guide. View Facebook's guide for businesses
Youtube
Youtube advertising is a powerful tool for businesses. You can create engaging content that users both see and hear. There are two types of Youtube ad campaigns that you can use:
- In-Display advertisements – is displayed on the right side of the screen while on YouTube pages or at the top of YouTube search results. You should make sure your title and image are interesting enough to get noticed.
- Video advertisements – these are displayed before a YouTube video. Some of these ads will give the viewer the option to skip the ad after five seconds (ads can be up to 60 seconds), but others do not (15 seconds).
Sixty-four percent of Instagram’s users are aged 18- 29; it’s considered the best platform for attracting Millennials and Generation Z. Instagram allows you to engage with users with using five different types of advertisements: photos, videos, carousals, story ads and collection.
You can choose from three marketing objectives when you advertise on Instagram:
- Awareness: An ad with this objective amplifies the reach, brand awareness and local awareness.
- Consideration: An ad with this objective boosts the website clicks, video views and reach.
- Conversion: An ad with this objective amplifies website conversion, mobile app installs and engagement.
LinkedIn is considered great for generating business-to-business leads. You can advertise on LinkedIn using content such as:
- Posts in LinkedIn's newsfeed
- Sponsored direct messages to audience's inbox
- Text advertisements
LinkedIn has professionals who keep their career information up to date and look for content about business. Although more expensive to advertise on than other social networks, LinkedIn generally gives the highest conversion rates. You can choose from three marketing objectives when you advertise on LinkedIn:
- Build brand awareness
- Drive website traffic
- Generate leads and convert prospects
A huge benefit of using LinkedIn is targeting professionals accurately. You can target your ideal customers based on their company information, experience, education and interests.
Find more information about advertising on LinkedIn by reading their Business Solutions. View LinkedIn's Business Solutions
In New Zealand, Twitter users are an older, professional-leaning demographic. Twitter advertisements have relatively affordable rates. These advertisements are ideal for building an audience with interested followers.
Twitter provides two tools for promoting tweets:
- Twitter Promote Mode: you can advertise your first ten daily organic tweets to your target audience, as long as they pass a quality test. It requires you to specify five of your potential follower’s interests or metro locations.
- Twitter Ads campaigns: you can set up your advertising campaign by yourself. You can use targeting options e.g language, gender, age, location, device, interests, and keywords.