The paid social media landscape of 2019 is constantly evolving and will continue to do so. The only consistency is the importance and relevance of involving it in your business. But why? Well, organic social reach is slowly shrinking in effectiveness as the leading social networks push their paid channels to monetise platform investment.
It can be argued that the first era of social was to promote engagement and reach. Today, social media advertising is unequivocally a platform of acquisition and conversion. Social commerce is growing much faster than retail ecommerce. In 2018, $51.3 Billion USD was generated through paid social media. And if you weren’t sold on the benefits of paid social media yet, revenue is said to increase 10.5% annually.
It’s immature to still view social media as a platform for purely content and conversation; it’s now an established channel for customer acquisition, prospecting, remarketing and converting.
Organic vs Paid Social
Unlike organic social activity, paid social (as the name suggests) isn’t free. What you are essentially doing is paying for ad space on a social media platform, to display your ad in whatever format you wish to whomever you wish from a demographic you create.
The end goal can be optimised for whatever you decide, it all depends on what your goal is! Conversions, traffic, video views, you name it.
Do people really buy from social media?
According to research from Crowdtap:
- 64% of people use social media to find inspiration for their buying habits
- 46% of social media users are using social platforms while thinking about making a purchase
- 40% of users are actively deciding what to buy based on what they have seen on social media
With spending from consumers on social media only set to increase, can you afford not to be working with paid social media?
What makes paid social special?
Other than being able to reach new users at an incredibly reasonable rate using a sophisticated targeting system, paid social media’s ability to remarket to and re-engage its users is invaluable. Perhaps someone has been on your site and shown some interest in buying from you, but then changed their mind at the eleventh hour; you’ve missed out on a sale. However, paid social’s ability to find users with pre-existing interest is something your business really shouldn’t be ignoring.
Have you ever ran paid social activity before? Maybe you’ve tried it and you didn’t get the results you wanted. Or maybe you’ve no experience but want to get it going for your business… Whatever the case, we want to help! Get in touch with us now.