In a previous article, we looked at the impact of iOS14 and Google removing 3rd party cookie tracking. We discussed how the performance marketer has to incorporate branding into their strategies in 2021.
In this article, we are going to discuss the impact on a particular channel, social media. In particular the Facebook & Instagram platform.
Generally speaking, there are 2 broad ways of leveraging social media to grow your business:
Organically - Creating interesting, engaging content that results in more users following you.
Through paid advertising - Developing advertising campaigns that reach your specific target audience and guide them to a certain action.
Ideally, everyone wants to leverage and grow their own organic community to drive their business and marketing goals. A proper social media content strategy is key, and the main costs will be the time and effort that goes into building a proper content channel.
In the meantime, while you’re building an organic base of followers, you might want to leverage the instant reach of paid advertising.
If you’re not thinking of including social media advertising as part of your repertoire, chances are good that you’re missing out on some serious exposure and leads that could fuel your business growth.
We’ll discuss why you should leverage on social media in 2021, and a few techniques of overcoming the recent privacy updates.
Social media usage boomed after the pandemic appeared.
Many studies showed people using social media more after the pandemic hit.
For instance, one study from the US showed 72% of respondents claiming increased social media consumption. Facebook itself reported a 50% increase in messaging from users in countries hit hard by the pandemic.
None of this is astonishing. With the pandemic leading to lockdowns and stay-at-home orders, more of us have turned to the Web for our socialisation and entertainment.
Social media is one of the main channels that we use to socialise and it’s also possibly the most important when it comes to connecting with others right now, and it certainly shows an uptick in usage since 2020.
Figures will vary by platform, location, and demographics, of course. But the trend is general enough that you can safely say most of the globe uses social media more often now. It’s highly likely that many of your own target consumers have increased usage of it lately.
There’s a new group of consumers jumping on board social media.
You see, it’s not just that people who’ve always been on social media are on it more often now. In fact, there are more people who weren’t on it previously, that have hopped on as well!
A fair number of these represent people you may not have been able to reach with your other digital marketing or advertising efforts, previously. This could be because they used to prefer traditional channels like TV for brand or product discovery.
But as they discover social media and its attractions, they now become potential audiences for your ads and marketing.
For instance, Hootsuite’s Statshot report for Q3 notes that around 25% of demographics like baby boomers have started spending more time on social media due to the pandemic.
This represents a significant portion of consumers you can now reach more easily through social media ads. As more of the older generations turn to social media, you can increase the chances of your brand being discovered by them through advertising.
It’s a chance you shouldn’t pass up if a good part of your client base comes from them.
You can still hyper-target consumers on social media.
iOS 14 and its subsequent updates have reduced the ability of 3rd party apps to track the data of their users off the platform.
As the digital world takes on an increased focus on privacy among browsers and countries understandably tightening regulations, the ability to hyper-target and follow potential clients around has reduced significantly.
It’s definitely not doom and gloom for advertising though. While the first step is to ensure that you continuously build brand value and differentiate your offerings, the ability to target the right audience on social media platforms is not lost.
For top and middle of funnel advertising, you can still find a lot of targeting information on the platforms, such as demographic filters for age, interests, and behaviour. This information means advertisers can still comfortably serve relevant ads to the right groups of people.
“The key is to focus on optimising your messaging and audience set to ensure that your top of funnel ads are still reaching the right people efficiently. Track critical benchmarks such as engagement rates, view-through amongst other key metrics.”
One key change would be transiting your base of lookalike audiences from website traffic data, to social media platform data.
For example, instead of doing a 3 to 5% lookalike audience of your website visitors, you might want to create a 3 to 5% lookalike audience of those who viewed 75% or more of your video ads. Likewise, for your bottom of funnel strategy, you might find it more effective to retarget social media engagements instead of website visitors.
Last but not least, try implementing some of the new marketplace and purchase options on the platform itself. The variations of targeting and retargeting options provided from this could give you an additional boost.
While it may take time for these functions to catch on in certain markets, this minimal effort could provide you a potentially very high return!
Need help getting on this bandwagon?
While all of the above should persuade you to think about advertising on social media, there’s an important caveat to be made here. Like every other type of advertising, this needs to be done strategically. Spending on ads without a solid plan is one of the worst things any company can do online.
Should you need help with your social media ad strategy or even content, don’t be afraid to get in touch with us. We’ve designed and managed ad campaigns for over 30+ clients across different industries in the past year.
Just let us know your company goals and we'll be happy to guide you along in achieving them!
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