Social Media Marketing, Are You Ready To Take The Plunge?
In the big world of social media advertising, you want to get your business discovered. Social media marketing (SMM) uses social media and networks for marketing your business’ products and services. You can engage with existing customers and reach new potential customers through social media as a business owner.
Social media advertising platforms, ad campaigns, Twitter ads, dynamic ads, dynamic ads, landing pages, text ads, youtube videos, LinkedIn ads, messenger ads, carousel ads, and many other advertising options can be confusing.
Social Media Changes Quickly!
In 2017 US adults who engaged and used social media were about 213.19 million users compared to 302.25 million social media users today, according to Statista. They estimate there will be 323.07 million social media network users by 2026.
The worldwide web has opened up communication across countries, and social networking has expanded its reach to make connections. Networking helps businesses recruit employees, find people with unique skills, and boost sales across the boundaries of the world.
With the advancement of social networking reach, advertisers have found that social media is a tool to reach a bigger audience than ever before. Social media advertising now has a worldwide target audience, not just a local audience. Social media advertising was first used to connect to existing customers, and direct social media advertising can engage with customers worldwide.
Let's Understand Potential Customers and How They Spend Their Time Online
Today, Americans spend an average of 2 hours 27minutes each day on social media, with TikTok being the fastest growing social media platform. Social media users want to engage with businesses with a conversational voice and answer their questions.
When it comes to the social platforms consumers use, YouTube is tops: 73 percent of adults spend their screen time on the video-sharing site. Social networking giant Facebook ranks second, with 68 percent of consumers spending time on the platform. Other sites included in survey data include Instagram (35 percent), Pinterest (29 percent), Snapchat (27 percent), and LinkedIn (25 percent). The last place belongs to Twitter, with 24 percent of consumers spending time on the site according to mdg advertising. Since the article was written in 2018, TikTok has moved to the top list, competing with Facebook and Instagram.
According to Web3Lab, “TikTok hasn’t stopped growing since it launched. And the growth is anything but slow.”
There is no denying social media has a vast reach. The various social media networks utilize tahr, pages you like and visit, other details that can be used to drive traffic.
When the target audience matches the user demographics of a social media platform, advertising to these audiences can lead to new customers, and conversion rates go up.
Advertising Platform Choices Are Everywhere
Google ads
This is a paid advertising platform. Beginners can use Google ads to advanced advertisers, and Google provides support services to teach businesses how to use their ads to meet their business goals. The google ads manager is a platform for large users and supports multiple ad exchanges and networks, including AdSense, Ad Exchange, third-party networks, and third-party exchanges.
Bing ads
This is a paid advertising platform. There are fewer users on Bing and use Google’s keyword auction technique. One advantage is you don’t have to outbid Google’s massive user base.
Facebook Ads
This uses the demographics of the Facebook user and targets the user based on this information. Once you create an ad, you can set a budget and bid for each click or impression your ad receives. Facebook is a reliable choice when deciding where to advertise, and its audience of Facebook users covers many different characteristics allowing for unique traffic targeting. Facebook automatically reads your Facebook page and feeds and identifies the best posts and ads to send to each target market accordingly. If you are advertising on Facebook Stories, you can include a photo that will show for six seconds, and photo ads display in full-screen format for your audience.
Instagram Ads
This offers five different types of ads. Image ads. Story ads, video ads, carousel ads, collection ads, explore ads, IGTV ads, and shopping ads. Using the information they have gathered about their users, Instagram can reach a target audience that may have an interest in your business. Instagram provides an Instagram advertising guide to help set up your ads. Story ads can get your brand out there, and a survey suggested that these ads increase paying customers as a lead generation tool.
TikTok Ads
This can reach younger audiences. It focuses on product ads in “For You” feeds like brand takeovers. A brand takeover appears for nine seconds when the app is opened. The full-screen ad is presented to your target audience, getting your message right in front of them. The ads have a call to action button to “shop now,” which brings users to the eCommerce site to buy what they want quickly.
Pinterest Ads
This has an extensive professional user base that reaches corporate audiences, and it is geared towards a female user base. Because it uses Pinterest boards, it is not as distracting to users as other advertising platforms.
LinkedIn Ads
Like Pinterest, this advertising platform has an extensive professional user base that targets customers based on their job skills and qualification, and it focuses on a corporate audience. Sponsored messaging is Linkedin’s email marketing solution, and the message goes to the user’s LinkedIn inbox, where the user can interact via a chatbot or a human customer rep. Text and digital ads are only visible to desktop users, not mobile devices.
Managing Your Social Media Advertising
There are several additional social media advertising platforms available. Social media advertising can be completed manually, and this is the most cost-effective way to build brand awareness in your target audience.
By running an ad campaign manually, you can test out what works, and it doesn’t cost you. There are no ad management fees or agency fees, and you can develop your skills and learn as you build advertising campaigns.
Learning the different social media platforms and what works for your business will take time. Unfortunately, business owners may not have the time needed to do their advertising, and it takes time and effort to get social media ads to a place of being successful.
No Social Media Advertising Budget – Some Time = Learn As You Go
If you have a limited budget and don’t have the funds to hire a marketing expert, learning and managing your social media advertising might be the best option.
There are several third-party social media advertising platforms available. Some advertising platforms are hard to use, and optimizing social media ads and understanding results might be a challenge. Facebook ad campaigns can be run and analyzed once their app is installed on your desktop.
Advertising platforms can focus on using automated tools to spend your time in other areas of your business, but they may cost money. You risk spending money on the ad with no results with any platform or posting your ads on a paid social media advertising platform.
No Time – Some Social Media Advertising Budget = Find a Platform
If you don’t have time and a limited marketing budget, using a social media advertising platform may be the answer. Once you learn the automated software, it will take less time.
No Time – A Social Media Advertising Budget = Hire an Expert
You might find that your business will only meet its business goals by highering a marketing management service. These experts know what they are doing and how the large field of social media advertising works.
The chances you will get your desired results are higher simply because it is their job. You would be paying for the service, and the goals would be the advertising would turn into sales and long-term customers.
When looking at who to hire, do your research to spend money on advertising results. The advertising analytics will show how many users turn into website conversions and paying customers. This information will help you determine if you get the best bang for your buck.
Pawn Leads CRM
Pawn Leads is a Customer Communication System that provides a complete marketing solution for pawnbrokers and small businesses. By using a customized automated conversation through two-way texting, email, and webchat, potential customers will have an opportunity to engage and convert to paying long-term customers.
Pawn Leads provides user-friendly, integrated marketing solutions through social media platforms like Google and Facebook Ads. Understanding how ad formats will bring unique traffic, Pawn Leads will help encourage people to engage in your website through dynamic ads that reach a larger audience than what your business was doing before.
Landing Pages
Organic posts and stories can be an excellent way to boost traffic to your business website. Social media advertising can be linked to a landing page on your website or a product page, leading to quick and easy engagement, giving you the maximum advantage of your social media advertising. Pawn Leads will work with you as a business owner to identify your business goals and marketing strategies. This way, you can pinpoint exactly who you want to reach to take maximum advantage of how the Pawn Leads CRM can help, so you are getting the best bang for your buck.
Pawn Leads Will Review Your Website
When Pawn Leads reviews your webpage with you, they may discuss building a landing page or two. A landing page is a follow-up and is the next step toward becoming a paying customer. A landing page may include a form to gather customer information for future campaigns, and it may offer a discount, a call to action button, or an “opt-in” deal in return for providing contact info. Once the information is obtained, then the data is stored in the customer relationship management (CRM) database for future use to build long-term customers.
When you have a compelling message to get out, Pawn Leads will provide the tools to send email campaigns to your leads. Email campaigns can be a valuable tool to generate web traffic and help you achieve those goals.
Video Ads and Lead Magnets
Short videos posted on your business Facebook page along with your company name and a compelling lead magnet like a form or button do wonders to improve conversions. Pawn Leads will work with you to develop flyers, text message campaigns for holidays and special events, and email campaigns to generate paying customers. At the end of each month, social media advertising analytics and performance indicators will be reviewed to ensure that your social media advertising aligns with your identified business goals.
There are several social media advertising platforms available to businesses. Understanding how an advertising medium works is essential to expanding how your product, brand, and service are introduced to users. It is vital to understand how the platform uses a call to action button to hook a customer or encourage people to visit your business. Pawn Leads are experts, and this is their job.
Pawn Leads Follows Best Practices When Building Social Ads
Sam Reading, co-owner of Pawn Leads, understands pawn shops because he owns two in Idaho. Lex Case, co-owner, has used social ads to build his small business. Both owners designed Pawn Leads to meet the needs of small businesses and pawnbrokers.
As part of the business model, they follow best practices when working with each company to build social ads.
Identify the Potentials
First, they work with you, the business owner, to identify your target audience with all its unique characteristics.
Is Pawn Leads Right For You?
Second, they work with you, the business owner, to make sure the Pawn Leads software is the best platform for you, and then they help you identify which social media platforms will give you the best results.
Monthly Social Media Advertising Reviews
Thirdy they set goals for your social media ads and review these monthly making changes if needed.
Quality Tone, Pictures, and Your Own Videos
Fourth, they work with you to set your brand tone and voice and choose high-quality pictures for photo ads as part of your advertising solution.
Landing pages are often overlooked, so they work with you to create dynamic landing pages with lead magnets that get your customers involved. Every business is a bit different so having experts to help you determine what call to action button is essential in driving traffic to your store.
It matters in today’s social media advertising world if you use Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Pinterest, or one of the other social networks. Pawn Leads can help if you are ready to take the plunge. Visit us today.
