Social Media Advertising: Is Your Business Targeting the Right Audience?

Business marketing in the digital era is constantly changing, and social media advertising is probably the channel that changes the fastest.A lot of our business clients don’t even think about advertising on social media. But they probably should. Even if they’re in B2B industries, even if their products and services have high price points and a long sales cycle, their potential customers are on these social platforms—I guarantee it.These days it’s much more than posting and commenting. Your social media pages need to be strong enough to sell your brand, your products, and your services. They need to speak for you and serve as a portal to get to know you better. if a consumer decides to “like” your page, they want to know about your sales and promotions and new products. They want to get information about upcoming launches or events. But since true “organic reach” is virtually a thing of the past, you’re going to have to allocate advertising dollars or your message won’t be heard. Gone are the days when you could post content to your social media pages and expect more than a tiny percentage of your followers to actually see what you post.Not sure where to put your social media advertising efforts? Call me at +1 888-964-3498 and I’ll answer any questions this article doesn’t clear up. Or you can contact our paid search team online. We are here to help you with your advertising on Facebook, Instagram and elsewhere, whether you become a Symphonic client or not.

Which Social Media Platforms Will Serve Your Business?

Here’s something a lot of business owners forget: Social media is more than Facebook. Pinterest, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Nextdoor and YouTube can deliver significant ROI.[embed]https://youtu.be/aOymOiQdNaE[/embed]You probably already have a Facebook page for your business. But Facebook alone isn’t enough to maximize your reach. Instagram, Snapchat, and Pinterest are also great places to advertise your products and services. You need to establish a presence on as many social platforms as possible!HOWEVER, you have to be strategic. You have to choose the platforms that are right for your business and your goals. You can’t set up 10 social media accounts on 10 social media platforms and then ignore all of them. If you only have time to check in with one account every single day, you should probably only set up one account. If someone stumbles upon one of your pages and the most recent post was from a month ago, it doesn’t look good. What’s the point of following a brand that doesn’t post content?How do you decide what social media sites you should be posting on? Follow your demographic! If your products are popular with Generation Z, Snapchat may be the platform for you to focus your efforts. But if you need to generate leads from Baby Boomers, Facebook, Nextdoor, or LinkedIn may be better avenues for growth.Instagram was built on images and (later) short videos. Twitter was based on brief, witty observations and news-sharing. LinkedIn is the place to network in the business world. Pinterest is the place to put your social media advertising dollars if you’re reaching a predominantly female demographic. Think about what each platform is for before you misuse it and waste a ton of money.

Start With A True Strategy

A lot of business owners I talk to say they want a social media strategy. When I ask "Why," they respond: "I don't know ... It just seems like something we should be doing."Wrong answer. Setting up ads without a plan could mean you’re wasting your time. Or worse, it could even damage your reputation. If you aren’t sincere in your posts, users will unfriend, unfollow, and possibly even walk away with a bad impression of your brand. Plan your posts carefully and target your audience intelligently.Having a social media calendar allows you to stay accountable, be consistent and save time—all of which contributes to a results-oriented social media marketing approach.

Set The Right Social Media Goals

When leveraging social media marketing for small business, it is easy to get stuck on vanity metrics rather than improving the bottom line of your business. Make sure the bottom line remains the bottom line. For most businesses, the goals of social media advertising include:

• Acquire leads and generate sales (duh!)
• Brand awareness, or making your business relevant to potential buyers
• Brand loyalty, an important factor in long term growth

Don’t Forget Audience Targeting!

As I mentioned, you should choose the social media platforms for your advertising efforts based on what people use that platform for.But within each platform, you can refine your target by demographic. With Facebook, Twitter and the other social media sites, you can choose who you want to target with inexpensive ads that will increase your ROI.Make sure you target your demographic by age, gender, location, and interests. For example, LinkedIn recently updated its ad targeting options with the ability to reach more of the right people. Their beefed-up lookalike audience targeting reaches people who are similar to your ideal customer.[embed]https://youtu.be/84Ex7IYWh5g[/embed]

How to Set up a LinkedIn Matched Audience

Never Stop Testing

A/B testing as an advertising strategy goes back to when direct mail marketers used it to test their messaging on small audiences committing to the massive cost of printing and mailing a campaign. A/B testing works the same way with social media. It’s important that you’re connecting with those who follow you and providing the right type of content for them. Test a few different types of content and see what resonates well with your audience by driving the most impressions, engagements, and shares.Test across all social networks, performing different tests on each individual platform so that you don’t mistakenly assume that what works best for your brand on Twitter will also work best on Facebook.

Consider Paid Partnerships

From influencer marketing to co-branded campaigns, you may opt to found out your social media strategy with paid partnerships. These include:

• Influencer campaigns. From Instagram’s partner tag feature to YouTube influencer partnerships, there are many collaboration possibilities that could open your business up to new market segments
• Co-branded campaigns. Remember the Taco Bell/Doritos collaboration? Of course you do. You can take networking to the next level by partnering with another company on social platforms. These campaigns require communication, coordination, organization and planning, but they can grow customer bases exponentially.

Symphonic Digital can help you come up with a strong social media marketing campaign that will give you results. We can incorporate your vision into a strong social media advertising campaign. If you would like more information about how your business can get serious with social media advertising give us a call today at +1 888-964-3498 for a free consultation.