Part 3: Should I Invest in Social Media Ads? [Plus Examples]

Social media marketing has become an integral pastime that has only grown in popularity since its adoption. Over 3.36 billion people use social media across the world, and that number is expected to increase to nearly 4.41 billion by 2025. Most users spend about 144 minutes a day on social media apps, providing plenty of opportunities for your brand to get noticed.

However, the challenge is actually grabbing their attention and stopping them from scrolling. If you want to target social media platforms, make sure that you consider what audience uses  those platforms so that you know what types of social media ads will perform the best.

In this blog, part three of our paid ad platforms series, we will go over the top ways to approach social media ads for each platform. Let’s get started.

Social media ads: What are the different types of social platforms?

It is important to choose your platforms based on where your audience spends time and curate content for that person and platform. For the sake of this post and your sanity, we narrowed down the number of social media platforms to seven that we have seen the most growth and success in for our own campaigns.

Here are some suggestions on where to begin for your company’s social media ads:

• Facebook: Dominating the social sphere with 2.7 million monthly users, Facebook focuses on audience targeting to get your ads to the right people.
• Instagram: Also using Facebook Ads Manager, Instagram is a great addition to your social campaign. Make sure your ads fit your audience and contain engaging images or videos, as this is a highly visual app.
• LinkedIn: This is the world’s largest professional network, and it keeps growing. If your focus is B2B, LinkedIn is probably your bread and butter of social.
• Twitter: One of the world’s largest microblogging services, Twitter offers ads that are discreetly placed in users’ feeds (with a variety of ways to customize each ad).
• Snapchat: If your brand caters to a younger audience, start thinking about Snapchat Ads, as many young people like to communicate via the app’s photo and video chat features.
• TikTok: An app that features an endless number of user-generated videos that often go viral, TikTok has several ways to go about advertising beyond just creating videos.
• Pinterest: Another highly visual app, Pinterest is great for shopping guides and vision boards. You can use it to make your product someone’s inspiration.

Make the ad fit the audience.

Once you narrow down which platform(s) are the perfect fit for your brand, focus on your creative. If you choose social ads, you’ll want to make sure your creatives are highly visual or relatable.

Unlike Google Ads, most of the time, people are not actively searching for something related to your brand when your ad appears. Social ads will show on a “discover” page or banner as users are scrolling through their feed or watching stories.

Your ad should be attention-grabbing and cater to that platform’s audience. For instance, you likely would not want to post a text-based ad on Instagram. This is because users on that platform are looking for visuals. The best social media ads are designed for the audience based on the platform they’re on.

Examples of social media ads

As you can tell, there are many types of social media ads. Below are various ads that appeared on our social media feeds. This will help illustrate how each ad speaks to a different audience.

Notice how companies adjusted their delivery for each social platform. You’ll want to create something that stands out to that user. The goal is to invoke them to click your ad, follow your brand, or purchase a product. Social ads are for exactly what they sound like: being social.

Conclusion

In 2021, it is now more essential than ever to invest in social media ads. However, you’ll want to know which platforms your target audience spends time on before investing your hard-earned dollars. The next step is to create your ads for each platform in a way that will attract your audience. Plus entice them to take action.

If you think that social ads are right for your marketing strategy, and you’d like to gain a better understanding of what these services can do for your company, contact BrandCraft Marketing to chat with one of our paid ads experts today.