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13.6: Advantages and challenges

  • Page ID
    24940
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    Some of the difficulties of advertising on social media are the same as the difficulties of being on social media in general. They include:

    • Promoted posts all need to work hard to make an authentic connection with the audience.
    • You need to consistently promote good content.
    • There is always the chance that your audience will respond negatively to a post, which can escalate quickly.
    • Choosing the right platform to advertise on can be a challenge.
    • Tying ad spend on social media to revenue increases can be difficult, since the benefits of advertising on these platforms are often indirect. Take a look at Sprout Social’s Ultimate Guide to Measuring Social Media ROI for some tips: sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-roi-guide.

    It is important to clarify with whomever you are reporting to that ROI on social media is not an exact science. Far more data is available than on traditional media, but it has its limits. So rather than drawing a clear line from social media advertising to sales, look at encouraging behaviours that lead to sales, such as convincing users to sign up for a test drive rather than attempting to sell a car. You can easily calculate ROI if you know how many signups for test drives you get from Facebook, and how many test drives result in sales.

    Despite its challenges, advertising on social media cannot be avoided. If you want to reach the maximum possible number of users with granular targeting that ensures you’re reaching exactly the right users at the right time, social media advertising is the way to go. It is also the only way to ensure that a significant portion of your audience per platform will see your posts.

    Like social media in general, advertising on this channel can:

    • Increase brand recognition
    • Improve brand loyalty.

    It is:

    • Fairly low cost
    • Easy to share, and
    • Allows for real-time analysis of your campaigns and audience.

    This page titled 13.6: Advantages and challenges is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Rob Stokes via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.