Social Media Advertising: The New Kid on the Inbound Marketing Block

I had the pleasure of going to HubSpot’s Inbound ’15 conference with the GRM team a few weeks back, and we were really able to immerse ourselves in all things inbound marketing. In addition to indulging in the local Boston culture and drinking all the Sam Adams ours hearts desired, we learned many things that have inspired us to do better as marketing professionals.

My number one takeaway from the conference is that inbound marketers can no longer get by marketing on social media platforms without a paid budget, unless if they get extremely lucky and create viral content that makes everyone want to buy their product. We all know how difficult that is to accomplish. So without further adieu, here’s why social media advertising is the new kid on the inbound marketing block:

You NEED a Social Ad Budget to Survive

Yes—even  HubSpot founders Dharmesh and Brian agree with this. They’ve even built in a new social advertising platform into their marketing software. While traditional advertising practices seem so outbound, social media platforms are making it increasingly more difficult for businesses to market to consumers free of charge. Only 1-6% of your Facebook company page followers are seeing your posts in their newsfeeds. All of that wonderful social media content that you spend all that time on every week is going to waste if you don’t put an ad budget behind it. Sorry to break it to you, but the glory days of organic social marketing are over.

Social Ad Retargeting Moves Your Prospects along the Sales Funnel

Some of the best social ad campaigns I learned about at Inbound included some type of retargeting campaign. If you’re not familiar, a retargeting campaign allows you to continue to nurture your prospects after they’ve visited your website. For example, a user will visit your website, then when they login to their Facebook or Twitter account, your ads may be displayed in their news feeds. This is just another sales touch that will help reinforce your message until your prospect is ready to buy. And—you’ll be confident that you’re advertising to the right audience, because they’ve already expressed some type of interest in your product or service, because they already visited your site! This keeps your brand at top of mind, and helps them along the sales funnel.

Your Best Content Should be Easily Attainable  

The most compelling content will probably not be seen organically, especially on Facebook. Like I said earlier, it’s a fact that only 1-6% of your followers will see your content in their news feeds. Why spend all the time creating wonderful content if it won’t be seen? You create content to educate your prospects, so make sure they’ll be able to have access to it. Boost your content offer posts with a budget to make sure your followers can find and enjoy it! As long as it’s helpful for your audience, they will appreciate that the ad is showing up in their newsfeed.

It’s time to ditch the thinking that social media advertising is reserved for only large companies with large budgets. The beauty of social media ads is that you can do a lot with just a little bit of money—if you do it right. Click below to find out how I helped our client Barbizon of Red Bank run a successful Facebook ad campaign on a small budget and a large return on investment. I