Where, How and What: Evolve Marketing’s guide to online media advertising
Part One: Where should you advertise?
With thousands of social networking sites accessible to billions of fingertips, finding your voice as a brand has never been more important. We’re going to talk you through the five key players in this space; Facebook, Instagram, Linked In, Google Ads and YouTube.
Facebook is a platform for sharing, liking and communicating with ‘Friends’ and ‘Pages’ through video, image, stories and text. According to this US Pew Research Center study, 69% of adults use Facebook, with more women online than men.That being said, this platform is dominated by Gen Y and X, the 25 to 49-year old’s.
At Evolve, we leverage Facebook’s detailed targeting capabilities to drill down your key demographics to deliver one of three objectives. These include;
- Awareness: build brand awareness, increase reach
- Consideration: increase website traffic, increase engagement
- Conversation: drive online sales, increase traffic to brick and mortar stores
These overarching goals require in-depth consideration, and expert execution to achieve optimal ROI and reach the right people for your brand.
Facebook/Instagram Ads ‘new campaign’ objectives
A picture speaks a thousand words, and the folks at Instagram nailed this back in 2010 with their image-based sharing platform. Look, we’re not saying ‘see above’, but Instagram is kind of like the little sister to Facebook (Facebook owns Instagram). Since Instagram ads are initiated through the Facebook Ads interface, this makes it super easy to run the same campaign simultaneously across Instagram and Facebook. However, there’s a substantial difference in the audiences of both platforms, so keep in mind that what works for your Facebook demographic may not necessarily work for your Instagram peeps.
Overall, the Instagram audience is still female-driven, outweighing men by 12% and unlike Facebook, Instagram’s audience is far younger on average.
Google Ads
Formerly known as ‘Google Adwords’, Google Ads is based on users’ keyword searches, propping paid ads to the top. As you can see below, these look identical to organic results, minus the green ‘Ad’ label in the top left. With 40,000 searches a second, Google allows brands to have their voice stand out amongst the rest through different campaign types such as;
- Sales
- Leads
- Website traffic
- Product and brand consideration
It’s hard to breakdown the demographics on this one because most research indicates Google’s billions of yearly searches mean a majority of the internet-accessible world has used the search engine. SEO Tribunal’s report found ‘the average person’ conducts around 3-4 searches a day, so it’s important to have experts initiate and run your campaigns to drill down the right audience and ad copy.
Google Search for “reusable coffee cup” showing ads targetted for those keywords
YouTube
Video-sharing site, YouTube just became the second most popular social media site in the world and is on track to surpass Facebook for monthly users with over 2 billion logging onto the platform each month. YouTube began in 2005 and has since generated a worldwide user-base, offering videos from every category imaginable – unboxings and tutorials to slime making and memes.
The percentage of adults using YouTube is 4% greater than Facebook, with a bigger male audience than female. By far the biggest demographic for YouTube is the 18-29 years bracket, with 91% of those aged in this sector visiting YouTube. Similar to the Facebook/Instagram duo, these ads are set up using the Google Ads interface, but once again, advertising on these platforms requires two completely different approaches, and knowledge about the right audience, where they hang out on the internet, and what content they engage best with.
Linked In
Linked In is a Microsoft owned social networking site for professionals across the world. This platform puts business at the forefront, making it perfect for B2B communication. While it’s on the smaller side of the rest, at 575 million users, opportunity abounds to reach the right people through campaigns spanning three types of objectives;
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Conversions
27% of adults use LinkedIn, with 29% of males compared to 24% of females using the site. 51% of these users are college-educated and earn an above-average wage, according to Pew. This advertising backend on this platform is different too and it isn’t for every business so it’s important to keep in mind what your business objectives are before creating a campaign on this site.
LinkedIn Ads ‘new campaign’ objectives
So that’s part one of our breakdown of the top five players in the social media advertising game. As experts in social media advertising, we recommend each alone and in combination respectively, dependent on your business’ communication needs and objectives.
Evolve Marketing has over 19 years’ experience as a full-service agency operating out of Brisbane with a wide portfolio of values clients across B2B and B2C sectors. Talk to us today so we can help you find the right place to bring your voice to the digital world.