How to choose which platform to use for your next ad campaign? When is it better to concentrate on social media ads, and when is it more beneficial to invest in Google Ads?
Let’s find out!
When do you need to use Social media ads?
In short, advertising on social media is especially helpful when you need to grow your brand awareness. It helps you build your community and engage with your potential customers. In other words, the main focus of social media ads is the upper funnel – awareness and consideration stages.
Key advantages and reasons behind running social media ads
Social media ads are especially great for:
1. Improving your brand recognition and building awareness
Even though, in this case, users are not yet ready to buy your product, they will become familiar with your brand. In other words, it’s your chance to show the audience what you stand for and why they need to consider choosing your brand.
2. Getting insights about your target audience
Advertising on social media helps you to learn more about your audience. Based on the data gathered, you can improve your next campaign and optimize your performance.
3. Growing engagement rate
In addition to increased reach, advertising on social media is a good way to increase your audience engagement rate. Showing relevant content can help you to attract your audience’s attention and bring users to the next stage of the funnel.
4. Increasing inbound traffic
Thanks to social media ads, you can significantly increase your inbound traffic. Here we are talking primarily about the users from the upper funnel. There is a high chance they are not yet ready to buy your product, but by clicking on your ads, they can find out more information about your company and your products, sign up for a newsletter.
5. Generating and improving brand loyalty
Above all, social media ads can help you strengthen your brand loyalty. In addition to growing awareness, advertising on social media is a great way to nurture and develop relationships with potential and existing customers.
6. Building a brand community
Social media platforms are a great place for the development of your brand community. Depending on your company’s industry, it might be helpful for your brand to build a community. This tactic is beneficial if you are eager to nurture one of the most effective communication channels – Word-of-mouth (WOM). Communities can play a significant role in the development of your brand and your company’s growth.
Generally speaking, social media ads are a great way to build up your upper funnel, increase your reach, improve brand recognition, and develop trust in your brand.
Trends in social media advertising
Even though Facebook and LinkedIn are probably the first platforms that come to your mind when you think about social media advertising, it is about to change. Although these two platforms are currently most used for advertising, you should not overlook such platforms as TikTok, Twitter, and Snapchat.
That’s right. Those platforms are continuously working on developing new features and functions that could be of use for modern digital marketers.
Hard to believe? Let’s have a look at some statistics!
TikTok
According to wallaroomedia, at the current moment, TikTok has more than 1 billion monthly active users. And as of January 2021, the app was installed 62 million times, which made it the second most installed non-gaming app worldwide.
Although many marketers still prefer ignoring and avoiding this trending newcomer, TikTok’s popularity keeps growing, uncovering more opportunities for ads and lead generation for brands.
Besides paid ads, companies can leverage other opportunities on TikTok to boost their reach:
- Running branded challenges
- Collaborating with trending content creators
- Partnering with influencers
Need more inspiration? Check out the latest success stories from TikTok.
According to the latest company report, Twitter aims to drive more value for advertisers by focusing on performance-based advertising and expanding offerings for small and medium businesses. The company already achieved tremendous results by making $1.05 billion in revenue from ads last quarter.
According to the report, Twitter’s total ad engagements increased 32% YOY (year-over-year).Get more inspiration and ideas for your ad campaign by exploring Twitter advertiser success stories!
Snapchat
According to the recent company’s report, Snapchat is constantly increasing its user base as well as opportunities for advertisers. The company highlighted that one of its main focuses right now is strengthening its capabilities to drive more outcomes for advertisers.
As a result, during the second quarter of 2021, Snapchat achieved a 23% increase in daily active users (YOY) and a 116% increase in revenue (YOY).
And again, it is never a bad idea to check out what works best on this platform. So here is some more inspiration for those who want to try out Snapchat for running ad campaigns!
What is the main takeaway here?
If your target audience is heavily using Snapchat, Twitter, or TikTok, don’t hesitate to try out these platforms for your next ad campaign.
The crucial thing here is understanding where your audience actually spends most of their time. And rather than investing in all the social media platforms, better focus on those most popular amongst your target segment.
When do you need to use Google Ads?
In short, Google Ads are used mainly by brands for flourishing their lower funnel, in other words, increasing hard conversions.
Keep in mind that the company often needs to invest in both awareness and conversion stages to ensure sustainable growth.
According to statistics, people are more likely to click on the ad of the company they have heard about. Therefore, investing solely in Google Ads might not be sufficient.
Key advantages and reasons behind running Google Ads
Without a doubt, running Google Ads takes a big part of a marketing budget, but the massive reach of Google Ads remains attractive to many businesses that want to scale their leads rapidly.
Here are the key benefits of Google Ads:
1. Google Ads are a fast way to gain leads
It takes time to build up your SEO strategy and gain organic visibility across social channels. Google Ads allow you to target warm leads and significantly increase your inbound traffic.
2. Transparency and competition
Thanks to Google ads, you can easily compete with your competition on SERPs by automatically optimizing set bids.
3. Reach more potential customers
With Google Ads, you can set up your ad campaigns on platforms such as Youtube, Gmail, and Display Networks. These platforms have enormous potential reach.
4. Understand your target audience better
Google ads give you many insights into your target audience: for example, most-used keywords, demographics, locations, and other relevant information that can help you build a more specific image of your target segment.
Key takeaways
It is crucial to understand that Social media and Google Ads are rather complementary and should be used in combination since they serve different purposes.
Social media ads are great for building brand recognition. However, they are less likely to help you gain many conversions.
On the other hand, your users have a higher chance to click on your Google ad if they already saw or heard about your brand.
Hence, when it comes to smart advertising, social media ads and Google Ads often go hand in hand.
Advertising on social media can help you grow your brand awareness and nurture leads from the upper funnel.
In contrast to social media, the main focus of Google Ads is hard conversions and sales. In other words, Google Ads help you to target those users who are more highly interested in your product and are more likely to buy it.
Knowing the application of different types of ads can help you focus your attention on what you need at the current stage. For example, if you aim to grow your brand awareness, learn more about your audience, and improve the word-of-mouth for your product or service, you should focus on socials media ads.
And suppose you already know a lot about your audience. In that case, you have solid brand recognition, and your main goal is to convert users into paying customers – investing in Google Ads will help you yield desired results.
However, to ensure the sustainable growth of your company, Google and social media ads should go hand in hand. Either way, you need both awareness and conversion-oriented campaigns to make your business flourish.
Learn more about the customer journey and KPIs that are crucial to track at each stage.
Depending on your marketing objectives, choosing either Google ads or social media ads will boost your sales, engagement or awareness. If you are interested in knowing more about how you can optimize your marketing campaigns and how to make their executions more successful, read our next article that will be published soon. Stay tuned!
