Why are Social Ads worth it?
Social networks have become an important advertising tool for small, medium and large companies as well as for individual entrepreneurs and content creators. However, many people wonder whether spending money on advertising on social networks is worth it. We will try to tackle this concern through various arguments and key figures.
Before going into detail, I’ll start by quickly introducing the definition of Paid Media. It is the method that allows us to put forward sponsored posts on the different social network platforms. The main goal is to reach a maximum number of people who are potentially interested in the message that is being promoted. Indeed, more and more promoters are setting up strategies to reach not the maximum number of people but the most relevant audience possible.
Over the years, social ads have become an important part of the advertising world. The graph below shows the evolution of spending on social ads in the USA since 2016
In order to determine the relevance of paid media, we need to discuss several topics. First the difference between organic and paid, then the reasons why paid media would be a wise idea.
The difference between organic and paid
The main difference between organic and paid media is that one is free, the other is paid. Indeed, when we talk about organic posts, we are talking about all the posts that anyone can publish on their feed as we can do with our personal accounts. Organic is a very important relay because, in order to be successful in your social media strategy, you need to be able to create a community that will react to your publications in a constant way without having to resort to Paid Media. This requires an unwavering rigour and determination.
However, if you are a company and you want to be visible at a given time in a given area in order to sell products, for example. Paid media will prove to be a formidable weapon.
Benefits of Social Media Advertising
Now, if we were to find clear reasons for using paid media we have a few that stand out and justify it on their own.
Firstly, to improve brand awareness. Studies show that users spend an average of 2.5 hours on social media and digital marketers need to take advantage of this time to build brand awareness and loyalty. With this in mind, social media marketing can also be used to bring back former customers through retargeting, especially on YouTube.
Secondly, digital advertising allows you to have total control over various parameters that can be subject to much more uncertainty than traditional advertising (on the street or on TV). Among these parameters, the most important is the audience. Indeed, the tools of Meta or even YouTube, Snapchat and the rest allow you to make a considerable sorting of the people you want to target. This sorting can be done according to several parameters, among them geographical area, interests, age, profession, family situation… These highly developed tools are not negligible from an advertising and cost optimization perspective.
This makes a perfect transition to the last clear reason to use Paid Media: Costs. Traditional advertising campaigns have costs that will depend on when they are shown on TV, and how often they are shown… the brand is forced to pay for a service that they can’t even slightly predict the outcome. The social networks offer a whole structure for budgeting that allows the costs to be reduced to what the campaign manager wants. For example, the campaign manager can set a maximum limit of money that cannot be exceeded for Facebook Ads. Another interesting system used is the “Pay-per-click” which asks a simple question to the marketer: How much are you willing to pay for a user to click (and not view) your ad?
More than just reading blogs or other sources, the Social Ads experience can be easily tested by going to META business manager for example, which is the main tool for using digital advertising. It is by navigating these platforms and training that the use of them becomes less a source of questioning but of certainty.
About this article
This article has been written by a student on the Grenoble Ecole de Management’s Advanced Masters in Digital Strategy Management. As part of a content creation assignment, students are given the task of writing articles based on their digital interests and disseminate the articles online. Articles are marked but we make minimal changes to the content. Thanks for reading! James Barisic, Programme Director, MS DSM.
