Why now is the time to cut through the noise with social media.
When things started to go sideways in mid-March, many companies immediately slashed their marketing budget. I’ll never understand why an organization would handcuff a department devoted to increasing revenue, but that’s another story. One major effect of this national trend was that, with paid ad spends dropping precipitously, social ad inventory increased dramatically.
It’s the opposite of the situation we tend to see in December, where everyone and her Etsy-store-owning cousin advertises on social media during gift-giving season — ad inventory drops, resulting in steep increases in cost-per-click.
What that meant for advertisers who stayed in the game (like our clients) was better outcomes for the same amount of money. Results like cheaper website clicks, less-expensive cost-per-fan, and historically low cost-per-engagement meant that most advertising spends went much further than in previous months. And though brands are slowly coming back to social, we’re still driving our clients’ ad performance at much better cost-per-click than we’ve seen since Facebook and other social platforms originally rolled out advertising.
Even smaller spends are performing well.
One week of B2B LinkedIn sponsored content and website clicks campaigns:
B2C Facebook website clicks campaigns:
B2B Twitter promoted tweets, followers, and website clicks campaigns:
What does that mean for you?
Your company still has an opportunity for big gains on paid social for a while longer — whether you want to increase your fans and followers for credibility with customers, drive up leads and website clicks, or just increase your thought leadership visibility via reach and impressions, now is the time to spend.
What are you doing right now to ensure growth in the next several months? Are you laying in a foundation of potential clients and goodwill by providing content and services that help your target audiences? Are you building relationships with leads based on trust and affinity so that you’re front-of-mind when they’re ready to buy? Are you listening to the needs of the decision-makers and influencers in your industry?
Your company can thrive if you feed it.
If you try to save money on a road trip by not putting gas in the tank, you’ll never get to your destination. And right now, your MPG can be better than ever.
Of course, we’d love to help. We’ve found that strong organic posts combined with engaging curated content and integrated with strong paid social campaigns drive measurable results for our clients. Let us know your target audiences and goals for growth in the coming months — we’ll help implement a plan that’s customized to deliver.
Even if your plan is to handle paid social in-house, we’re here to provide advice. Drop us a line at officehours@widefoc.us to schedule a free 15-minute Q&A session, or message virtualcoffee@widefoc.us for a 30-minute discovery call.
Eric Elkins is our founder and chief strategist. He’s been spending this stay-at-home time cooking up a storm, supporting Denver restaurants with to-go orders of craft cocktails, and watching his daughter play Final Fantasy XIV.
