Social Media Advertising: When to Use What (and When to Back Away)
When to Use What Social Media Platform
LinkedIn: Great for B-to-B, especially for ABM (Account-based marketing) campaigns. The best outlet for promoting webinars, whitepapers, and thought leadership. My best tips? Make your audience as broad as you can (avoiding job title and job level targeting), without using the Audience Expansion feature. Try an InMail campaign offering a top-notch incentive for a SLOW, steady drip of qualified leads. Get your landing page at A+ level before attempting.
Facebook: I use Facebook for both B-to-B and B-to-C campaigns, and you can fight me on that! It excels for eCommerce, niche consumer retail products, content marketing, events, and remarketing. Utilize the Audience Network, Lookalike audiences, and play around with interests and behaviors targeting. It’s easy to make your audience too small using these levers, so watch Frequency closely.
Instagram: Insta obviously offers all of the same targeting capabilities as FB, but skews younger and more mobile. I tend to stick to short B-to-C campaigns here, specifically awareness /education campaigns and eCommerce/retail. The CTAs are just too buried for most B-to-B efforts.
Pinterest: I love advertising on Pinterest! Yes, it skews female dramatically. (Why do people always state this like it’s a detourant?!?) If you’ve got a consumer product, service, or local event coming up that aligns with a typical “pinteresting” topic like food or lifestyle, it’s an amazing space to both build awareness and generate traffic. Optimize your creative by using vertical ad layouts or max width if you’re using video assets.
Twitter: Honestly, I use Twitter advertising for one thing: targeting the followers of both competitors and relevant industry pubs. You must try this for B-to-B if thought leadership is a marketing goal.
NextDoor: For hyperlocal consumer targeting, NextDoor can get you precision audiences that are incredibly engaged. This isn’t a volume play - but if you’re a small-medium local business, it’s a great addition to other standard local marketing tactics.
When to Back Away and Try Something Else
Its very rare that I wouldn’t recommend trying social media to reach a targeted audience. With it’s low entry point and testing-friendly nature, social media as a whole is an incredible tool for the emerging brand. Some exceptions that I have seen:
You’re web presence isn’t ready. If your website is circa 2013 or your landing pages aren’t optimized for goal conversion, stop and back away slowly. This also applies to product photography and other assets like your branding and messaging. Social Media is so visual, and consumers are so trained to look for trust signals online, that your ad dollars have to work SO much harder when you’re not presenting yourself well.
You’re not running paid search campaigns. In 2019, search is just a part of the consumer journey, and fewer and fewer people are clicking on ads the way they used to. This is partially due to the increase in knowledge regarding tracking, and a decrease in overall brand trust. A large chunk of your audience will “Google you” after seeing an ad, rather than click through to your website, so you have to be there. PLUS, if done correctly, your paid search audience will ALWAYS be more qualified than your social media audience, because they are looking for your product in the exact moment that they see an ad. This is magic that can’t be replicated on social media, so cover this base first.
Other Digital Media to Try
In addition to paid search and social media advertising, I have seen incredible success with the following avenues:
Digital Video. YouTube advertising, which is owned by Google, has incredible targeting capabilities for both B-to-B and B-to-C brand awareness. Hulu is great for broad consumer awareness across geographical areas, if you’ve got a minimum of $30k to spare.
If video assets are out of budget for you, think about audio! Both Spotify and Pandora offer low-entry advertising programs using DMA and basic demographic targeting. I’d recommend Spotify for younger targets, and Pandora if your buyer profile skews older and/or higher income. Better yet, try both, since their audiences won’t overlap much. See what works for your brand!
Another low-entry option is Display advertising using Google Ads. I use this specifically for remarketing and product marketing in B-to-B, but given Google’s breadth of In-Market and Interest targeting options, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it for B-to-C either.
What did I miss? How do you like to use social media advertising?
