Six reasons you need to start using paid social media advertising

If you or your business owner are still on the fence about social media advertising, here are some figures for you. More than two billion people use social media every day. The average person spends 135 minutes per day on social networks. Also, the number of small businesses advertising on Facebook has doubled to 50 million in recent months.
So if you aren’t using social media to advertise your products or services, you are at risk of falling behind the competition.

Paid social media is quite different from traditional outbound advertising.

Big data and machine learning allows you to target, reach and ultimately find your audience with ease. Each platform has been designed to bring results for different aspects of your business, such as branding, lead generation, website traffic, etc.
These platforms even give you native analytics for insights into how they recommend increasing the performance of your advertising campaign.

Whether you’re looking for reach, engagement, or sales – the case for advertising on social media marketing has never been stronger.
Here are seven benefits to using paid social media advertising for your small business:
• Magnify your reach
• Laser targeting
• Branding
• Content marketing push
• On the fly reach
• Crazy market insights
1. Magnify Your Reach 

1. Advertising on social media gives your brand instant visibility.

Posts from friends and family now receive priority, so organic reach for brands on social media is declining steadily – especially on Facebook. The sheer volume of posts makes connecting with your audience a statistical improbability.
Due to Facebook’s change in their algorithms, posts from family and friends now receive priority over brands and pages. We aren’t saying posting on social media is pointless, but if you are expecting big results from it, you need to be able to put money behind it.
Paid ads are guaranteed a place in the user’s feed, this is what we mean by “putting money behind it”. Despite the sheer volume of posts and ads being ran on social media platforms, everyone gets to be seen.
To reach the most amount of people, you need to find out where your audience spends their time online. Refer to the image below from Sproutsocial.com, this graphic depicts the platforms that each different age group use the most.

2. Laser Targeting

If you take anything away from this, its that Paid social media advertising allows you to reach the exact people you want! Each platform offers a ridiculous amount of targeting options. This goes beyond just basic demographics, some targeting options include; interests, hobbies, personality types, and many, many more.
Look Alike Audience targeting is one of the most powerful options you can use, it allows you to take a list of people. Let’s say, your customer purchase list. You can upload this file to Facebook and tell it to find people that are most like these people, the people that have already purchased from you.
You can create retargeting campaigns by simply installing the Facebook Pixel onto your website. This will track users that have visited, added to cart, purchased etc. It can even track the exact product they looked at, so you can do things like create dynamic product ads that feature the specific products that each individual customers looked at.

3. Branding

Social media is one of the most cost effective ways to create exposure and buzz around your brand. If you business is appearing on social platforms regularly, people will start to recognise you. Once you become a familiar name with your audience you will start to increase credibility, drive engagement, and eventually purchasing behaviour.
Statistics show that 80% of users follow at least one brand on Instagram, of that at least 30% of users have purchased a product they found on the Instagram platform. So, when you are trying to create awareness, create ads that are both informative and memorable. One of the many companies that has used social media branding to their advantage is Sydney recording studio.

4. Content Marketing Push

Social media is an ideal way to distribute your best content.
Social media has become the best way to get your best content out there. According to Sprout Social, nearly 75% of users follow a brand because they’re interested in its product or service. Keep your followers engaged with educational content that will transform them into ready to go buyers!
Social media based ads will help drive website traffic, boost your social media engagement and, if done correctly, improve your ROI for content marketing.

5. On The Fly Reach

The dispersion of social media advertising isunrivaled, it probably doesn’t come as a surprise that 80% of time spent on social media is spent on a mobile device.
When people want to know, find, or purchase something, the first thing we do is pull out our phones. Social media advertising campaigns will help you either get that persons attention in that moment, or hopefully, you will already have made an impression on them with a previous campaign and you will be the first business they come to.

6. Crazy Market Insights

Facebook analytics platform is insane, you can find out just about every detail you could ever want or need. How did your audience react to your ad? Which platform worked best? Which ad graphic performed best? Did an image or video convert better? You can set up customised on the fly analytics that will give you live reports such as clicks, comments, website visits, conversion, any many, many more.
The optimisation you can do with your ads is unparalleled with Facebook insights. Once you know your exact perfect performing audience, nothing can stop your growth.