Advertising is evolving quickly for owners of both small and large businesses. There are more options to connect with potential customers and subscribers through email, on-site ads, and social media. Even with all these channels, 63 percent of business owners find it hard to generate traffic and leads for their website.
We want to take a look at this common issue and offer a real-world solution. In many cases, the marketers in charge of reaching customers on social media are not looking in the right place. Virtually every social media platform offers its own form of advertising from Facebook Lead Ads, Twitter advertising, and everything in between. Our goal is to take a closer look at advertising and how you can determine the best social media platform for reaching out to future customers.
Know Your Target Audience
If you want to reach the right customers, it’s crucial that you understand your target audience. When you initially designed your product or service, there’s a good chance that you had your dream customer in mind. Despite all the research, target demographics can shift based on availability and website visibility on search engines.
When you’re trying to figure out which social platform you should advertise on, it’s a good idea to cross reference your Google Analytics data with your market research to gain more insight on your primary audience.
For example, you could look at the following report and see that the target audience for this website consists of mostly males between the ages of 25 and 34.
After some research, you’ll discover that the 25-34 age group makes up a majority of the Facebook user base, coming in at 58.3 million users. If you combine these two pieces of information, it becomes evident that a large section of your customer base uses Facebook.
Check Social Media Groups
Another great way to figure out where to advertise for your product or service is by checking the groups or trending topics related to your niche. You’ll be able to dive in and read what real consumers think about the space your brand occupies through social listening. This could give you insight as to what problems they are facing, what solutions they are looking for, and where they are hanging out.
Let’s say you check Facebook groups that talk about your niche, and they all look like a ghost town. No one is posting, engaging, or sharing their thoughts. There’s not much you can gain from this information.
However, if you switch over to Twitter and look for hashtags around your niche, you may discover that most of your audience is discussing the industry on Twitter as opposed to Facebook. If you notice that the community seems to flock to one or two social networks to discuss a topic, it’s a safe bet that there are people on the platform interested in what you have to offer.
Furthermore, you can identify trends within each discussion and use that data to create your next advertisement.
Implement and Track Social Share Icons
Social share icons are small links that appear throughout your content and website that encourage customers to share your content or like your business page. The exciting thing about this tool is in most cases you’ll get a share counter which will help you build social proof and show you where your audience is sharing your content.
Here’s a sample of what that might look like on your website:
If your article has 958 shares and a whopping 949 of those shares occurred on Facebook, there’s a good chance that this is going to be an excellent social media platform to advertise your product or service. People are sharing your content, and you’re building brand awareness, now all you have to do is seal the deal with a killer ad that speaks directly to your audience.
Conclusion
One of the best ways to advertise on social media is by understanding where your audience resides. If you are willing to research your analytic data, read what people in your niche are saying, and track social shares, you’ll be able to figure out the right platform for your marketing campaign.
Keep in mind that your audience devotion to one website may fluctuate. People use various social media platforms and the ability to identify where your core audience spends their time will help you craft better content and advertising that will allow you to reach out to consumers across the internet.