Social Media Is Not Free

Businesses view social outreach as a revolutionary tool that allows them to expand their marketing efforts. To reach your audiences at no cost posting to the social sphere is a quick solution. However, social media channels are now inundated with content of varying quality. Making it nearly impossible to tell what is legitimate and what is not.

The value of social media used to be found in its incredible accessibility and widespread reach for free consumption. Now the value lies in meticulously designed paid ads.

Our goal here is not to convince you that organic social media is dead or useless. Far from it. Companies should circulate content organically on social media channels because it offers a direct connection to customers. While also helping you achieve your marketing campaign goals. But it’s time to face the music: for social media content distribution to be truly effective, it demands the investment.

Facebook for Business

Did you know Facebook is used by more than 1.6 billion people every day? For marketers with a B2C focus paid ads are the best option for selling merchandise.

First determine who your audiences are, where these audiences are, and what you want to say to them. With this framework, decide which strategies will best reach your target audiences.

Image of the Facebook Ad Budget & Scheduler Tool
Image of the Facebook Ad Budget & Scheduler Tool

Reach your target audience with an ad created from a post on your company page. Then strategize how you want your post to be consumed across your digital medium. You have the option to position an ad directly in the News Feed, on the sidebar or on the popular platform, Instagram. You can also customize each ad’s target audience based on characteristics. Such as location, interests, online behaviors, and even offline behaviors.

Facebook ads are easily actionable as they allow for purchases to happen directly on Facebook. You no longer need a fancy digital storefront to showcase your products.

The Ads Reporting feature allows you to manage each campaign and measure audience engagement, offering real-time performance metrics.

LinkedIn Ads

LinkedIn has over 260 million monthly people engaged on its site and continues to grow. As the go-to networking platform for professionals all over the world, LinkedIn is a fantastic resource for marketers to reach a wider audience. LinkedIn provides you with three methods for reaching your audience via paid ads: boosted posts, sponsored InMail and pay-per-click text ads.

It’s common knowledge that boosted posts are best for supporting general awareness goals. Allowing you to feature one of your selected posts in the target audience news feeds’. For more conversion-based campaigns, consider sending sponsored InMail. This approach allows you to send personalized messages with prominent call-to-actions to your targeted audience.  

Image example of a LinkedIn Sponsored Ad

LinkedIn offers a pay-per-click ad placed either in the sidebar or news feed of users’ home pages. For instance, LinkedIn is geared towards reaching business professionals. The platform is much more personalized. Allowing you to filter by job title, industry, company size, and membership within specific LinkedIn Groups.

Similar to Facebook, measure the value of your self-service sponsored content within the Campaign Manager tool. Although a bit more costly than Facebook, LinkedIn’s sponsored content is still affordable, allowing you to set a maximum budget at a minimum of $10 daily per campaign.

Are You Prepared For 2020?

Let’s face it, but social media’s paid ads are still the cheapest way to reach the best audience possible. Contact Sage Lion Media to learn more about how to take advantage of our paid media strategies and how that the cost is worth it in the end.

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