Can social media ads bring useful traffic to my e-commerce website?
Yes, advertising on social media brings traffic to any website. For eCommerce websites, it’s a proven strategy. It’s not magic, though, and like all paid advertising, it’s going to be most effective on businesses prepared to capitalize on its traffic.
Let’s discuss more.
Social media is so heavily divided by interest and demographic, it’s very easy to reach your target audience. With social media posts, people come to know about a website, which in turn helps in driving traffic. Sharing engaging and valuable content on social media, and then boosting that promotion with direct social ads, creates interest in the audience, and they would likely visit your eCommerce website.
Since social media advertisements are paid, it depends on your budget and how you spend it. And you do need a budget. If you can’t stand the thought of risking money, it’s not the strategy for you, that’s the truth. Ignore anyone peddling magical claims that you can turn a profit fast through social ads, even if you’re a beginner or your business is new. It’s not true. Social ads take time and money to really get working for an unestablished business.
Put simply: social ads will generally not push an unprofitable business into profitable levels. But they will help a healthy, revenue-earning business earn more sales and turn a bigger profit.
With all that said, there is an option for flexible spending on ads with social media. For instance, you have options for daily spending, setting demographic/geographical coverage, etc. This helps tighten the focus of your ad delivery so you aren’t wasting money on people who aren’t interested.
You also need to have a good understanding of your product, audience, and effective ads in general. As one example, CTAs (call to action) help to get more website visits, thus more sales. Unlike social media posts, ads prompt the user to visit the website in more innovative ways. The ad is more about selling to a person, or at least telling them to click to check something out, than informing them. With ordinary social posts, you give value, but with social ads, you imply value and deliver it on the landing page. You only have so much room with an ad, so you need to lead with the kicker. Why should people care enough to click? Figure that out, and design an ad from there.
The best thing about social media ads is the potential exposure to anyone on the site, as long as you temper that with good targeting. No product is applicable to everyone, so your ad needs to be for the people most likely to buy your products. It should be relevant to the right person, and the ad itself has to be clever and well-made according to that type of person. Otherwise, a social media ad is going to fall flat, just like any other poorly-conceived marketing attempt.
In short, social media ads are capable of bringing traffic to an eCommerce website. At times, ads bring irrelevant traffic also if you do not smartly implement them, or they’ll just fail to draw traffic due to ineffective marketing. It’s already clear that they work, it’s just a matter of how applicable to your business social ads are right now, and how focused you are on making them work.
Lately, I’ve been teaching beginner online business owners the importance of advertising, and to see it in a different light than how most do. If you’re interested in understanding more about the theory of advertising, to make it work better no matter the medium you use, I recommend my article: Welcome to a World Without Advertising.
In conclusion, social media advertising is a trusted way of generating web traffic. Due to the increase in competition and the innovation level in ads, one should implement smarter tactics to stand out from the competition and get their desired results.
Please feel free to reply to me if you need clarification.
Good Luck!
Thanks,
Cleo