PPC (pay-per-click) ads are everywhere and can get a little confusing on how each platform differs. This is a guide to social media platforms that allow PPC and how to make your campaign most effective.
1. Facebook
The top dog of PPC in the social media world. If you are a large or small business, odds are that you are using or thinking of implementing some sort of PPC campaign. For a basic overview, Facebook Ads include a targeting section based on age, gender, and location. You then set your financial restrictions on how much you want to spend either daily or long-term. The ideal way to create a successful campaign is to have patience and test multiple ads, seeing which are clicked on most and what characteristics attracted your audience. You can do so by creating A/B tests and reviewing your analytics via the Facebook Ad itself.
2. Instagram
Instagram is surprisingly easy because creating an ad is integrated into Facebook. If you create and ad on Facebook you can just link that ad to Instagram as well on the same cost. You will see the option to carry out the ad on Instagram on your Ad Manager on Facebook. You choose an objective for your ad: conversions, consideration, or awareness.
3. LinkedIn
LinkedIn is more of a B2B platform. If you own a business that is more geared towards professional networking or you provide services for other businesses, this is your realm. LinkedIn really allows you to specify who you are targeting based on job title, job function, industry, geography, age, gender, etc. There are 3 specific types of ad units you can use: sponsored content, text ads, or sponsored InMail. Sponsored content lives on your company page and can be viewed to all your followers (very similar to boosting a post on Facebook). Text ads are usually viewed in 3’s and is important to note are only visible to desktop users. These are quick and easy. Sponsored InMail is the most expensive choice but are more personal.
4. Twitter
Advertising on Twitter is pretty straightforward in terms of how to create your Twitter Ad. All you have to do is decide what format you want your tweet to be (all text, images, videos, etc.). Next, you set your budget on how much you want to spend on that ad. However, Twitter is a lot more experimental and you should try a lot of options to see which ad is most responsive.
5. Pinterest
Fairly new to the advertising world is Pinterest. When advertising on Pinterest, you are looking to use “Promoted Pins”. When you start a campaign, make sure you make your account a business account. From there, you can either select an existing pin or upload a new one to promote. Not only are you focusing on the visuals of the pin, also check your keywords as the promotion can also be search based. The promoted pins can then be monitored on Pinterest through their own analytics platform.
We hope this guide gives you a decent overview of how PPC and ad campaigns work on each social media platform. Hopefully you can now make a confident decision about which platform would be most effective for you in driving more traffic to your business. contact us today for guidance on starting your own PPC ad campaign on social media!