We are confronted with a medium for outreach that is evolving all the time. Social media is proof that despite all the changes, what doesn’t change is the community’s desire to network. And it had proved to be a great leveler. While it has made big companies think in small incremental steps towards a target market, small companies have been able to strike it big without breaking their bank on advertising. But how effective is social media advertising when it comes to the real deal, the numbers?
How Effective Is Social Media Advertising; Or Even How Tricky
Getting customers on board in the physical world is tough whether you are online or offline. but social media gives you an effective way to reach out to a large audience with a minimal budget. Everyone you reach out to is a potential asset and shows you instantly how effective is social media advertising.
But with the advantages come the huge pitfall. If you make a customer unhappy in the brick-and-mortar world, the damage it does is minimal. But a peeved social media customer has the potential for causing huge damage to you and your company’s reputation.
The Consumer Decides What The Brand Is Than The Company Telling Them
Getting through instantly to a new set of customers is instantly possible on social media. When you conceive an ad, you can immediately decide the class of consumer you wish to target. And you place your content directly in that particular news feed.
The bouquets are instant. You realize how effective is social media advertising when prospective customers are instantly converted into loyal ones.
This is possible as you can interact and engage with your consumers on a real-time basis, something not possible on other platforms of advertising.
Honesty is no longer an option in social media advertising, it has become a necessity, a survival tool. As a company, you establish a two-way relationship with your consumers and this trust can be converted instantly into a lucrative market.
Social media advertising also has other add on that are just as effective in convincing the consumer to try out your product. Blogs for instance.
Well-written blogs give you an effective opportunity to say a lot about your product without sounding didactic or pushy. The same goes for free content that any potential consumer can download.
This material gives the consumer valuable information and establishes an instant connection with our brand.
Such an inbound approach to marketing benefits your business as you can instantly arouse the consumer’s interest and can close a sale much faster than through regular advertising.
This is not possible with the traditional approach. The journey from a billboard or a print advertisement to the actual sale is a long one. You need to find out where you can purchase a product that arouses your interest in a traditional advertisement.
So the road from a consumer being interested in your product to the actual closing o the sale is a long one. And the chances of the link breaking down even greater.
This is where you realize how effective is social media advertising. Here the consumer can click on the ad and gets to learn more. And if that has them hooked, your sale gets closed instantly. This helps you to move quickly from leads to sales closure.
How Effective Is Social Media Advertising In Shortenin G Your Advertising Budget
Social media advertising scores high not only as a medium for a much shorter journey from advertisement to a sale, but it is also a great money saver.
With traditional forms of media, a lot of money is spent on creation, development, and physical printing and installation. Consequently, the cost of finally reaching your potential customers is way more, and you realize how effective is social media advertising.
One of the traditional methods of advertising is direct mail. It roughly costs around $57 to reach a group of 1,000 potential customers. The same outreach is possible with just $3 through social media advertisement.
Television, magazines, and newspapers are just as expensive and have a limited reach. And the costs are at least 6 to 12 times the amount spent on social media advertisements.
Social Media Consumption Has Grown Multiple Times Over The Years And The Media Has Changed Too
The mobile has become the center of a person’s life to the exclusion of much of the traditional. From pre-teens to the age, people have effectively shifted to social media en masse.
Research has shown that people spend 6 hours on average online. And mobile users represent almost 43% of that number.
Social media become even more relevant when the target is the 16-24 years age group. Comparing those numbers to television time will give you just the reason for how effective is social media advertising.
Targeting The Right Consumers
Reaching the target audience is one key area where social media advertising wins hands down over the traditional forms of advertisement. With the latter, the seller can never be sure where their advertisement is reaching.
For instance, an advertisement on a bus might be reaching 20,000 people a day. But that does not count for much if they are not the target audience.
A misguided advertisement is surely money down the drain. Social media advertising gives you the weapon to target the ideal consumer for your product.
Facebook for instance allows you to filter our target audience around multiple factors like age, gender, language, location, and specific preference.
You can narrow down your target audience by even as varied demographics such as exact age groups. Certain affiliation and interests.
Measuring Your Results
Measuring your effectiveness as an advertiser is one of the greatest gifts of social media advertising. Things happen in real-time in this virtual world, and you can get instant knowledge of trends, sales, changes in preferences, etc.
With traditional methods, you have no idea where your method is doing right and where it is going wrong.
Social media allows you to fine-tune your responses after learning where things weren’t wrong.
It could be that though the number of viewership is great, it isn’t the right audience for your product. Every social media site offers an opportunity to reach out to a specific target group based on multiple factors. And that in effect tells you how effective is social media advertising.
