Social Media Platforms to Consider for Lead Generation

Social media advertising is projected to account for $47.9 billion of ad spend in 2021. And it’s not just major players — paid social can be an effective way to advertise for businesses of all sizes. Campaign stability, message frequency, speed to market, and audience targeting are all available with paid social, at the scale that best fits your business.

The first step to ensure successful paid social campaigns is picking the platforms that are right for your business, and maximizing each platforms’ capabilities. Here are the top four to consider.

Facebook

Facebook has the broadest reach of any platform with 190 million active US users, and access to user data across its network of properties including  Instagram and WhatsApp. Businesses can generate leads with hyper-targeted ads that drive conversions without users having to leave the platform. Target potential customers by geographics, demographics, interests, or behaviors; reengage users who have previously interacted with your profile; use your CRM data to target your offline audience; and create lookalike audiences to reach users with similar profiles to your customer base. With a $0.43 average cost per click and a 3.9% click-through rate, Facebook is a great option for all types and sizes of businesses.

Do: Find out what works best with built-in A/B testing and campaign budget optimization.

Don’t: Put too much text in your ad. You want your ad to be visually appealing and having a lot of ad copy won’t help. Your most compelling copy should be in your calls to action.

Instagram

Like Facebook, all Instagram ad campaigns operate through Ad Manager. The most simple option to advertise on Instagram is to simply boost an existing post in-app to expand its reach, but there are a wide variety of ad campaign formats to choose from. Ads can come in the form of stories, in-feed photos, videos and carousels, collection ads, Explore ads, IGTV (Instagram TV) ads, Instagram shopping ads. The formats serve different goals and provide different call-to-action button options for each format. 

Do: Engage with people on your ads just as you might an organic post, especially those asking questions about an offer in your ad. With the greater reach of your ad, comes a larger audience of people who see how your business interacts with the public.

Don’t: Miss out on the opportunity to boost a post that is already getting strong organic engagement. People reached by the ad are likely to have the same positive interactions with the post.

Twitter

Across the board, our strategy is always to generate as many low-funnel leads as possible for our clients. Twitter — despite its almost 70 million US users — doesn’t have great targeting capabilities and hasn’t produced high-quality lead generation consistently for our clients. As we can’t generate valuable leads at an efficient cost, we don’t often recommend Twitter advertising and generally advise allocating ad spend to more reliable platforms. Of course, there are exceptions, such as events. If you have a campaign idea in mind, let us know and we’re happy to provide more specific recommendations.

Are you ready for a paid social strategy that fits your business?

Adpearance is your partner for implementing a lead-generating social media strategy. We’ll start with a free digital analysis to assess the opportunity in your market and determine how paid social can be leveraged for sales success.