Social Media Advertising: What Platform is Best For You?

Facebook or Instagram? YouTube ads or Twitter? Or maybe it’s time to join TikTok? Between shifting trends, a wealth of channels, and emerging platforms, finding out where your customers are and the best ways to reach them can be challenging. Plus, so many other brands and technologies are competing for their attention. 

A social media advertising agency can help you focus your energy and resources on the right platforms where you can connect with the most customers. Here, you can build brand awareness and sustain engagement from a quick like or view, all the way to a purchase and lasting brand loyalty.

Let’s take a quick look of what each platform offers, and learn how to focus your social media marketing strategy on the best platforms for your business:

Where and What to Post: A Breakdown of Social Media Ad Platforms

1. Facebook

Boasting nearly 3 billion users globally, Facebook represents the largest social media advertising audience. It’s no surprise then 91% of B2B and 96% of B2C marketers are constantly engaging with 15% of audiences shopping on the platform. But is Facebook advertising right for your business?

With its behemoth audience share comes the price of steep competition. Naturally, countless brands are competing for users’ attention, making it difficult for a brand-new page to cut through the traffic. Plus, as younger users increasingly tend to favour other platforms, Facebook has earned a reputation for being a bit of a dinosaur. 

Keep in mind, though, that it’s all about your audience. Social media advertising agencies still recommend using Facebook if your audience is on it and an experienced Facebook advertising agency can help you reach your target audience. Facebook ads run on a powerful suite of tools for user targeting and campaign optimization, resulting in a high 4.7% conversion rate.

2. Instagram

With its nearly 63% of global audiences in the 18-34 age range and 70% of users attesting to discovering products and shopping on the platform, the renowned photo-sharing app is a no-brainer for most brands in Toronto and worldwide. 

In particular, highly visual businesses like retail, clothing, beauty, food, and art engage over 1.386 billion daily active users increasingly. With the app’s e-commerce integration, customers won’t even need to navigate to your website to shop.

Aside from shopping, Instagram also offers many tools for engagement. Beyond posts and comments, stories have interactive features, such as polls and questions that allow you to stay on top of customers’ feeds.

Instagram’s popularity with a diverse range of consumers is only amplified by its integration in Facebook’s ecosystem. Instagram advertising allows you to serve ads on both platforms seamlessly, and reach at least twice as many audience segments.

3. Twitter

Increasingly known as the customer support app, Twitter’s microblogging design has morphed into a fast and easy way to answer customer questions and maintain a friendly, responsive rapport. 

With 330 million monthly active users sending out 500 million tweets daily, Twitter has long cemented its reputation as a staple for any business. 

Along with enhancing the customer experience, Twitter is also great for staying on top of trends. Hashtags are a quick way to get in on the buzz in a timely and relevant manner, and build brand awareness. Even adding a hashtag guarantees 100% more engagement, which can be sustained with Promoted Tweets tailored to your demographics. 

Note, however, Twitter ads are known to be significantly more expensive than Facebook ads. Twitter is not great for driving organic site traffic without regularly posting links, and even then, trending will require consistent virality which can be difficult to achieve.

4. YouTube

With YouTube’s 2.3 billion users — and more across Google — there’s no competition when it comes to video sharing. And while not exactly a social media platform, YouTube videos rank the highest on Google searches, especially for “how to” lifestyle and educational content. Just look at the 3.25 billion hours of videos watched on the platform monthly.

This makes YouTube a prime advertising space, especially with TrueView. YouTube advertising allows users to decide if they want to watch an ad or skip it, while you only pay for engagement, making ads incredibly cost-effective. This also draws more subscriptions to your brand channel, and grows your audience.

5. LinkedIn

As the professional networking platform, LinkedIn has a highly specific purpose and demographic. Most active among its 690 million users are in the 30-49 age group who are recruiting or job hunting, with a smaller window for B2B lead generation as a result of networking. 

This means, the cost of LinkedIn advertising is relatively high. And while not the best choice for B2C businesses, 82% of B2B marketers networking with business-minded audiences generate qualified leads. Thanks to targeting features based on job title, industry, and work location, recruiters and B2B businesses using LinkedIn advertising and organic tools are cost-effective.

6. TikTok

Known for viral short-form videos, TikTok is increasingly the gen z platform of choice, with growing outreach to other demographics. Highly visual, creative, and even service industry brands are finding success among the platform’s 18-24 age group and over 600 million — and growing — active monthly users.

While relatively new, TikTok For Business has tools for maximizing the platform’s average session time of 10.85 minutes — recently the highest among various social media platforms. TikTok advertising offers a massive potential exposure to younger audiences who respond best to casual, “behind-the-scenes” content, as opposed to sales-driven promotions. This also makes influencer content highly popular, which is great for brands who work with influencers or are considering it.

What Social Media Advertising Experts Say

With virtually every customer demographic engaging every minute on different social media platforms, the normal reaction is to start pushing content on as many channels as possible. But are you on the right platforms — and are you using the right tools on each? How are you reaching the right audience?

A social media agency can help you answer these questions, and manage ads and marketing campaigns. At the core of these processes is auditing your brand, following, and goals. Ultimately, social media agencies and experts note that the right social media advertising strategy comes down to your audience: who they are, what platforms they’re on, and how they use these:

• Step 1 – Know your audience: Build customer profiles using demographics such as age, location, occupation and income, and interests and shopping preferences.

• Step 2 – Define your goals: Getting customers to purchase products or subscribe to services is a given, but there’s more to social media advertising than facilitating these transactions. For example, on Instagram, they can browse products, tap a link to your e-commerce portal, or simply answer questions in the comments section. Similarly, many customers also use Twitter for product support. Knowing your goals defines how you set up your social media channels and use them for advertising.

• Step 3 – Tracking and growth: A social media advertising agency can create and run ads for your business, targeting the right users and converting them to customers. This includes setting up brand accounts, creating organic content and paid ads, and optimizing posting to maximize engagement. And because social media evolves every day, an agency can help you track engagement, listen to customers, and stay on-trend.

What’s trending? Speak with Facebook, Instagram, and other social media ads experts to get in on the buzz. Book a free consultation with our social media agency in Toronto to learn more about the latest in social media advertising and marketing — and get started.