Advertising through Social Media
What is Social Media Advertising?
Social Media Advertising has come a really long way in a very short period of time. Social Media advertising is nothing but using popular social media web pages like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Yelp, etc. to place advertisements for potential customers. Long gone are the days of posting ads in newspapers, as social media advertising has become the new “it” thing. Social Media Advertising (SMA) is not just a buzzword anymore, but an actual tangible driver of sales. Marketing departments have quickly moved to social media platforms as they are filled with hundreds and millions of consumers. People nowadays are always stuck on their mobile phones, posting pictures on Instagram, or tweeting, or talking to long lost friends on facebook. A study had previously shown that if a person is shown a particular good repeatedly, the urge to purchase it increases. Hence, what better way than to post ads about goodies once in a while, in a place where the consumers are always hooked on to?
How to effectively use social media for advertising?
If not correctly, social media advertising can tip sales into your pockets in a huge way. Here are a few tips on how to do so:
- Understand how ads are sold on social media platforms:
Twitter and Facebook are both huge social media platforms, but they both sell ads in a very different way. Thus, it is critical to design tweets and posts according to this.
- Rotation of ads:
Seeing the same ad over and over again can get very annoying, especially to the impatient youngsters. It is better to keep your ads fresh, so that users want to click on your posts, and not just close the ad altogether. Thus, make it attractive to the customer, and always remember what the customer wants.
- Tracking of likes and shares:
You’d probably be sending out a lot of tweets and facebook posts to get people hooked. While doing so, always keep a track of what got the most likes and shares, so that you understand what works with your followers, and what doesn’t.
- Designing Ads:
Ads should always be attractive, and a little alluring. Curiosity gets the best of us, hence try to play it up with your customer as well, so that they end up clicking on your advertisement. Moreover, as most of our generation is stuck on their mobile phones, ensure that your ads work just as well with smartphones and mobile applications. Nothing is worse than a potential customer getting annoyed with an ad he or she tried to open, but failed to do so.
- Audience Targeting:
Most of the prominent websites allow targeting your audience on the basis of location, gender, or age. Facebook makes audience targeting very easy and efficient, as it will make your advertisement for the appropriate audience. Suppose you are an online retailer who sells only shoes made for women. Your target audience would, in this case, be just women, and Facebook effectively helps you achieve it by making you ads visible to woman frequently.
