As far back as fifteen years ago, you might remember hearing people say that they’re not on social media and don’t see the need for it. Fast forward to today, and you would be rather hard pressed to find someone who shared that sentiment. Even if they’re not actively posting on a platform, there is a good chance that the vast majority of people you meet have a social media account to watch video, read a news article, or simply see what others may be doing. Digital marketers understand the power of social media platforms for advertising. This power is only getting stronger. The question many businesses ask is no longer, should we use social media for advertising, but what are the best social media platforms for advertising.
Not all social media platforms are created equal when it comes to advertising. Choosing the right platform can make a significant difference in the effectiveness of your campaigns. The demographic you want to target for advertising may be more prevalent on one social media platform than another. The nature of your advertising choices also plays a factor. As a small business owner, or even a seasoned marketer, understanding the best social media platforms for advertising your company requires nuance and information gathering to achieve your goals. Here is a breakdown of the most prevalent social media platforms to focus on for advertising your brand.
Facebook – Still The King of Social Media Platforms for Advertising
With over 2.9 billion active users each month (or 35% of the world’s population), Facebook’s extensive user base and advanced targeting capabilities make it still the social media platform of choice for advertisers and digital marketing specialists. Their targeting options have a highly sophisticated approach, able to break down audience demographics, user interests, and account behaviour patterns with advanced geo-targeting options.
Meta has also developed ways for businesses to make it easier to convert leads through their Meta Business Suite that allows the social media platform to manage advertising campaigns to a narrowed down audience. Their Meta Pixel tool allows you monitor the actions users take on your website, helping you to retarget your ad campaigns for better results, and even engage lookalike audiences (users whose online behaviour patterns resemble your existing customer base).
Using a variety of ad formats such as images, video, carousel, and slideshow, businesses have a lot of freedom on this social media platform to advertise their products. The cost-per-click or cost-per-impression is reasonable and accessible, which allows you to regularly conduct A/B testing to improve your advertising campaign performance.
Ideal For: e-commerce, local, direct to consumer
Instagram – Visual Advertising For Brand Engagement
Meta’s other popular social media platform, Instagram, is particularly popular with millennials and gen z. Primarily a visually-driven platform, businesses with strong visual content will find Instagram’s capabilities among the best social media platforms to advertise their services.
With a wide variety of photo and video features, such as Stories, Reels, and the traditional News Feed, Instagram gives businesses a wide variety of advertising options for their visual content. User-Generated Content can be incorporated to not only boost your engagement but allow users to trust your brand by its association with others. Influencer marketing was both on Instagram, making it a prime platform for collaborations that can amplify your reach.
Ideal For: Visual brands like fashion, lifestyle, makeup, clothing, travel, hospitality, and fitness
YouTube – The Best Social Media Platform For Video Advertising
Powered by Google, the king of search engines, YouTube has over 2 billion monthly active users who seek out short form and long form video content. Many creators have built livelihoods off content creation, and Google’s Ad formats have allowed them to do that. The extensive reach of YouTube makes it a powerful social media platform for brands with visual advertising strategies to scale their efforts.
There are various advertising formats offered, including skippable and unskippable ads, bumper ads, overlay ads, and sponsor cards. These options allow advertisers to optimize the platform by choosing what is best for their goals by using this social media platform.
YouTube’s targeting capabilities allow advertising based on demographics, interests, keywords, specific video types, mobile viewing optimization, or even True View Ads. Here, advertisers only pay when users watch the whole ad rather than skipping after the first few seconds, ensuring your budget is spent on viewers who are engaged.
High-quality, engaging advertising content performs better, as you only have a few seconds to capture audience attention. The benefit here is that YouTube’s detailed analytics allow you to track the performance of your ads down to the most engaging or least engaging seconds of your advertising content.
Ideal For: any business that aims to advertise using video
LinkedIn – The Professional’s Social Media Platform for Networking & B2B Advertising
LinkedIn is the go-to platform for job recruiting, professional networking, and business to business marketing. It is an ideal social media platform for advertising to business professionals. With a highly engaged audience, LinkedIn is a valuable social media platform for businesses looking to target other professionals and key decision makers.
LinkedIn offers unique targeting options that allow advertisers to reach users by job title, industry, size of their company, or whether they are open to other work opportunities. Like Facebook and Instagram, sponsored content will appear directly in users’ feeds, making advertising a seamless part of their browsing experience. LinkedIn also expands on this by allowing advertising content to appear as direct messaging. With Sponsored InMail Ads, digital marketers can send personalized messages directly to a user’s inbox, which can be highly effective for direct outreach and lead generation. There are even options for you to offer pre-filled Lead Generation Forms for users to easily submit information.
Ideal For: B2B Companies, Recruiters, Educators, Training Development
X – The Town Hall For Real-Time Engagement and Brand Conversations
Not many social media platforms are known for real-time conversations going viral or trends being set, but X is an ideal platform for brands that want to spark timely discussions, engage in real-time product launches or events, and hop on trending topics.
For brands that want to focus on their written messaging, this social media platform allows advertising businesses to target users based on trending topics and relevant hashtags. Businesses that have used X to monitor mentions or respond to customer inquiries in a similar manner as customer service agents have seen positive results and reception towards their business operations.
Ideal For: news and media, tech startups, public relations
Pinterest – Visual Advertising Engagement & Discovery
Brands looking for a social media platform that can gain insight into their customer’s interest can gain a lot of useful information through Pinterest. Showcasing products and ideas through visually compelling content that seamlessly blends with organic posts is a unique advertising strategy. This platform offers features like Promoted Pins and Shopping Ads, which allow brands to present their products in a non-intrusive way and make it easy for users to shop directly from the platform. Rich Pins enhance this experience by providing detailed information like pricing and availability, while keyword targeting ensures that content reaches the right audience based on specific search terms.
Brands can maximize their advertising impact by creating high-quality, aesthetically pleasing images for enhanced search visibility. Along with visually compelling advertising content, this social media platform can help you with strategic targeting and analytics to track performance. While learning how to maximize Pinterest, this social media platform is ideal for advertising strategies focusing on strong visual appeal to attract and inspire their audience.
Ideal For: home decor, DIY, wedding, floral, food and drink
TikTok – The Rise Of A New Advertising Social Media Platform
Since 2021, the emergence of TikTok as a popular social media platform cannot be understated. It’s a platform that started with short-form video content for creativity and trends, but now has quickly become a powerful platform for news, vlogging, and creating authentic brand awareness. Posting options that utilize video, photo, hashtags, sounds, and effects, what sets TikTok apart from other social media platforms is its algorithm based approach.
Users don’t get to select the content they wish to see; the algorithm sends them content based on their preferences and continually learns what content each user finds more engaging and more captivating. For advertising strategies with video-based content, TikTok is about as advanced as a social media platform can be to get your business in front of its target audience while testing the limits of your creativity.
Ideal For: Visual Media companies, consumer goods targeted at younger audiences
When choosing the social media platforms you wish to advertise on, consider where your audience spends the most time, the type of content that resonates with them, and the advertising features that align with your business objectives. By strategically selecting the right social media platforms for advertising, you can maximize your ROI, build stronger connections with your audience, and drive sustainable growth for your business.
Ultimately, the key to successful social media advertising lies not just in the platforms you choose but in how well you understand and leverage them to meet your marketing goals. As social media continues to evolve, staying informed about platform updates, user behaviour, and advertising trends will help you stay ahead of the competition and achieve long-term success in your digital marketing efforts.