It's no secret that any social network today is a huge community of people who spend at least an hour a day in front of the monitor. Most often, each of the participants in any social network “sat out” for several hours in it, chatting with friends, watching entertaining content, reading some news, and so on. All this time he remains “within” this site, being a potential advertising contact. It would be foolish not to use different advertising tools to monetize and make money on such a large audience.
Therefore, today advertising on social networks is both a powerful tool for earning money (for owners of groups and well-developed pages), and a channel for selling their goods and services (for entrepreneurs, business owners). And not to use such an effective tool is tantamount to giving up a powerful stream of customers.
In this article we will try to learn a little more about how advertising works on social networks. To do this, we will analyze the different formats for buying ads on the most popular Russian network “VKontakte”, and also collect the opinions of some advertisers working with different types of it (to compare effectiveness).
What is advertised?
So, for starters, we will decide on what (most often) advertising on social networks is used for. Who buys it and for what purpose? What money are advertisers willing to pay in order to get their share of traffic?
If you ever visited VK, you probably noticed an ad block on the left of the page. It is arranged quite simply: on top of it is a headline offering a certain product or service, below is a picture with the company logo or “person” - the person representing the goods. Then the text can go (although this is optional). In fact, the formats in which advertising on social networks is offered are quite different, and you could meet them all.
To understand who and why is buying a place on the VK page, you need to understand the audience of this resource. If we consider that there are millions of users on this social network, we can say that the audience here is quite diverse, and it can be targeted using different filters. Remember yourself: you indicate in the application form on the site your gender, age, and also the place of study and work. Advertisers who need to sell any product can customize their ad so that it displays to you.
Therefore, the answer to the question about the purpose of ordering VKontakte advertising can be completely different, because the audience of the site is different, which means there are all kinds of manufacturers of goods - companies that need the attention of all these people.
In other words, advertising on social networks is used by a variety of business representatives, from the owners of the local cinema to the largest online laundry store. Everyone can find their customer “VKontakte” (as in any other network) and “reach out” to him using their ads.
Where do they advertise?
Of course, despite the diversity of people spending time on their favorite sites, their age, gender, income level and place of residence, there are also different ads on social networks. VKontakte, for example, has a more youthful landmark. And if we talk about “Classmates”, then this site is more likely to be an older audience.The Mamba dating site is unlikely to be visited by children and older people, as well as those who already have a soul mate. Here you can find lonely, adventurous people. That is, each social network has its own “core” - a group of users united by some common features. You should be guided by it in the event that you are promoting advertising on social networks of one kind or another.
Types of Advertising
Each social network uses its own advertising format. Often sites work with different types in order to provide the advertiser with more tools with which you can “reach out” to your client. It is quite difficult to cover all types of advertising materials that operate on the Russian Internet, so we will talk about the most popular network - VKontakte. Here is the largest audience, and therefore the most active market for advertising services. Therefore, on her example, we will see what is online advertising in social networks.
Ad unit
The classic and most popular, apparently, format for promoting their services is placement in the side advertisement block of ads. The latter is located on all pages of the VKontakte site, and you can see it every time you visit this resource, on the left side. We talked about him a little higher.
This block is configured from an advertising account available to all users. In it you can change settings such as the payment format (per click or per 1000 impressions), audience (gender, age, groups, preferences and a lot of other settings), cost, appearance of the ad (picture and title, picture + title and text- description) and more. In fact, advertising on social networks in a dedicated block (and there is probably one on all platforms, since this is a fairly common format) is presented by a special configurator. It gives a wide choice of options for what your advertisement will be. Your task is to configure it so as to interest your client, replenish the balance of your account and start showing ads.
Promotion Records
Another interesting option for providing information about their products is advertising records. You can see them if you open the “News” section. Advertising services on social networks using such records is a common way to promote yourself as “organically" as possible without causing annoyance to users.
If the information that is submitted in the ad unit on the side of the page is initially perceived by the user as a commercial offer, the information from the paid entry may be of interest under the guise of regular news. Therefore, it is obvious that such a format gives a return more than a simple block.
Using a recording, you can advertise anything, but the main plus is that you can put text or images, a video clip or just links, a survey into it. This, again, expands the advertiser’s horizon.
Advertising in groups: exchange
If the advertising records are located in the “News” section, then the groups in another variant are the sites. Advertising on social networks in this case is placed on the pages of various communities. Its advantage is that the advertiser can limit his audience not by some targeting settings by gender or age, but by members of one group, for example, choose fans of some musician. In such a community you can organize, for example, the sale of tickets or souvenirs.
You can buy advertising in groups using the VKontakte exchange. In other social networks, this is done both centrally and directly by agreement with the community administration.
Other advertising
Of course, there are other approaches to placing ads and finding customers for your product.For example, the same contextual advertising on social networks (such as VKontakte, Instagram, Facebook, etc.) did not take root - it is not so convenient to post materials of this format here - users respond better to the image present in the ad. Therefore, content is more often used in search engines, and in social networks posts and teasers work better.
You can also mention a form such as advertising in the comments. It is used by the users themselves, however, with the right approach, this direction may turn out to be promising.
Promotion of profile pages
Another interesting way to promote your products and services can be the creation and promotion of a profile page with all the necessary information. This is often done by representatives of different areas of small business and various Internet projects. For example, in this way you can advertise the services of a makeup artist by publishing photos of finished works on his page and adding friends of a certain audience (for example, girls aged 20-30).
Promotion of groups and publics
If you have a fairly stable business (for example, a trademark) that needs to be constantly developed, targeted advertising on social networks will work perfectly only in combination with your own community - a group or a public. Do not send users to your site, but stay “within” the social network. This, of course, is somewhat difficult: you need to have a beautiful page, prepare everything in such a way that it looks very serious and inspires confidence among people. Perhaps for these purposes it is better to find an SMM manager.
Hash tags
Do not forget about promoting the entries of your group or profile using hash tags. This is a word preceded by a pound sign (#), symbolizing that it is a tag. He determines that a particular word will be a link to the search for the same words. Say, if you publish information on one of the tags, your posts will occupy higher positions and cover more traffic. On popular and popular topics, you can earn views much more than on unknown ones - this must be taken into account.
Efficiency
Today, advertising on social networks and the Internet industry as a whole are very effective solutions. Perhaps someone thinks that selling in their classic form is a more reliable, understandable and true way to make money than some advanced solutions. In part, this idea is understandable and predictable - people do not want to learn something new.
However, in this case, it is better to pay attention to this segment of advertising. After all, if you already receive, relatively speaking, 10 sales a day with the help of some other advertising sources, why not use the capabilities of the network to get 5 more additional customers? It may be that in terms of operational costs they will turn out to be even cheaper than the classical approaches. Those companies that have already realized this have long attracted customers and earn more.
If you are a business owner and still do not sell through online advertising, you are wasting your time. For example, “VKontakte” is a fairly simple mechanism, everyone can figure out the work of it. The main thing is desire and a little time.
Promotion Tactics
If you are interested in advertising sites on social networks, you first need to find out what formats are on the market and what is their cost. It does not make sense to bring this information here (even on any one network), because it is too dynamic and can change in the next minute. Find out what is.
Next, you need to think about what your advertisement will be like. Is it worth it to buy a format with an additional field for a text description (“VK”) or is it better to purchase a post in some popular group? What exactly will be written in your ad?
The fact is that it is almost impossible to find the perfect solution without practical experiments (in this area).You need to make several advertisements, test them, and you will see which one is more effective. You can determine by the amount of money spent on advertising and customers who contacted by ad.
The fact is that for the promotion of each specific service there may be an individual approach. Say, in one case it’s better to work with the block, in the other - with community posts, or even directly with the site owner. You can only find out what will be more effective specifically in your case through the application of your knowledge and skills.
Try buying ads on social networks - and you can make your business grow even faster!
