Choosing an Advertising platform?
But which is going to suit your company best? If you are considering advertising on social media, it’s important to be sure you know what you want to achieve so that one can get the most out of your advertising budget. There are a few things to keep in mind when choosing a platform for your advertising. The following discusses these considerations for the main Social Media platforms you should be looking to market with.
Dylan Pons
1/10/20242 min read
Facebook is the giant when one talks about social media channels with over 3.03 billion monthly active users. This makes it a platform with a huge reach enabling you to hit the highest number of people and at the same time, while also allowing one to target a specific audience. However when one looks at organic post reach in Facebook is very low. The algorithm ensures your posts reach a limited audience generally this only being your followers. Sponsored posts have a much greater reach and are thus a good basic rule to market key communications (Services, Products, etc).
The beauty with Facebook is the targeting options the platform offers: especially options like look-a-like audiences (public based on a list of your existing clients / fans / followers) will then target an audience similar to them. Retargeting is also another powerful tool that will give you the ability to remarket to an audience that has already shown an interest in your website or interacted in previous ads. Thus allowing you to target more specific interests of these specific people. Facebook also allows one to target specific segments by choosing who sees your ads based on country, city, post code, age, language, etc. This thus enables you to target specific niches of customers based on your existing customer base increasing the likelihood of them becoming a client.
Instagram is the most visual of the big social media networks. It’s a place where users upload photos and video of daily moments with their mobile device. Instagram offers post ad formats in photo, carrusel and video as well as the possibility of publishing ads in the Story section where content disappears after 24 hours. Instagram has a solid 800 million monthly active users worldwide, and clearly wins as the most popular social media platform for image-heavy content. Since the platform is so visual, and now that links can be included in promoted posts, it is no surprise that all most all fashion and cosmetic brands as well as most celebrities active online can be found on Instagram. This channel has more female than male users, but is becoming more popular among men all the time.
Another interesting aspect of Instagram is that it is frequently updated with new features, compared to other social platforms. Changes and new features in Stories are a constant, and allow for a more spontaneous and natural presentation for brands, something many companies value as they struggle to show their more “human” side. Instagram users are pretty open to following brands and they also investigate hashtags they’re interested in. Data shows that as brands we shouldn’t overuse hashtags in our posts, and for now, Instagram does not apply the hashtag search function to paid advertising, but this may change.
Instagram offers many segmenting possibilities, as its parent company is Facebook, but IG has a smaller user base so the number of users your chosen targeting will reach will be a bit smaller.
For sure if your product, service or brand benefits from photos or video prepped for rapid mobile consumption, Instagram is the ideal social channel to promote yourself on. It’s also an effective way to impact internet users between the ages of 18 – 49 years old.