Nowadays the most active internet audience is to be found mostly in social networks, which of course raises the demand for targeted and profiled advertising, which allows to show ads to users based on their interests.
The fear of using a new channel for advertising led to many myths about advertising in social networks. Such as:
- in social networks you can find only students and seniors;
- there is no target audience there
- social networks are for fun and not for business
- the users of social networks do not show a clear interest in making a purchase
- nothing is measurable
- advertising on these sites is expensive and inefficient
These myths are debunked, and this fact is confirmed by statistics.
For example, the audience distribution on social networks in the Russian internet: in each social network most of the users are working citizens in the age of 25-34 and students and seniors are in fact the minority. From this we can conclude that the solvency of the target audience “lives” in social networks.
Let us look at some other social media advertising myths and see how we can make your business profitable:
Social network is measurable
In fact, social networking is extremely measurable. To do this, use the categories that are amenable to calculation: URL-label, sales funnel, customer data, etc. These and other metrics will help you understand where and how the budget is spent. Social networks do not differ in approach from conventional marketing. Therefore, before the launch of an advertising campaign it is necessary to understand which of the indicators characterize the success of the promotion.
The statistic can be collected through Google Analytics, community statistics, which shows the coverage, sex and age structure of users, geography, referral sources in the community and so forth.
Example of traffic sources statistic in VKontakte:
Banners in social networks do work!
We’ve all heard that click through media advertising is an average of less than 0.1%. According to the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, an average user spends about 50 minutes in social networks, which allows the advertisers to remind the users about their products and impress them with some innovations. Of course there is the possibility that the users in social media networks will not click on the banner to make the transition, but it is likely that they will remember the ad that they saw and will make the choice to purchase this product. In order to make the banner efficient follow this formula: impressive and bright image + memorable text. This will allow the potential clients to remember your brand/company/product and make a choice in favor of it in the future.
And most importantly, do not be afraid of social networks, your audience is in them!
Online Marketing in Russia 