Even with a large marketing budget you want to ensure you spend it wisely. You may have enough money to advertise on a variety of platforms or decided between advertising on social media versus Google Ads and want to know how to proceed.
But if you’ve decided on social media, which platform should you pursue? Not all social networks are created equal for each niche.
In this article we’ll cover the more major social networks as well as touch on some of the smaller ones. That way you know the best network to pursue for your social media advertising.
What To Consider Before Choosing A Social Network
The primary thing to think about when choosing a social network to advertise on is where your target audience is and where they expect to see your ad.
Different social media networks tend to appeal to different demographics and have different uses, so even if a user is on a few different networks, your ad may not do so well on some of them.
Let’s take a look at a few of the popular ones.
Facebook is a good network for wider audiences and for most products.
While Facebook has users of all ages, most users fall between the 25-34 year old range (Statista). These 25-34 year olds will likely stay with Facebook over time, so the demographics of Facebook will likely get older in the future.
People tend to expect advertising for almost any product on Facebook, so it’s often a good choice as long as your product doesn’t skew young – you may get some traction from a younger audience, but there are networks that are better for this.
Although you can advertise business to business products and services on Facebook, your budget may be served better elsewhere. Sure, if you can afford Facebook and a more business oriented social network, go for it, but if you’re picking just one, there’s better choices for business to business.
LinkedIn is the place to be for business to business advertising. This is the place users expect to see business related advertising and probably what you should be pursuing if you have a business product or service.
That being said, LinkedIn tends to be a lot more expensive than Facebook. If you’re able to get the right targeting on Facebook, you can often get to the same audience for less money.
Does that mean you Facebook can be as good as LinkedIn for business to business advertising? Not really…
Consider that a lot of users don’t use Facebook during working hours, so they’ll only see your advertisement when they’re not in “work mode.” This can work against you in that people aren’t seeing your ad when they’re in a position to convert.
Twitter tends to be good for general brand building. Twitter is often more affordable than the other big networks, but mostly in order to get a lot of reach and views of your business’ tweet.
Going further, Twitter offers some very specific targeting that can’t be achieved on other networks. Not only can you target by audience, you can also target by keyword and hashtag. This means you can easily hop on a trending topic to get reach for your brand.
While you can pursue conversions on Twitter, it may be more useful to simply go for reach here.
So if your product is one with a long sales cycle and you just want people to be aware of it, Twitter may be the way to go.
What About Networks Like TikTok
Without sounding to flippant, we’re going to lump the likes of TikTok, Snapchat and others into the same category.
Snapchat looks to be standing the test of time, but is often overshadowed by the newest network, like TikTok. Eventually there will be a new network that will be the big new thing, and so on.
These networks tend to skew younger so that’s what you need to consider if you’re going to advertise here.
Just keep in mind that if your product is for younger people, they may not be the ones you should be advertising to. Younger audiences may not have the funds to buy your product, so advertising to their parents may be the better option.
We Didn’t Mention A Lot Of Other Networks
We’ve missed out on the likes of YouTube, Instagram, and a lot of other social networks you may have heard of. However, if you’re considering these networks, just think about who your audience is and where/how they expect to see your ads and where those ads fall into your wider marketing strategy.
Every network has its pros and cons, so before just jumping in and advertising, sit and think. That’s what usually gets results.
