How Much Money A Company Should Be Spending On Social Media Advertising

Everyone knows that social media is all the rage in digital marketing right now. It’s an effective and easy way to keep in touch with your existing customers and a great way to reach out to a new audience.

As the popularity of social media continues to rise, digital marketers have started to place more focus on reaching potential customers on social media platforms. One of the best ways to do this is through social media advertising.

What is Social Media Advertising?

Social media advertising is a form of social media marketing that focuses on paid-for advertising techniques. These techniques create brand awareness and promote products or services on social media websites. This is done by paying for adverts that target a specific audience. Brands are able to identify their target audience and distribute adverts to users based on the behavioural, demographic and geographic user-data provided by social networking sites.

The focus of social media advertising is linked to the overall marketing strategy, goals, values and concepts of a brand. Social media marketing strategies use social media to reach its audience with attractive, engaging and interesting content. While social media advertising uses this as a foundation to find new customers.

What’s The Ideal Budget For Social Media Advertising?

There’s a lot of content on social media. So paying for advertising can help get your content in front of your desired target audience. When it comes to working out a budget there isn’t a specific formula that works for everyone. A good place to start is by figuring out what kind of advertising you want to do for the specific audience you’re trying to reach.

Research states that adults aged 18 to 40 use social media the most to stay in touch with the latest news from their favourite brands.This gives you an idea of the type of audience you’re reaching through advertising on social media.

So if you create an awesome profile that best represents your brand you can also continue to advertise to your followers through organic posts. This can reduce the overall amount you have to spend on advertising in the long-term.

Remember, while social media advertising might be the cool new kid on the block, it should only form part of your overall marketing budget. Always be careful not to over-spend on social media advertising because in most cases brands need other forms of advertising too.

If social media advertising is new to you, it’s always best to start small because it can take some time to reach the right audience.The last thing you want to do is lose money in the trial an error phase.

Types of Social Media Advertising

There are lots of ways to advertise on social media.But the type of advert you select depends on what you’re advertising and what type of audience you want to attract. Types of adverts available also depend on the social media platform you’re using. Here are a few of the most popular options…

  • Sponsored Ads

With sponsored ads your social media marketing team can create and control the content and audience of the ads. There are two types of sponsored ads namely, standard ads (placed on the right of the page) and page post ads (promoted organic page posts that appear on a user’s news feed).

  • Sponsored Posts

Sponsored posts are regular posts that companies can pay to have turned into an advert. It can be a simple post discussing the brand and its history. It could also be a random post that has the potential to attract a lot of attention.

  • Carousel Ads

Carousel ads allow brands to showcase a few images, videos, or both in a single post. This allows you to feature multiple products in a long visual intensive post.

  • Canvas Ads

Canvas adverts are full-screen, ads that are optimised for mobile devices. They feature a combination of text, links, images and videos to create an immersive experience for your target audience.

Final Thoughts…

It’s best not to break the bank when spending on social media advertising. You’ll know that you’re on the right track once you see a positive response to your advertising efforts. Start small, so if it doesn’t work right away you can adjust your approach without the risk of over-spending.