The Pros and Cons of Paid Social Media Marketing

The number of users on social media continues to grow year after year. If you are a digital marketer, chances are that you already know the importance of social media platforms. 3.48 billion people use social media, which translates to 45% of the world’s population. Not only is that a 9% increase from last year, but those users typically spend around 2.5 hours on social platforms every day. With the opportunity to increase reach, brand loyalty, brand recognition, and conversions all for a relatively low cost, social media marketing is a must. Social media marketing can be further broken down into two segments, paid and organic. Today, we will be taking a look into the world of paid social media marketing.

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Paid social media marketing simply refers to any paid content used on a social platform. Some examples would be a promoted ad that appears on someone’s Instagram feed, or a promoted trend on Twitter. But why should you pay to advertise on social media when the platform is otherwise free to use? One huge reason is reach. Every paid advertisement is a chance to get your brand in front of the eyes of new potential customers. Facebook is by far the largest social media platform, with 2.38 billion monthly active users. Facebook also provides valuable marketing tools that allow businesses to promote content directly to their target audience. These tools are Core Audiences, Custom Audiences, and Lookalike Audiences. This is a blessing to marketers, as it is easier than ever to get your message to the right people.

Core Audiences: The Core Audiences tool allows you to choose who your ad is promoted to based on location, demographics, interests, behavior, and connections. This tool has proven to be useful in my current job. As the Marketing Specialist for Skagit County Parks, Recreation, and Fair, I love to take advantage of the location feature to ensure that community members see our advertisements regarding the local fair. Another example could be promoting a male clothing line. It’s super useful to be able to direct that advertising effort to the male demographic who you are trying to reach.

Custom Audiences: The Custom Audiences tool allows you to find existing customers within Facebook based on contact lists, visitors of your website using Facebook Pixel, or app users who have previously viewed your content. Custom Audiences can be a powerful re marketing tool. For example, if you post a video on Facebook, you can send a free trial advertisement to users who have viewed your video. The familiarity they have developed with your brand will make them much more likely to give the free offer a try.

Lookalike Audiences: Lastly, the Lookalike Audiences tool allows you to connect with Facebook users who are similar to your customers. You can build a lookalike audience by using data from your website or past marketing efforts. For example, you can use your website as the source to build a lookalike audience. Facebook would then gather data on users who have previously visited your website with the help of Facebook Pixel. Finally, Facebook would find similarities between those visitors and target consumers on Facebook with similar demographics and interests.

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As you can see, Facebook can be a very powerful tool to reach your target audience. However, Facebook users are not necessarily as excited about this as we are. According to this report, 51% of users are not comfortable with Facebook compiling data on them. Facebook assigns various categories to users based on its advanced algorithm. These categories represent user’s interests and are what drive the target marketing of the platform. The data has shown to be a little faulty though, as 27% of users feel like data collected on them is unrepresentative. Two of the biggest things users disagree with Facebook on are their cultural affinities and political views. 37% of users who are assigned a cultural affinity category say that they do not have a strong affinity in that group, while 27% of Facebook users say that the political view that they are assigned does not describe them. This can present a problem for marketers, as we can potentially waste money on advertising efforts if Facebook’s algorithm is not getting our ads to the right audience.

The Facebook algorithm can be a taboo subject. Users hate the thought of their personal information falling into the wrong hands, and the latest Facebook data breach has led to over 540 million user records being exposed on Amazon’s cloud computing service. Facebook is also under criminal investigation for deals it has struck with tech companies regarding access to personal information, and who can forget about the Cambridge Analytica scandal? As a social media consumer, it is a little worrisome that a platform such as Facebook can have my personal information leaked to hackers. However, as a marketer I geek out over all the data that can help lead to a successful marketing campaign. While some people may not like the idea of seeing an advertisement for a product they’ve just done a search for, I see the beauty in it. Personally, I don’t mind getting pushed ads for products that I think are cool anyways. It sure beats seeing ads that I have absolutely no interest in. I think that consumers just have to realize that this is the way the world is heading. If you want to be a part of the internet, data collection is just the baggage that comes with it. I would encourage others to try and change their perspective on big data, so they can truly admire how far technology has come. Regardless of your views on data collection, there is no doubt that paid social media marketing campaigns can be extremely helpful to business. The ability to more precisely target ads is changing the game in digital marketing, and I think every business should be taking advantage of that to some degree.

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