Online advertising has incorporated new platforms and business opportunities for companies and brands, there are many types of advertising channels on the Internet. According to the latest studies the most used by brands is advertising in searches, but has gained a presence in the plans of the companies the advertising on social networks. Since the business models of the social platforms in the last years, has been oriented in subtracting presence to the organic contents so that the companies invest in advertising on social networks with the purpose of obtaining a greater scope for publications.

The importance of advertising on social networks is that it has become a key means …

• 80% of marketing professionals consider advertising on social networks with an important source of sales opportunities.
• They allow an additional boost to attract visitors.
• You can offer the same value (content) as your organic sources but increasing the reach.
• These advertising media are the new weapon to promote business , some of its keys are:
• It allows to generate notoriety in the short term.
• It has advanced segmentation. (Micro-segmentation).
• It helps to boost the branding of business.
• More measurement capacity that allows cost optimization.
• It is a new medium, more tolerated and with more integrated formats in the communication of users.

You must consider the use of advertising on social networks to achieve a greater scope of your actions …

In a proper digital marketing planning, you should consider the use of several means to achieve a greater scope of your actions, diversifying efforts in the different media in which your client can be. If you cannot make a large technical and economic deployment, we advise you to focus on the social networks that your target audience uses the most, because it allows you a great level of budget segmentation and control.

One factor to consider are the algorithms that condition what users see in your timeline: if you achieve greater reach and more participation, those users are more likely to see your organic publications as well, getting more commitment from your audience.

This type of promotion is more effective in the long term and creates a stronger bond with clients because it reaches a participatory audience.

The main advantages of advertising on social networks are …

• With little investment, a large impact on potential customers is possible. The cost per click is very low compared to other advertising formats.
• You have more means to segment and find your target audience, since you can create specific campaigns depending on demographic and sociodemographic data, interests, behaviors, business experience, etc.
• Social networks offer us greater flexibility in ad formats. It can be visual, written, videos or announcements of simple texts and most of them are displayed in the same spaces in which users interact, so it is more integrated and accepted.
• Greater monitoring through reports on how your advertising campaign progresses or the visits you have received. This will help you evaluate results and get to know your most loyal followers, to be able to make configuration adjustments or improve in future campaigns.

Social networks should not only be seen as entertainment but also as a way to take your business further. If you have not yet made room in your business planning to social networks, get down to work, you will see how this new way of advertising on social networks allows you to carry out a better analysis of both your target audience and your results, with a better targeting and of course better overall performance. Each one allows different types of segmentation, so it improves the optimization of the budget focusing on the audience and objectives that most interest you.

Now that we know the advantages, we will briefly know the characteristics of the advertising on social networks and in the different platforms, where to promote our products and services …

Facebook Ads

Facebook and Instagram share a platform for advertising management and some formats are the same in both, although the strategy may be very different since the audience may be different and especially the conversation and relationship between users is very different, creativity must be adapted

The ads that stand out are the sponsored stories or relevant ads. Ads can link to web pages, events or applications. Advertisers can sponsor their most relevant activity for their businesses and make sure they have an audience that sees it. The social network offers us different types of ads according to the objectives we look for in our strategy and broad options for audience segmentation.

Ad types / Objective of the promotion

• Promoted publications → Scope: Increase visibility of post and web traffic and focused on conversions. “Advertising”
• Published publications → Scope: Increase post visibility among fans audience and focused on getting more post interaction and promote post published organically.
• Clicks to the website: Increases the traffic of visits to your website.
• Conversions on the website: Measurable promotion according to the conversion actions you establish. You will need a conversion pixel for your website before you can create this ad.
• Interaction with a publication: To promote your publications.
• I like the page: Promote your page and get fans to connect with more relevant people.
• Application downloads: Increase the number of downloads of your application.
• Interaction with the application: Increases the interaction in your application.
• Requests for offers: Create offers so that users can exchange them in your establishment.
• Local diffusion: Reach people who are close to your company.
• Responses to events: Increases the number of attendees to your event.
• Sales of the product catalog: Automatically shows the products of your product catalog according to the target audience.
• Notoriety of the brand: It reaches people who are more likely to pay attention to your brand.
• Generation of potential customers: Generate leads for your company.
• Video Views: Create ads that get more people to watch a video.

Budget and bids

• You can set a daily maximum and a campaign total.
• Choose start and end dates.
• You can vary the rhythm of the announcement.
• CPC bids on website → click that came to the web.
• CPC bids → one click on the ad.
• CPM bids → cost per thousand impressions.
• Important the results in the first 24 h. Start with a high initial budget and then adjust. Check the audience threshold and timing.
• Set maximums of your bid. It will be shown more times.

Some analysis metrics

• Results: Number of clicks on the website, clicks or impressions based on your goal.
• Cost: Money that was spent per click on the website.
• Scope: Number of people reached by the advertisement.
• Frequency: Average number of times each person has seen your ad.
• Clicks: Number of clicks on your ad.
• Click-through rate (CTR): Number of clicks on your ad with respect to the number of times it was shown.
• Daily spend: The money spent on the ad during the current day.
• Total spent: The money you spent in total on the ad.
• Average price: Average cost per click or cost per thousand.

Beware of the creativity of your ads. Remember that Facebook gives less diffusion to ads with more than 20% text in image.

Twitter Ads

It has ad formats designed to generate notoriety, dissemination of content and promotion of tweets. It allows an advanced segmentation and usually has good CTR improving the organic publications.

It stands out because it has a high segmentation: sociodemographic data, keywords in tweets and searches, by hashtags, by user names, by followers of interest accounts, by audiences or television programs among others.

Ad types / Objectives

• Promoted Tweets → to generate more reach to increase post visibility and web traffic.
• Promoted account → to get followers, increase your community / brand recognition.
• Downloads or application interactions → Promote APPs and increase app downloads.
• Video views → Promote video content to increase your views.
• Budget and bids
• You can establish a maximum daily and total campaign budget.
• Choose start and end dates of promotions.
• Important the results in the first 24 h. Start with a high initial budget and then adjust.
• Bids for CPC if you care about interactions and traffic.
• Bids for CPM if you are looking for brand exposure.
• Set maximums of your bid. It will be shown more times.

Some analysis metrics

• Expense: The money that was spent on an ad.
• Impressions: Number of times the ad was viewed.
• Interactions with the tweet: Number of clicks, retweets or favorites.
• Interaction rate: Number of tweet interactions among the number of impressions.
• Cost per interaction: The money spent on each interaction.

Instagram Ads

When sharing platform with Facebook, you must have a page in this social network to be able to make ads on Instagram.

Ads allow you to promote images to reach a wider audience, advertisers can place advertising between photo and photo of your friends,

According to several reports, based  on reach metrics, ad recognition and brand awareness instead of focusing only on “likes”, comments and number of followers obtained, they  are demonstrating that Instagram advertising is effective when it comes to gaining notoriety branded.

Ad types / Objectives

There are three main types of Instagram ads that you can choose from. Whether it’s improving your brand awareness, getting more visits to your website or increasing downloads of your mobile application, Instagram can help you access a huge and active audience.

• Photo ads → To show stories or present products with attractive images.
• Video ads → You can create video ads with more than 60 seconds in length, although only the first 30 seconds are the most important of a video on social networks. Try to engage your audience at the beginning and they will be more likely to want to see it complete.
• Ads by sequence → Ads with multiple images and an n call-to-action button links to the promotion’s landing page.
• Ads in the Stories → Will show the ads in full screen enter the stories they review in your timeline.

Budget and Bids

• It has the same bidding system as Facebook, you can choose pay-per-click model, impressions and conversions on the website.
• You can assign a daily budget and the algorithm is responsible for showing your ad to control your expenses.
• It allows you to configure the campaign by dates and assign a budget for the campaign, in this way the platform adjusts the expenditure to the period of time.
• You can change campaign optimization and campaign options manually.

Some analysis metrics

Use the same as Facebook, but you must adapt the results evaluation data to your business objectives, therefore, the results depend on the objectives that you would have assigned to the ad and based on the data offered of the total amount spent and conversions of objectives, you can have a cost per result.

LinkedIn Ads

This platform is more limited in terms of advertising formats, but it has a high segmentation in relation to professional data from its user database. It is therefore a highly recommended option for companies of products and services for other businesses (B2B).

It helps to gain notoriety and dissemination of the content and has segmentation by professional profiles.

Ad types / Objectives

• Sponsored content → To increase brand awareness, foster new professional relationships and attract potential customers.
• InMail → Sends highly segmented messages directly to the LinkedIn mailboxes of the people that most interest your company.
• Dynamic ads → Interact with the professionals that interest you the most with personalized ads, generated dynamically.
• Display ads → Promotion in banner format to reach the target audience.
• Text ads → Short text promotion in prominent LinkedIn locations.

Budget and Bids

• Set a daily maximum and a campaign total.
• Choose start and end dates.
• CPC bids → one click on the ad.
• CPM bids → cost per thousand impressions.
• Set maximums of your bid. It will be shown more times.

Some analysis metrics

• Clicks: The number of clicks your sponsored update received.
• Impressions: The number of times your ad was viewed.
• Click through rate: Number of clicks divided by number of impressions.
• Interactions: The number of interactions achieved.
• Average cost per click.
• Total value: The total value of the impressions or clicks that ad got.

General advice for advertising on social networks

• Take care of the format, sizes and messages of the images.
• Take advantage of creativity and sizes to the fullest.
• Analyze segmentation well.
• Experience ad variants.
• Track results.
• It is essential to create “Call to Action” buttons to help achieve the expected conversion.

Once you know the importance of advertising on social networks, you will be interested in expanding information with more about advertising on social social networks, and you are invited to read on Local Advertising Journal.