Advertising on social media is an increasingly powerful tool for businesses as 27% of users say they discover new brands and products via paid social ads. With more and more users spending time on their mobile devices, it’s crucial for your business to establish a presence on social media. Social media ads can give your business an affordable and flexible way to reach new customers. However, launching your first campaign can seem daunting. Here at Netwave, we help clients achieve their goals through targeted campaigns tailored to their specific needs. Read on as we explore the different social advertising platforms and help you discover which ad type is best for your business.
Before launching a paid social campaign it’s important to evaluate which advertising platform is best suited for your business. Meta and LinkedIn are the two most popular advertising platforms currently, though they serve two separate markets.
Ideal for B2B marketing and corporate recruiting, LinkedIn’s track record speaks for itself. As research shows that 80% of B2B leads are driven directly from the platform. Known for its audience of professionals in nearly every industry imaginable, advertising on LinkedIn gets you in front of a highly qualified audience.
LinkedIn’s paid platform offers hyper-targeting when building campaigns. Users can be targeted by a wide range of criteria such as job title, industry, seniority, and more. This ensures your ad is being seen by the highest quality audience possible. However, this detailed targeting can lead to much higher advertising expenses when compared to a platform like Meta.
LinkedIn offers four distinct ad types to businesses:
- Sponsored content – ads that appear within a user’s LinkedIn feed
- Sponsored Messaging – Personalized and targeted messages that go to a user’s LinkedIn inbox
- Lead Gen Forms – Collect quality leads using pre-filled forms.
- Text and Dynamic Ads – Self-service pay per click (PPC) ads
Meta
With 2.93 billion monthly active users on Facebook and 1 billion on Instagram, Meta advertising is a powerful way to reach your audience. Simply put, the reach you can obtain using Meta ads is immense. Hootsuite’s latest trends report notes that “Instagram ads reach nearly 30% of internet users.”
Meta provides businesses with a robust advertising platform with ad types suited to any industry, which can be served on both Facebook and Instagram. Their ad offerings are divided into six objectives, encompassing the various goals a business may be looking to achieve. Under each category are several ad types, designed to achieve those goals.
- Awareness: Ads designed to reach users most likely to remember them, great for reach and brand awareness.
- Traffic: Drive users to your website, app, or Facebook event.
- Engagement: Reach users more likely to engage with your content, great for conversions and video views.
- Leads: Capture leads or drive phone calls for your business.
- App Promotion: Ads designed to drive installations of your app.
- Sales: Reach users most likely to purchase your product or service.
Once you have determined which platform to advertise on, you need to establish your objective. This can be anything from increasing site traffic to gathering leads. Here are some of the most common objectives our team builds campaigns for.
Lead Generation
Meta’s lead generation ads drive users to fill out a contact form directly on Facebook or Instagram to capture relevant information without driving them off the site.
Success Story:
A local bank was hosting the first in a series of loan seminars for homebuyers. Their goal was to promote the event while capturing qualified leads for attendees. The ad ran for two weeks resulting in 12 leads and 4,434 local users reached.
Event Promotion
Businesses can promote a specific event by boosting a Facebook Event page and targeting relevant users within a specific geographic area.
Success Story:
A local Vocational School tasked the Netwave team with promoting their annual fundraising event. The ad campaign was designed to drive users to the school’s site, where tickets could be purchased. The ad ran for one month, driving 748 link clicks and reaching 17,694 users. The event experienced record attendance, surpassing numbers seen in its 24 year history.
Hiring / Site Traffic
Businesses can boost recruitment efforts through social advertising. It’s crucial to note that Meta restricts user targeting on employment ads to prevent potential discrimination. However, LinkedIn offers robust targeting options for recruitment ads.
- Facebook Event – promotes open houses and hiring events.
- Traffic – drive applicants to a careers page.
Success Story:
Looking to recruit drivers in New Jersey and Texas a family owned transportation company was looking for a Facebook campaign that drove users to the careers page of their website. Since February the Netwave team has been running a campaign that has thus far resulted in 2,320 link clicks with an exceptional cost per click of $0.21. The client has reported an increase in phone calls and Facebook messages regarding hiring since the campaign launched.
With social advertising the possibilities are limitless, no matter business’ your goal there’s an ad type for you. Ready to launch your first campaign? Contact us and we’ll get everything set up!
