Social Advertising Platforms
- Facebook
- Instagram
- Twitter
- Pinterest
- LinkedIn
- YouTube
- Snapchat
Facebook Advertising
Facebook is currently, and most likely will remain, the biggest social media advertising platform. There are 1.47 billion daily active users on Facebook as of June 2018.
Facebook is widely recognized as the leader in social media advertising trends. Facebook advertising works for just about every business and is a great place to start with social advertising. Facebook offers social media advertising companies and businesses to reach audiences based on the campaign objectives. A few options include campaigns to drive awareness, engagement, traffic, conversions, store visits, and many more.
Facebook currently allows users to post ads using photo, video, carousel, slideshow, and Facebook Instant Experiences:
- Carousel is a feature that allows users to show up to 10 images or videos and links within one advertisement. This allows advertisers to direct people to multiple places on their website with one creative.
- Slideshow is a feature that allows users to create video advertisements from still images.
- Instant Experiences is a tool that advertisers can use to create immersive advertisements using photo, video, text, carousels, product feeds, and more, all in one streamlined page. This page lives in the Facebook app, making it a very fast and seamless experience for the user. Each one of these tools offers benefits depending on the goal of the advertising campaign and what content is available to the advertiser.
In addition to a variety of ad formats, Facebook offers targeting options that allow advertisers to target specific demographics, interests, and behaviors. Facebook can also target users based on where people shop, travel, and much more!
Instagram Advertising
Instagram is owned by Facebook, so their advertising systems are similar. Instagram introduced advertising in 2015 and it’s seen growth ever since. In fact, the number of Instagram ads increased by 28 percent when comparing July 2017 to December 2017.
Visuals are one of, if not the most, important element of an Instagram advertising campaign creative. It doesn’t matter if you are selling the best product in the world with the best customer service, if you have poor visuals, your Instagram campaign will suffer.
Instagram ads can be in the same format as Facebook: photo, video, carousel, slideshow, and Instant Experiences. Instagram also allows users to structure a campaign based on the campaign objective, such as website clicks, conversions, app installs, engagements, video views, and awareness. Instagram advertisers can target their ads the same way as Facebook ads.
They even have their own Instagram analytics platform.
There are over 330 million monthly active Twitter users tweeting away and scrolling through their feeds. Twitter offers several forms of paid advertisements to reach these users. Twitter advertisers have the option to select the objective they want to achieve for their business, whether that be increasing traffic, engagement, awareness, video views, followers, app installs, or app re-engagements.
Like Facebook, Twitter also offers targeting for paid advertisements based on location, gender, languages, device, platform, and carrier.
Twitter has two distinct differences from most other social platforms. Twitter includes targeting by keywords to reach people based on their Pinterest searches. Twitter also includes an option to target people who are similar to users who follow specific accounts.
For example, if you want to target people who are like people who follow your competitors, you could include your competitors’ Twitter accounts in the target audience. It’s important to know that you are not targeting the specific followers of these accounts. You are targeting users who are like those followers.
Pinterest Advertising
Pinterest reached over 200 million monthly active Pinterest users as of September 2017. Pinterest advertising offers campaigns based on an advertising objective.
Pinterest advertising objectives include awareness, engagement, traffic, app downloads, and video awareness. Additionally, Pinterest offers a few different ways to shape audience targeting.
Advertisers can target audiences based on interests and keywords. When targeting by interests, Pins will show in users’ home and category feeds based on a user’s past interests and on the topic of the category. Advertisers can select from a variety of interest categories, each with additional segments. When targeting by keywords, advertisers can select phrases and words that would be similar to what a user is searching. This targeting places Pins in a user’s search results. It is best practice to include both keywords and interests in a campaign to reach people in both places.
Pinterest also offers custom engagement or email list targeting and some demographic information. Demographic information, such as location targeting, is more limited than other platforms.
LinkedIn Advertising
LinkedIn offers advertisers three different ad products depending on the goals of a campaign:
- Sponsored Content
- Sponsored InMail
- Text Ads
Sponsored Content places content in the LinkedIn feed. Sponsored InMail sends content to LinkedIn users via a message to their inbox. Text ads are delivered in locations around the LinkedIn feed on a desktop.
LinkedIn’s targeting particularly shines when it comes to employee and company-specific targeting. Industry, position, seniority, and company size are a few ways LinkedIn allows businesses to hone in on a target audience in addition to age and location demographics.
As an example, take a heating and cooling company. Their HVAC company’s advertising strategy may use LinkedIn to recruit top talent in the local area. An ad campaign on LinkedIn could even help them market themselves to potential corporate or business accounts.
YouTube Advertising
With over 1.3 billion users, YouTube has become more than a place to watch videos – it serves as the world’s second most visited search engine behind Google.
Social media advertising companies recommend YouTube advertising for businesses that have short video advertisements ranging from 6 to 15 seconds to be used in TruView in-stream ads. These advertisements appear before a user watches the intended video. A social media advertising company might also recommend YouTube advertising for companies that have longer video advertisements that would appear in search results called TruView discover ads.
If a business has either of these assets to use in YouTube ads, it can target the ads to people based on demographics, interests, and keywords.
Snapchat Advertising
Snapchat has 187 million daily active users with 71 percent aged 34 and under. If your audience is under 34 years of age, Snapchat is a great place for your social media budget.
Snapchat offers three ways to create ads: Snap Ads, Filters, and Lenses. Snap ads appear when a user scrolls through their friends’ Stories. Filters are sponsored graphics that users can find when swiping through options to select an overlay on their own photo or video. These are often used for events at a specific location. Lenses also overlay a photo or video but can be designed to affect or alter the image and video of the user.
Should I use a social media advertising agency?
One of the largest expenses associated with social media advertising services for your business can be hiring someone to do your campaign in-house.
This means you have to add another person to payroll, and pay them for their social media advertising services. Effective social media advertising requires creating copy, graphics, videos, optimizing campaigns and content, monitoring, and reporting.
The constantly changing nature of social media also means that those in the field must stay up to date with the latest tools, trends, and advertising policy updates. Social media advertising companies are dedicated to staying on top of social trends and policies that lead to successful campaigns.
When considering whether or not to make someone on your current team your social media advertising guru, you should consider how much you have in your budget, whether you have the resources to teach them the tricks of the trade, and how fast you want results.
If you’re looking for someone that can jump in right away to help your business create a fantastic social media advertising campaign, going with an agency is your best bet.
They know what they’re doing and can likely get you the results you’re looking for with their expertise and knowledge. It also saves you the trouble of adding someone to your team.
It’s important that a social media advertising company offers several pricing package options that can be tailored to your needs. Here at InBoostr, we have a variety of options, proven results, and social media advertising experts who can determine the best strategy to fit your budget.
When choosing a social media advertising agency, be sure to know if they will provide detailed reporting and communication about campaign results. To gauge the performance of your social media advertising campaign, InBoostr will provide extensive social media advertising reporting and performance updates.
InBoostr offers monthly and weekly reporting options depending on your social media advertising needs. You’ll know exactly what is happening with your campaigns when you choose our social media ad management services.
A social media advertising company should be able to tell you metrics like how many people saw your campaign, what actions they took after they saw the advertisement, and how they will use targeting to make sure the people who will act are the people most likely to see the campaign!
3 tips for choosing the best paid social ad agency
With so many agencies out there, it can be hard to choose the perfect one for your business. But don’t worry — it doesn’t have to be difficult!
Follow our three tips to make the search for an agency and social media ad management services easy.
1. Make sure they offer the services you’re looking for
If you’re a small business that really wants to make an impact with social media advertising services, it’s crucial to find an agency that provides the services you’re looking for. For example, if you want someone to run your social campaigns for you, make sure that the agencies you’re considering offers that service.
2. Look for a pricing table that outlines their social media advertising services
The best social media advertising agencies in the world will publish their pricing.
Why?
They don’t want to waste their time, or any potential clients’ time.
When an agency doesn’t provide transparent pricing, it could mean that they have hidden costs associated with their social media ad management services, or that they don’t have a concrete pricing system.
However, when an agency does provide transparent pricing, it means that they’re truly interested in finding serious potential clients. It also means that they want you to be informed right away about budget, and what to expect to pay for their social media advertising services.
3. Do extensive research
You should never settle on the first social media agency that you find.
Researching a lot of options not only gives you the ability to choose, but it allows you to get a sense of a realistic budget, learn about services that you may not have been aware of, and get to know a lot of different agencies.
You should also be sure to get to know the company before signing on the dotted line. Do research on the results they’ve driven for clients, on their agency history, and other important factors, like what their social media ad management services include.
Connect with a top social media advertising services company!
If you’ve been searching, “best social media advertising agency near me,” look no further than InBoostr.
Social media specialists at InBoostr can help a business determine where its social media advertising spending will provide the most ROI. InBoostr’s social media experts are ready to use our social media advertising services to help you reach your goals.
Our team has driven over $500 million in sales and 200,000 leads for our clients. If you’re looking to see the benefits of our social media ad management services, reach out to our team to receive a free quote.
