Are social media ads effective?
Yes! They work, provided you test them in the right manner and give them time. The purpose of an ad is to spread a message and create awareness for a product or service. For businesses, social media ads prove to be helpful, because so many people use social media. Many surveys support this point. But you have to have realistic expectations, not just of social media ads, but of advertising in general.
Let’s discuss more.
In addition to the benefit of potentially low advertising expenses, there are numerous advantages of social media ads over the traditional methods of advertising, such as improved brand recognition, customer loyalty, conversion rates, etc. Also, as most businesses nowadays have a website, the effectiveness of the website is determined by its traffic. Social media advertising helps in bringing useful traffic, particularly through powerful targeting options.
Social media helps in reaching the target audience in a better way. But on top of being able to get very specific with who you want to advertise to, social ads also can be shared. An advertisement could be made visible to a larger audience, even those who do not like or follow that social media page, due to sharing-type engagements. That would depend on the budget of the ad and the marketer’s targeting choices, as well as how shareable the ad is.
However, with all the advantages that social media ads offer, some beginner marketers are now opting for only them and not considering other methods of advertising. Advertising expenses, being one of the main reasons. This is a huge mistake.
Social media works, but it is not a band-aid to low advertising experience, and it will not start working after only a few weeks and after a $50-100 ad spend. And yet, I hear people all the time who are still nervous about advertising, who want to do it as little as possible, who cling to the idea that social media ads will protect them from spending more money than they want to, or ‘bothering more people’ than they want to.
The reality is that all forms of advertising take time to work. They need to be tested. They need to be shown to a lot of people, and you need to make a variety of different ads, so you can learn what people like the best.
The nice thing about social media ads is that you can relatively cheaply keep them running, testing them for months, and improving their return, a little at a time. But if your idea of social media ads working is spending $50 with your very first ad and getting $100 in sales, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. It takes time to figure it out.
I feel it’s helpful, in case you are curious about social as an easy form of advertising and are still hesitant to really commit to the concept, to mention something..I talk to a lot of people who are afraid of promotion and advertising, whether out of nerves or because they hate the idea of spending money on their business. Some just dislike the very concept of advertising and feel unethical contributing to it. This is not a healthy attitude to have if you want to succeed. I have penned down the importance of ads considering a hypothetical situation in my post: Welcome to a World Without Advertising.
I don’t want to be presumptuous, but it seems a lot of people who ask about whether social media paid ads work are hoping for a magic bullet because they’re still uneasy about advertising in general, and don’t want to commit to it too much. Please excuse me if that’s not the case with you. But for running a business, you really do have to commit to advertising, and doing so is not a bad thing, by any stretch of the word. That article explains why, so please do check it out if what I’m saying is at all applicable to you.
In conclusion, social media ads work, provided you use them consistently and wisely. They will not fix an unprepared or poorly-conceptualized business, but they are a viable tool.
Please feel free to reply to me if you have any questions.
Good Luck!
Thanks,
Cleo