Advertising on Social Media

All advertisements should either build your brand or sell your product/service. When creating an advertisement, ask yourself what you want the advertisement to do. Do you want the advertisement to build your brand recognition or sell a specific product or service?

• Branding
  When using an advertisement for branding you need to ensure that your logo is the most prominent item on the ad. You also need to make sure the viewer understands what the brand is about or does. If you’re a small business or a new business in the area, building your brand is important, and ensuring that the audience knows what your brand is about is just as important. Have a strong statement or brand value that is easy to understand and placed in the advertisement.

• Selling
  When using an advertisement for selling a specific product or service you need to have a very clear benefit statement as the most prominent item in the ad. The audience will be looking for the “What’s-In-It-For-Me” to motivate them to purchase. A clear benefit statement will drive sells.

It is well known that a creative advertisement will grab attention and that creativity or originality in advertising is a good thing. However, do not let the creativity overshadow the brand. The worse thing that could happen is to have a great ad that drives people to purchase, but they go to the wrong brand because it was not clear who the advertiser was.

When advertising on social media, you can have very targeted campaigns. Most social media platforms that offer advertising space also know a lot about every person that is using that social media. This means that you can have your ad placed so that it is only shown to a specific target audience, which allows you to control the budget for that ad. For example; only show this ad to people that have moved into this specified geographical area within the last 6 months, who are married with children and like Mexican food.

The other important point about advertising on social media is that “every message” you post on your social media site is an advertisement for your company. So make sure that if your post is not specifically selling a product or service, it is building and promoting your brand or your brand values.