Social Media Marketing 2021: The 6 Most Effective Social Platforms

While there are hundreds of different marketing strategies in the world of digital marketing, only one can deliver consistent revenue from day one: social media marketing.

Social media marketing is paid advertising displayed to users on social media platforms. Social networks use user information to serve highly relevant ads based on interactions within a given platform. When your target market matches the demographics of a social platform user, social media marketing can result in a huge increase in your revenue and sales with lower acquisition costs.

What are the benefits of advertising in the form of social media marketing?

Why is advertising on social media platforms the best choice for a quick ROI?

Most Online Marketing Channels require significant lead time to achieve ROI. Organic content marketing, for example, works best once backlinks and SEO traction have been generated.

Some marketing channels, on the other hand, bring quick results, but not day after day. Influencer marketing, for example, can get you quick results in the form of sales with little effort (but high cost). But these results are not scalable over time. Instead, revenue is generated per post and decreases over time.

Other online marketing channels, on the other hand, are consistent and scalable, but they are relatively time-consuming to set up initially. Google Ads, for example, can deliver consistent results for your brand, but it takes a while to master and achieve a specific ranking.

With social media marketing, on the other hand, you can generate consistent sales from the first day your website is online. For e-commerce websites in particular, the ability to acquire new customers immediately and continuously is of enormous importance. And even if you don't have a positive net income on your first sale, referrals, email marketing, and customer retention can pay off with every new customer.

That's why global social media ad spend doubled from $16 billion in 2014 to $31 billion in 2016 and has been growing year over year since.

In this guide, we'll look at how you can use social media marketing to sustainably increase your website's sales. We'll look at some of the most popular social media platforms, share some advanced tactics and tips for setting up your campaigns, and show you how to efficiently manage your multi-channel advertising.

The different types of platforms for your social media marketing

There are now a large number of social platforms and new ones come onto the market almost every week. In our experience, it's best to start with the most popular platforms. Once you have profitable strategies in place for your target audience, you can then allocate some of your budget to more experimental campaigns.

• Social networks: Facebook, LinkedIn
• Photo sharing: Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest
• Video sharing: TikTok

Why Is Social Media Marketing So Effective For Your E-Commerce Promotion? 

We bring you the 6 best social media channels where you can use proven advertising strategies and get consistent ROI. But what are the advantages of social media ads anyway?

• Increase your sales and fan base.
• Leverage customer-generated content for ads (which work better, too).
• Better targeting new and returning customers.
• A/B testing running ads, leveraging each platform's insights analytics.

The fascinating thing about social advertising is that there are virtually no limits to scaling. You don't have to wait for someone to search for the keywords you want. Nor do you have to wait for someone to read your blog. If you want to reach 50,000 people in a day, you can do it with social media marketing.

Which social network you choose for your online business depends on 3 important factors:

• Where your target customers are most concentrated (app usage, groups, etc.)
• Where your target customers are most likely to be reached (preferred media, targeted targeting, etc.)
• Where your target customers are most actively engaging with ads (requires testing)

To be successful on social media, you need to present your enticing offer through an enticing medium to the consumer who actually finds it enticing. And in a place where that consumer will actually see it.

So how do you decide which social media platform to run your ads on? We take a closer look at each provider.

1. Facebook Ads 

Facebook is THE universal social media network. monthly active users steadily, peaking in Q2 2021. With approximately 2.9 billion monthly active users as of Q2 2021, Facebook is home to more than a quarter of the world's population, offering advertisers an unparalleled opportunity to reach virtually everyone.

When it comes to online commerce, Facebook particularly excels at lead generation. If you want to collect email addresses, then Facebook is the right address, and at a cost of less than CHF 1 per lead.

The most common model is to run a Facebook ad that leads directly to a high-converting landing page, which in turn offers some sort of free lead magnet or product bundle.

Common examples of promotional content on Facebook include:

• Product Coupons
• Sitewide discounts
• Limited Offers
• Giveaways
• Free Shipping
• ebook
• white paper

These leads can then be nurtured with a targeted autoresponder that introduces consumers to your brand and products. Many e-commerce brands also use bundled product offerings to increase perceived value and generate instant sales.

Facebook offers more targeting options than any other advertising platform. Advertisers can search by location, job description, interests, past activities, and many other incredibly valuable criteria.

Facebook Ad Pricing 

Prices vary widely and depend on various factors such as: B. the audience you want to target and the budget you have set for your ads. Generally speaking, the more money you're willing to invest, the more efficient Facebook's algorithm will be at spending your budget, and the better your ad performance will become over time.

According to a comprehensive study by AdEspresso, for example, the average cost per click (CPC) for Facebook ads is around 0.28 cents and the cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM) is $7.19. The study also broke this down by age and gender. The 65+ age group showed the most consistent trend towards lower CPC costs over time. On average, women's CPC costs were 4 cents higher than men's.

How to set up your Facebook ad campaigns 

Setting up and running successful Facebook Ads campaigns consists of 3 main parts:

• ad creation
• Set up audience targeting
• retargeting

Advanced tactics for Facebook advertising 

• Your prospecting and retargeting ads should be unique, and your ads for each interest segment should be tailored to each audience.
  
  
• Use prospecting ads to increase brand awareness and get your product known. Then use retargeting ads to convince users who have already expressed interest to buy. Retargeting ads are ideal for a more aggressive approach and closing the sale.
  
  
• The use of emoji in ads has spread like wildfire, even among larger, established brands. They can be very effective in getting higher CTRs, but as with all strategies, you should run A/B tests to be sure.
  
  
• Always test! Ad fatigue is a pervasive problem on Facebook. It is therefore advisable to place new ads every 2 weeks and to test them against each other.
  
  
• Lookalike Audiences are a staple for many advertisers - and rightly so. They are very good for prospecting. However, you should be careful not to overlay the lookalikes with additional target groups. Because you run the risk of reducing your potential reach and missing out on valuable customers.

How to Get Better Facebook Ad Results in Just 5 Minutes

Large e-commerce companies can use their Insights data to quickly export a list of their customer cohorts with the highest average order value and lifetime value. This data can then be used to find lookalikes on Facebook. This only takes 5 minutes.

2. Instagram Promotion 

While Facebook is the undisputed king of social media with its staggering user base, the company's hottest acquisition is starting to look like the king of social advertising. Instagram now has more than 1 billion monthly active users and boasts one of the highest engagement rates on social media, 58% higher than Facebook.

Instagram is heavily image and video oriented. Therefore, online brands with products that are visually appealing or that are able to incorporate visual media into their campaigns achieve the best results on this social media channel. It's also worth noting that Instagram's user base is heavily geared towards the 18-29 age group and slightly more towards women and minorities. If some or all of these traits align with your target audience or buyer persona, then Instagram is probably the best choice for your business.

Unlike organic posts, Instagram ads can be designed to link directly to a product page or other landing page, allowing for direct interaction with your products.

Instagram Ad Pricing 

On average, the cost of Instagram ads is in the same range as Facebook ads, at $5 per thousand views (CPM). While the price may be similar, most recent stats show that Instagram gets a lot more engagement on its posts and ads than Facebook.

How to set up an Instagram ad campaign

Since Instagram is owned by Facebook, setting up Instagram ads is very similar to Facebook. It makes sense to set up your ads for Instagram in the Facebook Ads Manager and have them displayed on both platforms with their respective placements such as Instagram and Facebook stories, feeds and in-stream functions.

First, focus on Custom Audiences. These can be audiences created through pixel tracking, an email list, or a followers list. Lists of users who have engaged with you in the past work best. When you're ready to move beyond custom audiences, your next step should be lookalike audiences. Facebook/Instagram's algorithm is very good at finding similar audiences that will respond well to your ads.

Use user-generated images of real people, too User Generated Content (UGC)called. Stock photos do NOT work on Instagram. Make your offers irresistible. The visual nature of Instagram primarily drives impulse purchases. Also, take hashtags seriously: Instagram is powered by hashtags, and they're a great way to engage with niche audiences.

3. Pinterest Ads 

With 478 million active users and counting, is Pinterest at the peak of the new e-commerce wave and could thus become an important point of contact for more and more brands. Engagement is high: around 90% of active Pinners use the platform to plan or make purchases. The Pinterest app therefore has a far higher purchase intention than other social networks.

Promoted pins are integrated into the organic content of the Pinterest boards in the form of native advertising. Above all, e-commerce retailers appreciate the value of Pinterest's targeted search engine and use Pinterest ads to promote their brand and products.

Promoted Pins are placed in more relevant positions on Pinterest's boards and are highly visible to those searching for keywords related to your brand or related products.

Pinterest Ad Pricing 

Advertising data is a bit harder to find on Pinterest. Not so long ago, ads were very expensive at $30-40 per 1,000 impressions and only available to big brands. However, recent reports indicate that advertisers are now realizing more affordable prices that are in a similar range to other platforms.

How to set up a Pinterest ad campaign 

When people talk about Pinterest advertising, they are talking about Promoted Pins.

Creativity is king. Users view hundreds of pins in a row. If you want to be noticed, you have to stand out through creative attention-getting. Focus on trends. What are the competitors posting? What searches are popular? Which products are in demand?

Interact with your followers. Repin your fans and use curated repins to expand your audience and reach larger audiences. Pinterest is essentially a search engine. Include long, detailed descriptions with keywords and hashtags.

Also, be very careful where your pins link to. The click objective determines whether you waste the click or turn it into a lead or sale.

4. LinkedIn Advertising 

LinkedIn is a social platform that mainly revolves around the B2B market. LinkedIn has approximately 303 million monthly active users, split evenly between male and female users. 61% of users are in the 30-64 age group.

LinkedIn typically has the highest median income available: 75% of LinkedIn users make $50,000 or more per year. This is also where you will find the highest quality leads, especially in specific verticals.

Unlike most social platforms that are best suited for B2C advertising, LinkedIn is great for B2B ads and social media marketing campaigns. Service companies and B2B product companies tend to do better on LinkedIn than B2C retailers. Some of the industries most successful with LinkedIn advertising include recruiters, higher education institutions, and high-value B2B products and services.

There are three types of LinkedIn ads:

• Sponsored Content
• Message ads
• text ads

Closely track ad performance and discard any ads with a click-through rate (CTR) below 0.10%. When you get 1% or more CTR, scale. While LinkedIn's ad targeting seems relatively new compared to Facebook, the ability to search by company, company size, title, location, seniority, age, education, and skills can be incredibly effective for B2B purposes.

LinkedIn users prefer shorter, more concise ad copy than their Facebook peers. Focus on professional issues and challenges. Everyone is trying to move forward. Can you help? Also, much of LinkedIn's value resides in its groups. Look for ways to reach these groups with your ads and promotional campaigns.

On LinkedIn, the average cost per click (CPC) ranges from $2 to $7 per click and can go as high as $11 or $12.

5. Snapchat Ads 

1.4 million Swiss people are active on Snapchat, 70% of them are between 13 and 25 years old. The advertising platform has a very active user base. In addition, Snapchat was the first social media app to Augmented Reality Ads to generate. For example, a customer can see how a shoe will look on him. A before-and-after effect can also be advertised for a cosmetic product.

There are three different types of Advertising on Snapchat:

• Snap Ads: Snap Ads are mobile, interactive video ads with a swipe-up rate 5x higher than the average click-through rate on other comparable social platforms.
• Sponsored Lenses: AR video lenses are part of what made Snapchat so popular. They are entertaining and engaging both individually and in groups. Sponsored Lenses allow brands to create custom Lenses for users to play with.
• Snapchat discover ads place a brand's story at the top of users' app feeds
• Local Geofilters: Geofilters are creative overlays that users can add to their stories.

Snapchat Ad Pricing 

The CPMs (price per thousand impressions) are about 5x cheaper than on Facebook and Instagram. This price difference alone makes Snapchat very attractive. Prices for brands that want to add their own location-based overlays (local geofilters) start from CHF 5.

5.TikTok Ads

The often underestimated social media platform TikTok has now reached 2 billion downloads worldwide. Advertising on TikTok is particularly worthwhile in the areas of fashion, jewellery, beauty, fitness or food – especially if you want to address Generation Z customers.

TikTok empowers brands native ads to create and show them specifically to their users. Such ads with authentic, user-relevant content are a crucial tool to get excellent results in terms of ROI and positive feedback from consumers.

TikTok Ads recently released a new report showing that TikTok Ads are more memorable than ads on other platforms and even TV campaigns. Measuring emotional response also shows that TikTok ads are more likely to elicit buying responses based on top emotional triggers.

The pricing of a TikTok Ads campaign

At TikTok, the advertising costs for the in-feed ad start at around CHF 10 per CPM (cost-per-mille). For each view of a sponsored video, the cost is between 0.01 and 0.02 CHF. Since the content on TikTok is more easily scalable, the costs are lower than on other advertising platforms. However, one must not forget that the minimum budget for a campaign is 500 CHF.

CONCLUSION: There is no better marketing strategy for e-commerce retailers than social media marketing on the hottest social networks 

From day one, social media advertising can deliver consistent, scalable, high-quality leads and customers that can complement any other form of marketing. Social advertising is incredibly measurable. You never have to wonder how your campaigns are performing and what the ROI you're getting from them.

Hiring an online marketing agency is ideal for any business that has the desire and resources to start new sales and profitable advertising campaigns from day one. If you have a social media marketing budget and need instant results, paid social advertising run by proven experts is your best bet.

By hiring a team that is extremely knowledgeable about social media marketing, you can stay focused on your business and do what you do best while a team of experts handles the entire advertising process for you.

Contact us today for a free analysis of your advertising accounts and let us show you the potential of your online business that can be achieved through good social media marketing.