Carving a space out for your direct selling business on social media can be a daunting task, but social media is an essential part of running any business these days, for a direct selling business even more so. The results from a successful social media advertising campaign often have the power to make or break a direct selling business.
A lot of audiences use social media as their main form of communication and entertainment with the average person in the UK spending and average of 2 hours and 24 minutes on social media each day and, 50.1% of the time spent on mobile devices was done on social media apps.
Just like email marketing and SEO, paid social media advertising is the next step in the evolution of online marketing for businesses.
Paid Social advertising is rapidly becoming an essential for any business to be able to successfully market their products through social media, as an organic social media impact can be difficult to cultivate in the current -highly saturated- online climate.
While any successful social media business plan will incorporate a combination of both paid and organic social media content, the impact of paid social advertising should not be overlooked in hopes of pursing a 100% organic strategy. Paid advertising is a fantastic (and budget friendly) way to maximize your visibility on social media platforms where potential customers spend a great deal of their free time.
Statistics show that 3 out of 10 social media users have said that they use social media primarily to research products they want to buy and a promising 49% of social media users say they’re likely to shop with brands that they see advertised on social media.
There are a few things about paid advertising you should know before setting out on your newest advertising campaign. For example, the social media platforms you choose to focus your online presence on, and the demographics of their users. As we all know there are a great many social media platforms to choose from, each of which come with their own lists of potential advantages when it comes to social media advertising.
Facebook: The most widely used of all the social media sites, Facebook hosts 51.15 million users and has the most varied demographic of any platform, making it the best platform for prospecting and attracting potential customers.
Twitter: Twitter has the advantage of being able to really zone in on potential customers by segmenting audiences according to keywords and common interests.
Instagram: Instagram implements a ‘pay per click’ advertising, which makes it perfect for any budget. It is also the most popular platform for following brands, with 90% of users follow at least one brand on Instagram.
In reality, it isn’t always about advertising on the biggest or newest platform. It is more about knowing where your target audience spends their time and how best to engage with them.
The Advantages of Facebook
All that said, Facebook (especially the use of Facebook Groups and Pages) has always been particularly lucrative for building successful direct selling businesses. Afterall, Facebook’s demographics cover the widest ground out of any of the social media platforms.
But significantly when it comes to paid social media advertising, Facebook has the advantage of offering multiple types of ads:
- Carousel: two more scrollable images or videos
- Single media: images, videos or slideshow of images
- Existing posts: includes links that you might have shared
The other major advantage of using Facebook’s paid advertising for a network marketer is Facebook’s Automated Rules. These enable you to fine tune your content and gain an understanding of your social analytics so you can identify what your strongest and weakest elements are. This helps you to remove the weakest performing ads and boost the content that performs best, all information which will help with the future of your social media advertising and the future of your direct selling business.
Location Based Ads
Another fantastic advantage to paid social media advertising is the potential to use location-based ads. Afterall, a cornerstone of direct selling businesses is the idea of selling within the local community and establishing real-life personal connections with your customers. This aspect can risk being lost in the whirlwind of online advertising.
Being able to target adverts directly to people who are within your local area is a way of growing and establishing your place within your local community. It just makes sense, people will usually be more inclined to shop with you if they know you are local to them
Paid ads can be a game changer
Regardless of your business’s size or budget, utilising paid social media advertising can really be a game changer for both increasing profit and driving new customers to your business.
Afterall, the primary motivation behind paid social media advertising would be the lead more potential customers through a marketing funnel to your online store and other online communities. There’s no better way to do that than by guaranteeing the reach of your social media advertising by investing in paid social advertising.
Want a little help getting started with paid ads? Take a quick look as Facebook’s Business Help Centre for advise on how to get started.