Social Media Advertising for Businesses

Even though social media platforms are best known for free marketing and promotion, it is difficult to generate traffic, sales and leads through free promotion on social media. Well, I don’t mean to say it is impossible but what I am trying to say is getting conversion through free promotion is really difficult. Just because you have posted on social media does not mean your products will be sold or your website will get traffic. You need a huge audience for conversion. In other words, you can sell products or get traffic to your sites through social sites only when you have a lot of followers. Building followers takes time and also a substantial amount of money.

Advertising on the other hand is one of the easiest ways to generate sales, traffic, and leads through social site. In fact advertising on social sites is better than advertising on traditional media (radio, TV, newspaper) or even other forums of internet advertising (search engine advertising, PPC and CPM advertising on blogs and websites, etc.) That’s because social media has a huge reach. If you advertise on Facebook, you have to potential to reach 2.9 billion people. If you advertise on Tiktok or Instagram, you will be able to reach to 1 billion people. Well, I don’t mean to say that your ads will be seen by 2.9 billion Facebook users or 1 billon TikTok and Instagram users, what I am trying to say is social media platforms have more users and audience compared to all other online and offline media platforms.

You can launch different kinds of ad campaigns by creating different kinds of ad formats. You can either run video ads, or text based ads, or graphical ads. You can either advertise to generate sales on your store or traffic on your website, or advertise to build your brand and generate leads. Interestingly, you can also advertise to build your social media audience. Let’s say you are a content creator and want your content to have a lot of views. You can advertise your content as well as your page to build views and followers. When you advertise you are reach more people and you can easily build audience (followers). When you have managed to build a lot of followers, you might not have to run ads again and again to get traffic, sales or leads for your products and services. If you advertise on social media platforms, you can generate sales for your business in less than a week. Interestingly, you do not need a lot of money to advertise on social sites.

Google Ads Vs. Facebook Ads Vs. TikTok Ads

Google and Meta has a huge market share on online advertising. Based on the advertising revenue generated, Google is number one online advertising platform and Facebook is number two advertising platform. Until recently, Google and Meta had more than 50 percent online advertising market share. However, in recent times platforms like Tiktok are giving fierce competition to Google and Facebook when it comes to digital advertising.  It is projected that by the end of 2023, Google and Facebook digital advertising market share will drop to 44.9 percent. In 2022, TikTok’s ad revenue doubled but was still around 2 percent of the online advertising market share. However, it is expected to grow tremendously this year. While Google and Facebook’s online advertising market share is dropping, other ad platforms are gaining their reach. For instance, Amazon's market share was less than 12 percent in 2022 but in 2023, it is expected to grow above 12 percent.

What is the Best Platform to Advertise for Small Businesses?

Google and Meta are big companies that have better reach (because Google search accounts for more than 65 percent market share and Facebook has more than 2.9 billion monthly active users), however, as a small business owner, you should think about conversion more than reach.  Well, it is true that you will be able to generate more sales by reaching more people but as a small business owner, you cannot spend a lot of money to reach a lot of people, you will have to reach people who will actually buy your products. TikTok’s ad revenue and market share both are increasing, this indicates that more people are using TikTok Ads. More people are using TikTok Ads because they are experiencing better conversion.

TikTok Ads For Better Conversion

If you are running an online business and looking for a platform where you can run ads to generate sales, you can try TikTok. You can run ads for your product listing on ecommerce marketplaces like ebay, etsy, amazon, etc. as well as your own woocommerce or shoipify store. TikTok is a video sharing platform, therefore, you will have to create a video ad and run an ad campaign. There are certain things to remember while running an ad campaign on TikTok. Your video should be interesting and engaging, it should be short and be able to give necessary information about your product, and you need to target your ads to your proper audience. Always try with small ad budget and make changes on your ads based on the statistics.