If you have an online business or do some of your promoting for your brick-and-mortar store online, you’ll want to know the best way to advertise this holiday shopping season. What social media platforms are going to be most effective this season? Do you have a clear message to send to your potential customers? Are you prepared and have your whole sales funnel right now? Will you be combining your marketing strategy and advertising campaign with geotargeting?
These are all the questions you’ll want to answer for yourself. The good news is that the consumer confidence index numbers are flying high this year. There hasn’t been such a high index for holiday shopping in the past 18 years. You want to get in on this action for sure. Here’s your best bet to attract customers.
Go With Social Media for Ad Spending
There are over 35% of respondents that believe social media marketing is the way to go this holiday season.You’ll want to create campaigns that are effective by finding your target audience. It’s really easy to do this when you’re using Facebook or Instagram. Research has proven this to be true..social media is very effective.
Digital Ads
If you’re used to doing traditional ads, stop right now and put that money into digital ads. Digital ads have been found to be far more effective by a huge margin. The people that have been analyzing where their ad dollars are best spent are believers, 68% of businesses surveyed will use digital means to market this holiday season. They are doing so because the trends and business analysts have proven that this will be the most effective way to be seen and to convert sales.
This includes engine marketing, digital display ads, the use of Amazon, and social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. These methods of advertising trump the likes of television advertising by 15%, print by 14%, and radio by 3%.
Geotargeting this Holiday Season
Due to studies, business owners and anyone in marketing are using geotargeting in holiday campaigns. In fact, 84% of advertisers recognize that location-based marketing is going to have a greater level of importance in campaigns for this holiday season.
28% of the respondents in the holiday marketing study said that they would be using geotargeting in every campaign they put out there this holiday season. Marketers are using this tool as a way to pinpoint information to their target audiences. This, of course, allows for greater potential of a sale. While interest in a product or service is good, it’s equally as important to turn someone interested into a paying customer.
Facebook is the Preference
When it comes to digital advertising channels, people spending a lot of money on ads say they like Facebook best. In total, 42% of advertisers use Facebook as their primary method for digital ads. This is a high percentage, as there has been a lot of backlash and decreased activity on the social media platform. Facebook is just so easy to use and has the bonus of a third-party target audience function.
Followed by Facebook is Google, where 28% of advertisers are using their ad dollars. Then Instagram at 18% and Amazon at 12%. Instagram is actually owned by Facebook, so between the two platforms, there are 59% of advertisers investing their money between the two. They are taking up the majority of digital ad spending.
Increase of Budget for the Holidays
Of course, marketers that know best are going to increase their ad budget around the holidays. About 37% of entrepreneurs said that they boost their ad spending around the holiday season. For entrepreneurs, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are really important days. This is where they can stand to make a lot of money in just one day if their campaigns match the desires of their buyers.
In fact, 21% of respondents in the study say they put money aside for the sole purpose of reaching Black Friday shoppers. There was 19% of the respondents spending their holiday ad budget. The trend seemed to show that advertisers are looking to win consumers through the whole holiday season, as opposed to using just one promotion.
What all of this means:
While Facebook and Instagram have powerful audience targeting features, they also allow advertisers to create custom audiences from other data sources. These can be their own customer data, or opt-in data sources from third parties. The use of custom audiences has also become important since Facebook announced its elimination of “partner categories,” which officially went into effect on October 1. That program allows the use of audience segments from third parties, integrated directly into Facebook. The loss of this capability means that advertisers now heavily rely on custom audiences.
Entrepreneurs selling products and services directly to consumers should feel comfortable not only using social media for advertising, but also taking advantage of all of the targeting tools available on each platform. As a result, these companies can significantly increase the efficiency of their advertising budget by reaching only those who are most likely to convert this holiday season.
Many business to business (B2B) entrepreneurs should also give consideration to digital advertising as an effective channel. By using Instagram and Facebook’s geotargeting, demographics, and custom audience features, it is possible to reach a desired market segment. B2B ads will also stand out among the stream of consumer-focused products in their feed.
While not every company will be a fit, and our survey results won’t apply to everyone, there is a clear business case to be made for entrepreneurs to advertise on social media and combine it with geotargeting as the best route to reach their target audience this holiday season.
