Working to get the attention of those you are trying to sell to is great, but how are you able to keep your prospects attention in order to close the deal? As a business, you must continuously bring your best foot forward on the advertising front, and gear all campaigns towards building long-term relationships.

In a previous blog post, we told you all about the stages of digital marketing so that you could better understand the life cycle and why we feel it is crucial to analyze and adjust your digital advertising campaigns to find success. However, we realize that the world of digital advertising is vast and can be overwhelming.  With so many platforms available to advertise on, how are you as a business owner to know what platform to use that will provide the best ROI (return on investment) for your efforts? Let’s dive into the best platforms for your business to reach a new and targeted audience, fast!

What is digital advertising?

Digital advertising refers to using data to help target the desired audience through technology. These types of advertising campaigns are set up to be objective-based and intend to achieve specific business goals, such as getting new customers into your store.

Why advertise on social platforms?

Social media advertising is a brilliant way to reach new and targeted audiences quickly. By the time 2020 began, we were already seeing a 20% uptick in social media advertising impressions. Currently, 3.8 billion people use social media, which is more than half of the world’s population. On average, people spend 144 minutes a day on social media, and this number is continuing to grow as the COVID pandemic has led to users spending more time on technology while the world is mostly closed.

So, which social platform will help you find digital advertising success? The answer may surprise you. Let’s take a look at our top four platforms we at Momentum3 use to advertise for our clients.

1. Google Campaigns

Google Ad Campaigns are all about instant results while offering its uses an extensive and vast reach. Let us face it, not much is able to beat the quality that comes with search intent. They are the most requested ad type we get from our clients. Full disclosure: we are Google Partners, and we strive to keep our Google Ads team certified and knowledgeable on all things Google. This is why many clients reach out to us to handle their Google campaigns, but it is not why we are passionate about this ad platform. We are passionate about it because we see first hand how it works, and we understand it’s capabilities. Google ads offer a wide range of campaign types and placement ability to help you expand your reach and gain awareness. Google offers campaigns based on acquiring sales, search ads, video ads, and display ads.

Your Ad Targeting Options with Google are:

  • Keywords – Keyword-based targeting helps Advertisers to get an audience based on keywords.
  • Customer Match – Target user with a batch of email addresses that we upload to Google.
  • Retargeting – Some agencies report that Facebook gives more results on retargeting ads than Google.
  • Demographic – Google demographic targeting is limited as compared to Facebook.
  • Geo-Targeting – Google geo-targeting is the same as Facebook.

There are so many pros to choosing to advertise with Google, but we must tell you that Google Ads requires a lot of work and maintenance in order to have a successful campaign. This is not a “set it and forget it” advertising choice for businesses, like some of the other platforms can be. These ads require that you pay close attention to details. At Momentum3, we run Google Ads for clients all over the United States. Our attention to detail is par-none, and we would love to help run your businesses Google Ads as well. Should you be interested in running your campaign yourself, we previously wrote a blog entitled A Beginners Guide to Google Ads that can help you on the path to getting started with Google Ads.

2. Facebook Campaigns

In a previous article, we spoke all about why small businesses need to be on social media. We spoke about the benefits that Facebook specifically offers and how it can help you further increase your companies visibility. For a Facebook campaign to be the correct choice for your business, the result you as a business should be looking to achieve is brand awareness. Are you looking to get more page and post engagement? What about having a campaign goal of clientele filling out lead forms or RSVPing to an event? Facebook also allows it’s campaigns to retarget clientele and to run video ad campaigns that work to entice clientele further to help them learn more about you as an organization. Facebook campaigns help funnel existing leads through your marketing process and convert these leads for a relatively low cost. Does this sound like the type of campaign you are looking to spend your advertising budget? If so, Facebook campaigns are the way to go. Did you know that Facebook allows you to target your audience thoroughly, so you aren’t wasting your budget advertising to individuals who are not in your realm of service? They also make testing campaigns easy and scalable.

Your ad targeting options with Facebook are:

  • Psychographics – Facebook’s target ads on users’ education, workplace, and likes, among others.
  • Retargeting – Facebook gives more results on retaining ads than Google.
  • Demographic – Unlike Google, Facebook demographic targeting is extensive and accurate.
  • Custom Audience – Target users who have already visited your website.
  • Geo-Targeting – Facebook geo-targeting is the same as Google.

Paid advertising on Facebook allows for immediate ways to get your brand noticed, and thus increase your following and potential for sales. Buffer recently created a blog about how Facebook Ad Campaigns work, and also the outcome you can expect with this type of campaign. It found that with a daily budget of $5, they received nine likes per day, one homepage click per day, and 787 new people reached.

A Facebook ad tip from our professionals is that if you choose this type of campaign, keep retargeting campaigns in mind. They offer those who use them higher conversion rates and lower CPCs.

3. Twitter Campaigns

Twitter campaigns are best suited for creating leads and generating sales, and you can easily pay for the performance that you hope to achieve. With Twitter, there is no minimum budget to advertise. In turn, your ads can cost as little or as much as you’d like. This result is achieved through five different types of twitter campaigns.

  • Website clicks – which encourage people to visit and take a specific action on your website
  • Followers and awareness- allow your business to gain impressions and followers
  • App installs- allow you to promote your app via tweet and pay per click to open or install your app
  • Tweet engagement – these allow you to promote tweets with the goal of starting a conversation about your brand. These options will allow you to find the best campaign option for your business

Just like with Facebook ad campaigns, there is an abundance of ad targeting options for Twitter campaigns as well.

Your Ad Targeting Options with Twitter are:

  • Keywords – Act on signals of intent by delivering messages to users based on what they have recently tweeted or engaged within tweets.
  • Tailored Audience – Use your CRM lists to reach groups of users on Twitter.
  • Follower – Target the followers of relevant accounts and handles to reach people who would be interested in your content.
  • Demographic – Target based on location, gender, device, and language.
  • Behavior – Reach high-intent audience on twitter based on shopping and spending patterns.

From an advertisers’ standpoint, the only downside to Twitter is that it is a smaller audience than other platforms such as Facebook. That can be okay, as they have a great return for your investment. A recent statistic says that 63% of Twitter users follow small businesses, and 85% of those users feel more connected to those businesses. Another thing to keep in mind about Twitter is that 2/3rds of the individuals on Twitter are said to be male. If your clientele is typically female, Twitter may not be the best option for your organization.

If Twitter seems like a wonderful platform for your business, we want to offer you this reminder and piece of advice. Chances are that with Twitter you are reaching out to individuals who do not already follow your brand. With that said, we want to remind you to make sure your profile and posts show what your business is truly all about. Your profile and bio should reflect that as well.

Is Twitter the best online advertising platform? We will leave that up to you to decide.

4. LinkedIn Campaigns

LinkedIn is all about building professional connections, which can help your business to grow should you primarily rely on B2B sales. LinkedIn ads allow you to take three different marketing objectives.

  • Awareness – growing your company or brand audience.
  • Consideration – drive your audience to website visits or increased engagement.
  • Conversions – collect leads that will help to drive website conversions.

The LinkedIn advertising platform is more powerful than you might initially realize, and the answer to why that is can be found in the targeting and campaign options below.

LinkedIn offers campaign options such as: text ads, in-mail ads, dynamic ads, and conversion ads.

Your Ad Targeting Options with LinkedIn are:

  • Company – Target your ads based on company size, company industry, and company name.
  • Demographic – Choose the best audience based on location, age, and gender.
  • Audience Expansion – Increase reach by showing your ads to audiences with similar attributes to your chosen targeting.
  • Professional – Target ads to job function, collegiate degrees, job title, field of study, and member skills.

Having the ability to advertise on an industry-specific level is beneficial for small businesses. To get the most out of your LinkedIn ads, we suggest creating different ads for each of your buyer personas, and then tweak the copy accordingly. This will allow you to see which ad versions work best with your audience and created more targeted campaigns in the future. A quick LinkedIn ad tip – headlines that are under 150 characters have the best engagement and higher click-through rates.

How can you make the most out of your marketing campaign?

Having the ability to cross-market your product or service on multiple platforms is a wonderful way to ensure success. Cross marketing gives you the opportunity to see which channel provides the best response for your business, and even allows you to test headlines, descriptions, and images to find what yields the best results. But before you begin your advertising campaigns, figure out your business objective and marketing goal for the campaign. Know your target audience and consider what social networks your audience is on. Pay for what matters most to you, impressions or engagement, and design your ads while keeping mobile in mind.

Here are some other ways you can get the most out of your campaign.

  • Track your ROI – John Hayes said, “We tend to overvalue the things we can measure, and undervalue the things we cannot.” As you create your campaigns, observe the competition, and track the moments of success within them. Use this data to test different headlines and descriptions to see if you can raise the bar of success.
  • Ensure your brand is cohesive across platforms – This is one of our favorite ways in which we like to help our clients. We enjoy helping every aspect of their brand to share a unified voice and visual approach. When done correctly this helps your customers (both future and current) recognize you and learn with you no matter the platform. It also helps to bring about a sense of trust amongst your customers. If you are failing to align your brand with inconsistent messages across platforms you can break your prospect’s experience and trust.
  • Use Social Media for Remarketing Efforts – Seize the moment! We suggest doing this by using display ads to drive past visitors to your social media. You can also target people you already know for repeat business. How neat is that? These campaigns allow you to work smarter, not harder. And who doesn’t want that?

At Momentum3, we understand that being able to set-up digital ad campaigns and being able to set-up digital ad campaigns that convert are two different things. Please know that you are not in this alone, and we would love to help your digital advertising campaigns be successful. The benefits of running digital ads are incredible, and if you are looking to take your business to the next level, digital advertising is definitely the way to go.