On the web, you're competing with a lot of others similar to you. Since you're competing for same set of eyeballs, you're racing against time to get more ROI against your campaign.
Paid advertising is one of the great and easy way to get traffic to your website, increasing the chances of leads, sales and revenue. However, things can be difficult if you don't know what you're doing.
Google, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are four popular platforms for advertising. Whether you're a small business or a big commercial enterprise, tapping into those four social media audience can give you a lot of potentials since they're all about bringing attentions to you.
Google is certainly everywhere on the web. Famous for its search engines, Google's paid ads offerings can be a great way to funnel more traffic to your website. Google is also the most obvious as its Search and services are popular in various platforms in many countries in the world.
Given by the massive number of audience it has, Google ads can help your business grow. Investing in Google can bring a tremendous results. But there are challenges that you need to address.
First of all, Google's ads offerings don't work well for everyone. Because Google thrives as a search engine, the results of Google ads depend on your SEO value, as well as the type of your business.
For example, the success of a banner ad from Google varies from one website to another. If your website is targeting tech-savvy people, chances are those people won't click on banners because they know that they're ads. But if you're promoting something to less tech-savvy people, you have a better chance in getting higher revenue through its pay-per-click (PPC) program.
PPC ads that Google offers, also have different degree of success. The cost of those ads depend on the keywords you're trying to rank for.
So if you have a lot of competition and can't invest a lot of money per click, chances are you're going to get stuck.
But for most small businesses that just started growing, Google's AdWords program can be a highly effective strategy. However, as your business grows, AdWords can be expensive. It will be difficult for you to compete with larger brands without investing more and more on ads.
Should you use Google's paid ads? While it can be a great start for small businesses, the end result depends on your industry, as well as the budget you're willing to spend in order to get more new customers.
In terms of ads, Facebook has a lot in common with Google. Facebook ads run on the same PPC strategyb(or pay-per-impression), and thanks to the massive amount of information Facebook has acquired from its users, advertisers can target potential customers with great precision.
Anything users have put on their profile (from their age, gender, location, education, religion, political views, interest relationship, etc.), as well as the posts they created and engagements they did with Likes or the Reactions feature, are all gathered for user profiling. The data can be used as a filter for your ads.
And the best part here is that, Facebook's ads are relatively cheaper than Google's.
The disadvantages of Facebook ads usually fall from two reasons: first, if you don't have a solid strategy, and second, if you approached Facebook with the wrong intentions. Since Facebook is all about socializing between users, ads are created to be passive. What this means, users aren't necessarily in the buying mood. This can be tricky, especially if you want to sell something.
However, with Facebook's precise targeting, you can increase your brand awareness and social exposure to a degree that is better than Google. You can capture leads and engage with your audience at the same time; you can also measure your success and you campaign straight within the platform. By looking at impressions, reach, likes, shares, click-through rate and so on, you have metrics that can help you in real-time. You can adjust your strategy accordingly to increase impact.
Facebook advertising is one of the most affordable and effective ways to market your business. If you want to use Facebook;s ads, you need to make sure that you have a clear strategy in place, including a solid goal and realistic objectives.
Instagram was born as a platform for image-based contents. But as it matures, it is more than just a place for selfies and pictures with filters.
As one of the fastest growing platform on the web, Instagram has a massive amount of users that are active. What this means, the level of user engagement shines beyond Facebook that acquired it, Google, or even Pinterest.
What's more, Instagram is also having a growing suite of business tools, and the ability to show important metrics. Instagram allows companies to observe how their unpaid posts perform organically before deciding which one is best to use for an ad campaign.
If you want to use Instagram ads, the challenges are similar to Facebook's. Instagram shares Facebook's targeting abilities, and that is a plus for you to reach your desired audience. You can use traits like age, gender and interest to pinpoint your ad campaigns, for example.
However, small businesses need to make sure that they have the required ability to target their desired audience, and know how to reach them. You need to have a compelling image to respond to audience, catching their attention, interest and curiosity. For a successful ads on Instagram, research is essential, as well as trial and error.
It's also important for you to create a Business Profile on Instagram. You can then connect it to your Facebook's Business Page. This way, Instagram can work its way with Facebook by pulling the audience information relevant to your campaign.
Ads on Instagram is worth investing, especially if you're running a small business with products that play well with images.
A slight underdog, but nevertheless powerful. Twitter as a place for paid advertising can drive direct response and metrics. As a microblogging platform popular for avid social media users, it's a lot simple. This has made its nature to be between Facebook and Instagram.
With its self-serving ads, Twitter has developed its platform to meet any ad channel that can scale. Twitter as a global audience, has a high click-through rate: relatively higher than Facebook but reasonable if compared to Google. At this level of engagement, you can easily understand the quality of engagement, enabling you to optimize your campaign quickly.
The challenges for paid ads on Twitter include its nature.
Twitter is mobile first. The majority of users and Twitter's ad inventory and revenue come from mobile. Since smartphones are now the most popular, it has given Twitter an advantage. However, the conversion rates on mobile is lower than those on desktop. It is more difficult for direct response marketers to value to Twitter engagement than they can to a desktop search on Google.
Twitter also has a more limited inventory, far less than Google or Facebook. While it's still sizeable, it can certainly be more difficult to achieve similar conversion volumes in the short run.
The next challenge is the "tweet", "hashtag" and "followers" terms. While Twitter has defined and also redefined the meaning of those words for the general population as well as other social media, advertisers tend to have difficulties in understanding the implications of buying a specific ads to target a group of people.