Paying for social media?! You better believe it.
Why it’s the best decision for (literally) any type of business
Picture this: You sell door handles. Your customers are usually contractors — people who know their business and don’t need products dolled up. So the question is… How would you benefit from using paid social media?
To answer this, I talked to Alex Johnson. Alex is the Paid Media Specialist at Agency Media, dealing exclusively with paid advertising. He’s giving us a little breakdown about what paid social is and why we should all use it (plus some very awesome, exclusive resources for you at the end).
CL: What exactly is paid media?
AJ: Well if someone likes your Facebook page and they start seeing your posts, that’s just social media. You and me have made a connection and you’re interested in what I’m saying.
Paid media is paying to get my posts in front of more eyes that aren’t already introduced to what I’m doing — so people who haven’t discovered me yet.
CL: How does it work?
AJ: We’ll just use Facebook and Google as an example. Each one has its own algorithm or equation.
If you chose a goal like, I just want people to like my posts, Facebook uses an algorithm to find a combination of the people that fit the audience you want and that are active when it comes to liking posts.
Another example of how it works would be using it to get your audience to come to your web page. Facebook, again, uses a combination of your goals and their historical data from everyone on Facebook, to target the most effective audience.
It’s like you’re putting in your restrictions and then letting Facebook determine the best selection through their algorithm.
And the beauty of Facebook is all the information they have. They know, at the very least, how old you are, your gender, and your activity. In turn, they use this info to effectively determine who would be interested in your product or service.
CL: What can businesses gain from paid media?
AJ: First, being active on social media is equivalent to opening up an incredibly affordable store online. You may not actually be physically selling anything on this store but it’s the brand, storefront, and presence of your company. And second, you’ll get business intelligence that you were never able to get before.
CL: Business intelligence?
AJ: Yeah, so you can put out an ad and even if the ad fails, you’re still recording data of people who interacted with it and didn’t like it. That’s really valuable information.
Whereas if you put out a newspaper, how can you tell what worked? Sales might go up, but the only thing you know is that you spent X amount on a newspaper article and got 20 more leads in one month. So that worked but why — what’s the correlation of all those people coming in? What do they have in common?
You’d be doing a lot of guess work. But with advertising now, you can skip the guesswork and look at solid statistics.
Another thing to note is that if you’re just now thinking of getting on the internet or Facebook, you’re already two or three steps behind.
We’re moving to a mobile world. Desktop was a few years ago and now everything needs to be optimized for mobile.
You need to get on now so you’re not three steps back in one year or six months when you finally clue in that this is important.
CL: So let’s say businesses haven’t gotten online or thought about paid social media. How do they know where to start?
AJ: Facebook is great for Canadian businesses specifically because pretty much 99% of Canadians are on Facebook. Where, let’s say you do something local on Google, a lot of people may not even be searching in your area. Facebook allows you to be location-based vs topic-based.
This makes Facebook the place to advertise if people aren’t yet aware of your product or service. It’s the introductory stage.
Google would be a more advanced step. It’s great for research and the learning stage. Your audience would be someone who wants to know more about a certain product or issue associated with it. You want to have a presence on Google if people often search specifically for what you offer.
LinkedIn is for professionals. It’s going to probably start shifting into more of a Facebook-type platform but it’s really good for advertising something like a B2B market. For example, I wouldn’t suggest a hair salon product on LinkedIn.
And then Instagram, which is probably the hardest to advertise on because it’s just pure content. A 12 year-old-girl in Outlook, Saskatchewan can have better pictures than Walmart Canada. It’s very difficult to use Instagram to advertise because organic posts can easily dominate. If you’re not able to produce really high quality content, then you’re probably going to want to stay away from it as a selling tool, but it could be a way to show off the personality of your business.
The crazy thing is this is only the tip of the iceberg. But don’t worry, we won’t leave you hanging. Alex is writing an ebook specifically for businesses like yours, to help you better understand the movement towards paid social and what you can get from it. Follow our blog and watch for the release!
