Advertising comes in many different shapes and sizes and the traditional methods have their benefits, but so does paid social media advertisements. Here we are going to take a look at the differences between the two and pick out the benefits that social media marketing has over those traditional methods.
Specific detailed targeting
Across all social media advertising you have a way to directly reach your target audience. This is done through you, the advertiser, building the audience to reach with the ads, which gives you a guarantee that your ad is going to be in front of who you want it to be. The more traditional methods such as TV, radio, newspapers don’t have that guarantee that social media ads do – it is not as clear as to who you will reach.
Of course, choosing the channel your ad appears on and the time it runs will help you with reaching your target demographic but with social media advertising you know exactly the audience you are reaching with your content.
Cheaper creative options
Traditional advertisements come at quite a high expense, which can limit certain companies due to the advertising budget not being so high. Another factor here is the creative options tend to be much more expensive than your standard social media advert as the bar for quality is much higher, especially for TV.
When it comes to advertising on social media, the creatives don’t need to be done in a certain way and can be created much more cost effectively. This can save thousands of pounds when it comes to delivering your content and makes social media a more affordable option for the smaller companies that have lower marketing budgets.
Full visibility on results
Social media advertising allows you to have full access to your marketing campaign at any time. A huge benefit to those who are obsessed with seeing results in real time. The different ads manager platforms have real-time up to date results that can be accessed anywhere.
On the other hand, if you are to use other methods like TV or radio, you usually have to wait until your campaign has finished and are relying on outside sources to share your data with you, rather than being able to access it at any time.
Ability to quickly change
Another benefit of social media advertising is the ability to change your campaign creative, messaging and overall objective really easily. As everything is managed by the advertiser, they have the ability to go in and update their advertising campaigns with a few clicks of a button.
On the other hand, the more traditional methods can be quite difficult to change as there are other parties involved and sometimes requires approval from the selected channels/outlets which can delay the changeover process.
Optimisation
Traditional methods offer very few options in terms of optimising your campaigns, they also often come with an increased cost as it may go against what had been previously agreed. Looking at social media advertising campaigns, they can be optimised within minutes, refining your approach to receive the best possible results.
This can be done by moving budgets around, turning off ads that aren’t working and optimising the placement and even platform, where on traditional methods, there are more limited options which causes a delay.
At Prohibition, we work with a range of B2B and B2C brands across all sectors to create engaging social media marketing strategies that allow brands to stay up to date with the latest trends and updates. Get in contact today to find out how we could help you.
Check out some other social media advertising blogs:
- The Ultimate Guide to Facebook Advertising
- How to Get the Most Out of your Targeting for Social Media Advertising
- Why Have My Social Media Ads Stopped Working?
