Molly Berard • April 26, 2021
Stepping Stones To Your Goals: Which Social Media Platforms Are Right For Your Company?
A digital presence is essential for nearly all businesses these days. We've had many new clients sign on with us who don't understand the social media platforms available to them, and therefore don't know which would benefit them the most. Let's look at platforms can help you reach certain business goals with both organic posts and paid ads.
Social media platforms seem to be growing and evolving with every passing day. As they do, digital marketing agencies and internal teams must determine the best way to navigate the changing tides. It's extremely likely that a business will fail without any sort of digital presence these days, but many business owners feel overwhelmed and aren't sure where to start. Today, we want to talk about which social media platforms will best help you reach your goals. We'll be looking at both organic (unpaid) posting and paid social media advertising.
Brand Awareness
- Facebook Page Likes/Engagement Ads: Page Likes or Brand Engagement ads on Facebook are arguably the most successful way to grow your brand online. Thanks to Facebook's detailed targeting options, you can reach new people who will be interested in what you have to offer. The ads allow them to like your page without leaving their feed, and will showcase posts that ask for engagement. When created by a well-trained digital marketing agency, you can see thousands of new page likes in no time!
- Facebook Organic Posts: Once you have page likes and followers, they'll be able to see what you post organically. Every post should include branding and should tell people who you are and what you do. This builds brand awareness and understanding!
- Instagram Posts: Instagram posts can be great for brand awareness! By using hashtags, we can show your content to those interested in topics like yours. For example, your digital marketing agency can use the hashtag #summerstyle on a post about your new bathing suit line. You post can then appear on anyone's feed who follows that hashtag, as well as on the Explore page to those who express interest in that type of topic.
- Pinterest Ads: Pinterest allows you to create ad campaigns with the goal of brand awareness. These ads will target people based on location, demographics, interests, and keywords that you choose. The great thing about Pinterest Ads is that they are seamlessly integrated into the feed, so much so that you may not even realize it's an ad!
- Pinterest Pins: Pinterest is a wonderful platform for brand awareness! People will find your pins through hashtags, interests, shares on other boards, and more. Pinterest users are extremely active and they like to save pins to their own boards for later. once saved to their board, their friends and followers will see it, and the cycle will continue!
- Twitter Posts: Twitter is a fast-paced platform that can do a lot for brand awareness. Hashtags are once again the key here until you amass a following. Digital marketing agencies will always try to create engaging tweets with the hope that they're retweeted and commented on to the point of going viral!
- Twitter Ads: Twitter ads are most effective with a brand awareness goal in mind. They will showcase your content to get people interested in following you, and they will put your posts in front of people you may not reach organically. Twitter is best for fast-paced companies who keep up with news, politics, social issues, and more.
- LinkedIn Posts: If you want to show your brand to business professionals, LinkedIn is the place to be. Businesses post regularly on LinkedIn to let people know who they are and what they do. Professionals across many fields are on the platform in search for brands they like.
- LinkedIn Ads: Lastly, your digital marketing agency can create a brand awareness campaign on LinkedIn. As with all social media advertising, this means that you're using budget to target a new audience. Your ads can be targeted by industry, job title, company, location, job function, and more to reach the professionals most likely to be interested in what you have to offer. LinkedIn Ads are a must-have for B2B clients!
Please note that ads are the fastest and most effective way to increase brand awareness. Posts are great once you have followers, but ads have much more capability to reach new audiences.
Website Traffic
- Facebook Website Clicks Ads: Facebook is once again a fantastic platform for achieving this goal. Ads will show to people in your target audience. When digital marketing agencies build out website traffic ads on Facebook, we associate it with either your website's home page or the specific page for what we're advertising. We can even build carousel ads where each card navigates to a separate URL!
- Google Traffic Ads: Google isn't normally considered a social media platform, but it feels wrong to exclude it from the conversation. Google is arguably the most successful at driving clicks to your website. Google Ads are targeted by location and keyword. When consumers search these keywords (or those similar to it), your ad can be shown. This is a captive audience who is actively seeking whatever it is you do. These people are much more likely to convert to customers than those seeing ads out of the blue on other social sites.
- Pinterest Ads: Pinterest Ads can be created to drive people to your website. When they click on the ad, they'll be taken to whichever URL you or your digital agency have associated it with. You could make an ad showing off your new line of bedding and take them directly to the bedding page of your site!
- LinkedIn Ads: As per the theme of this goal, when you make LinkedIn Ads you can point them to a URL. This could be a single landing page, your website as a whole, individual pages, and more. Professionals will end up on your site to learn more about you and will have the opportunity to convert if they make it through your website funnel.
- Instagram Ads: Instagram Ads are run through Facebook's Ad Manager because they are owned by Facebook. You can therefore run the same website clicks ads on both platforms, or make separate ones if you feel one will do better than the other on their respective platforms. When viewers click the ad, they'll be taken to your site.
Organic posting can be successful at getting website clicks, but ads are exponentially more so. All the platforms are great at integrating ads into feeds of your target audience. Until you have a large following, you shouldn't expect website click-based posts to perform at the same level as ads will.
Lead Generation
- Google Ads: Google is here again and for very good reason. As we mentioned, Google is the place to be when trying to catch the attention of consumers who are actively searching for products or services. If you can get your ad to perform well on popular search terms, you'll be shown at the top. When people click your ad, they can be taken to a contact or lead form to fill out. You can also use a Google Call Campaign to get immediate calls from interested consumers.
- Facebook Lead Generation Ads: Facebook can't stop, won't stop. Not only can you create ads that bring viewers to external lead generation forms, but you can also collect leads right on the platform. BusySeed and plenty other digital marketing agencies have seen great success with on-Facebook lead forms because it's more convenient to the user. There's no leaving the app, no load time. A form will pop up with questions that you've asked and once they submit they can immediately return to scrolling.
- Instagram Ads: Instagram Ads can be used to link to a lead form or the contact page on your website, or you can use the same form as on Facebook! The fact that these two platforms work so seamlessly together is so convenient. You get a two-for-one deal by creating one ad and showing it across two platforms!
- LinkedIn Ads: What other businesses or business professionals to get in touch with you? Run a Lead Generation campaign on LinkedIn! The platform has it's own lead generation form builder to use with the ads that allow people to fill it out without leaving the site or app. Just like On-Facebook leads, this is preferred by many users.
- Specialty Sites (Houzz, Angie's List, etc): If your business handles services in particular industries, it's a great idea to run lead generation ads on industry-specific sites. Platforms like Yelp, Houzz, Angie's List, TripAdvisor, etc. are where consumers flock to find services exactly like yours. An ad can reach them and encourage them to give you their contact information to convert them into a full-blown customer!
Lead generation is very tricky, even on the busiest of social media platforms. Make sure to work with a digital marketing agency who has seen success in the past. It's challenging to build enough trust to collect sensitive information like emails and phone numbers, and very few agencies are actually good at it.
Sales
- Google Ads: They're back back back again! Google Shopping Ads are honestly astounding. They display your product when keywords are searched, and then can follow the consumer after the fact. Google Shopping Ads can also appear on partnered websites including YouTube. The more a consumer sees a product they might need, the more likely they are to remember it, check it out, and make a purchase!
- Facebook Sales Ads: You can set up a Facebook Shop to display your items. You can even make collections of items that you'd like to show together. Let's say you're a store like Target that offers a little bit of everything. It never hurts to have all items available to show off in an ad, but it's hard to target such broad campaigns. Instead, you might make a collection for makeup, another for clothing, another for home goods, etc. That way, you can discuss more specific things in the copy of the ads!
- Instagram Shopping Ads: Instagram recently launched the option to create sales ads on the platform! As long as your store is connected to the account, you can tag the products shown in images or videos and let people purchase from there. It's proven to be extremely successful for things like clothing, accessories, home goods, and other commonly-searched for consumer goods.
- Amazon Ads: Like Google, Amazon isn't technically a social media platform, but we wanted to include it anyway. We all know that Amazon has taken the world by storm and is responsible for the huge majority of online sales in the US. Many consumers don't search for items to purchase in Google if they are avid Amazon shoppers. Instead, they'll head straight to Amazon before searching. You want to have Amazon Ads to ensure your product is seen for certain search terms. Amazon integrates the ads in with other products as seamlessly as Pinterest does, making it more likely for people to click into it. Things that are obviously ads can sometimes be a turn off for customers, but Amazon does a wonderful job at emphasizing the product rather than the fact that it's an ad.
Visual-based ads will always be the best option for making sales. People want to see what they're buying, and pictures catch attention far more than text will. Feel free to showcase items for sale in organic posts, but know that ads will always out-perform them.
There are, of course, other social media platforms that we haven't mentioned here. In all honesty, most platforms can be used to accomplish a goal in one way or another. The point of this article is to explain which platforms perform the best for each goal you may have. Any digital marketing agency you work with should be very well-versed in these platforms and should have examples of past success. If you're ready to work with a team who knows how to get you hundreds of results in no time, contact BusySeed! We've helped to grow over 300 businesses and we are adapting to the changing digital environment every day. Call us at (888) 353-1484 to get started! We build custom service packages based on your needs and goals. We look forward to speaking with you!
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