“I love social media because it sells s***”
~ Gary Vaynerchuk

While that quote may be quite raw, it accurately sums up my feelings on the power of social media marketing. Ever since I was introduced to the world of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn years ago, I had the strong belief that social media would emerge as a powerful channel for customer acquisition in the current digital era. As for which channels I thought would dominate the scene by now….let’s just say I was bang on with Pinterest, but missed the mark with Google+ (hey, we all make mistakes – even Google). Now that another year has ended and 2016 has begun, it has become quite evident that the aforementioned platforms, and new ones that have emerged (such as Pinterest and Instagram), have become crucial to web marketing strategies for certain businesses. Is a portion of your marketing budget for 2016 dedicated to paid advertising campaigns on social media platforms? Is tweeting and community management even a part of your digital marketing mix in the new year? If the answer to either question is no, don’t fear – there is still time to adjust your strategy and utilize social media marketing to make an impact in the coming months.

That said, simply setting up branded profiles and posting status updates won’t help you capture new business immediately. The world of social media has evolved significantly over the past couple of years and has become quite cluttered. Not only is investing in eye-catching creatives essential, but spending marketing dollars on paid advertising campaigns has become crucial to generate exposure. While it was easy for brands to generate high engagement rates and organic reach without spending a dollar on Facebook four years ago, it has become increasingly difficult over the past couple of years to achieve the same results without boosting posts or generating a massive amount of content on a daily basis. Other social media giants have followed suit, as brands can boost tweets on Twitter, sponsor content on LinkedIn, promote pins on Pinterest, and even promote content on Instagram via the Facebook Advertising platform.

With regards to advertising on social media, the following statistics exhibit the prominence of this new type of digital advertising:

• Social media advertising is expected to reach $35 Billion by 2017.
• Twitter advertising has grown 60 percent year-over-year based on their Q3 2015 earnings report.
• Instagram ads, while still in its infancy, brought in an estimated $595 million in 2015.
• Facebook desktop and mobile ads have significantly higher click-through rates than regular web ads (8.1x and 9.1x higher respectively).

Pretty awesome, right? There is a lot of money to be made via social media marketing.

Evidently, social media advertising provides businesses with cost-effective measures to reach targeted niche audiences in a digital era where there is a substantial amount of noise and clutter. Incorporating the element of strategic remarketing can also help brands increase conversion rates by retargeting web users on Facebook and Twitter. Within Facebook specifically, the ability to dynamically server ads based on the product pages a user has previously visited can prove to be highly successful. There is a tremendous amount of opportunities available on social media platforms these days as illustrated by the infographic below. In the coming weeks, we will prepare more in-depth overviews of the advertising options available on each platform, with pertinent statistics and insights that will help you determine which platforms are most suitable for your marketing objectives.

Are you ready to get social?