Social Media Marketing
Whether you’re working with a six-figure marketing budget, or digging out change from the couch cushions, you want to know your dollars are being used effectively. As you determine how much money you have to promote your business, you’ll naturally gravitate toward platforms that give you a good return on your investment. For many online businesses, that means buying ads on social media. As the social giants – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest – keep growing, you need to know if it’s smart to grow your advertising budget with them, or if it’s better for your company to focus the majority of your resources with just one or two outlets.
Money On Social
The average business was estimated to spend about 30% of its marketing budget on online platforms in 2016, and that number is expected to expand to 35% by 2019. Social media buying represents about 15% of the online spend from businesses. The key to knowing how much money to spend in digital marketing, specifically on social media, is understanding where your customers spend their time. Know your audience – are your buyers female or male? Millennials or Baby Boomers? Income, marital status, the list goes on. Understanding who you’re trying to reach will point you in the direction of where you should be.
So Many Choices
While it’s true you can be good at more than one thing, you’ll want to narrow your focus (and your cash) to the platform that is most representative of your audience. eMarketer reported in August 2016 that two social media sites would become the pack leaders through 2020. The research predicted that Facebook will stay on top with 90% of social media users logging into the platform. Instagram will grow from a 32% penetration rate to 47% by 2020. These projections suggest Facebook and Instagram as the two go-to social media platforms for advertising.
Other Advertising Choices
The traditional advertising methods of television, radio, and newspaper are slowly fading. While not completely obsolete, the old school marketing tools are taking a steady decrease year after year, according to cmosurvey.org. On the contrary, digital marketing is growing significantly. In fact, for the time, eMarketer predicts digital ad spending will outweigh TV, totaling $77.37 billion, while TV ad spending will come in at $72.01 billion.
The idea of digital marketing isn’t necessarily that you should have an astronomical budget; the goal is to use the budget you do have in a smart way. Using online platforms is proven to offer a good return on investment as the spending for digital marketing continues to grow. Spending money that leads to more money should be the goal of your social media marketing.