Targeted Social Media Advertising Can Drive ROI in 2019
By Brandon Ferris, Marketing Manager
Brands are finding it harder to be found organically due to recent algorithm changes on many social media platforms. Social media has moved away from populating feeds based on the time an article is posted, and are focusing on displaying content a user might be interested in. To counter this trend, marketers are investing more money into social media advertising.
Facebook is a great example of a social media network that drastically changed its algorithms to the detriment of organic traffic. In early 2018, Facebook’s algorithm favored content that would generate discussions via comments. However, this brought many controversial topics front and center, which sometimes fostered a jaded digital community.
Facebook’s algorithm now favors posts from friends and family over posts from company pages. This is resulting in a sharp decrease in organic reach on Facebook and forcing advertisers to pay for their content to be seen. This change comes along with an increase in rates for advertising on Facebook. LinkedIn, Tumblr and other social platforms have also moved away from displaying content chronologically, and now display what their algorithms determine a user will enjoy.
Though some of these changes may seem discouraging to marketers, it should be encouraging that, despite recent price increases, social media advertising is continuing to rise. According to statista, marketers spent nearly $100 billion on social media advertising. But through 2023, this spend is expected to increase annually by 24.5 percent, resulting in approximately $243 billion by the year 2023. So be prepared to see marketing professionals investing more of their budgets in social media advertising.
Growing investments in social media advertising indicates that marketers are continuing to see the ROI from social media, despite an increase in overall cost. But why is social media still so effective in 2019? It is a result of better optimization and enhanced targeting of campaigns.
Social media platforms will continue to roll out new ways for your business to advertise to a targeted audience. Targeting options made great strides during 2018 and will continue to be refined in order to help drive maximum ROI for marketers spending their ad dollars on social platforms. Social platforms like Facebook will continue to roll out new ways to advertise as well. Stories, messaging, LinkedIn’s InMail and other features are all being looked at as means for marketers to get in touch with targeted audiences. New features, such as 2018’s carousel ads and LinkedIn’s video ads and messaging ads will also be released to keep your advertising mediums fresh.
Social media advertising is on the rise. But don’t feel as though budget will make or break your social media strategy. Strategic, well-crafted ads with captivating offers and specific targeting will always reign supreme, even with less money to invest in wider coverage.
Interested in learning more about social media advertising? Our Strategic Marketing Group works with clients to plan and deploy a winning social media campaign. Our social media services include social media strategy development, ongoing postings, pay-per-click advertising and LinkedIn training. Contact Brandon Ferris at (440) 459-5968, or email me at [email protected].
