The internet has become a powerful tool to grow your business. Online advertising is a natural choice for most modern businesses, but banner and web page ads have began to decline. Instead, businesses are turning towards increasingly popular social media solutions.
Social media advertising is a market that wasn’t available 10 years ago, but by 2017, it’s projected to generate over $11 billion in revenue. In contrast, this is up from just $6 billion in 2013—that’s an incredible growth over such a short period. To give you an idea of how fast the internet is growing, take a look at these numbers from 2016:
- Internet users up 10% (332 million)
- Social media up 10% (219 million)
- Unique mobile users up by 4% (141 million)
- Mobile social media users up 17% (283 million)
Target Specific Audiences
Facebook has the largest online audience of any social media channel at over 1.79 billion users, making it a great choice for both small and large businesses. However, the sheer number of people isn’t the only thing that makes it a great advertising channel. The true power of Facebook advertising lies in the amount of data they collect that can be used to target specific audiences.
Social networks gather a huge amount of user information. By correctly utilising this information, you can target your audience with social media advertising in a wider variety of ways compared to other methods like web-page advertisements. More ad relevancy, more clicks, more customers.
Advertise For Smartphones
Smartphone users are the biggest consumers of social media. Mobile users spend the majority of their social media time on phone apps, and most of that time is taken up by either Twitter or Facebook. This means that many social media advertisements are being viewed on mobile devices, and ads have to be designed to fit onto smaller screens.
Simple and eye-catching digital flyers are key to reaching more potential customers. Mobile users are busy people—they won’t read large blocks of text and they’ll only skim through a dense paragraph. Keep it simple, make it memorable, and you’ll see your customer base grow.
Vary Your Advertisements
Repetition is key in traditional advertisements. The idea is to keep a brand or product in the consumer’s mind and build familiarity. Research has proven that messages are more effective when repeated, but that’s only true for media such as television because they interrupt whatever programme you’re watching.
When it comes to social media advertisement, there’s nothing worse than a user opening their Twitter feed and seeing the exact same advertisement over and over again. If you don’t vary your designs and messages, then social media users will mock your repetitive messages and interaction will drop.
The best course of action is to alternate your ads. Keep your designs fresh and simple, but memorable. Users don’t want to read loads of text when they see an advertisement. They probably won’t read it, so make it catchy and simple. Alternate the colours, change the message, or advertise a different product.
