Social media has become an integral part of our society with the average adult spending more than an hour and a half a day on one platform or another. Research has shown that the usage of social media by businesses has increased phenomenally making it one of the most effective marketing tools out there. It can be endlessly profitable and almost all businesses understand the importance of investing into social media marketing many, however, struggle to know where to start.

Some people regard social media marketing as superficial, but in reality it is often the exact opposite. Social media can help you accomplish goals such as brand awareness & discovery so that potential clients get to know about the products and services your company offer. It can alert people about new products and special offers that may be running and encourage them to share positive experiences with other social media users.

An advantage that social media marketing has over other more traditional marketing methods is that appears more relatable to the general public and does not give the same impression that a hard sell technique may have. This will encourage visitors to the social media page to read on and click through to the business website for further details and possible sales.

When setting up Facebook adverts you have to choose what you want your ad to do. For example, do you want people to be able to click on to the ad and go to your Facebook profile page? Do you want them to go through to a website or do you want them to contact you via Messenger, WhatsApp or phone?

You need to think about what the main aim of the ad is? You want to try and reduce the amount of clicks a purchase needs to make to complete the task you wish them to do. For example, if you are advertising a new product that they can buy from your website then you should make the ad click straight through to this page. If you do link it to your profile page on Facebook or even the home page on your website, then the person will have to click through again to find the page they are looking for.

If you are offer a wide range of services that are tailored to a person or businesses specific needs then you may want to put a messenger or WhatsApp link on as they may need to contact you to find out more or obtain a personalised quote. Often you can have two different types of ads running at the same time to see which one performs better for you and your business. You can then use this data going forward to help you decide what to do next.

If you already have a social media account on Facebook but are looking to try and promote it and build up your following or get traffic to your site, then you may consider doing some Facebook advertising. The beauty with Facebook paid ads is that you can set your own budget, so it you want to start off small you can. You do not have to commit to keep running the ad either so you can stop it at anytime or set it to only run for a certain number of days.

When setting up your ad, you have a number of options available to you. You need to decide what the main aim is with the advert. Is it to get traffic to your site or to get likes on Facebook or is it to sell a particular product or service? Once you have decided this you can then choose the right option to create your advert. You will also need to have an image that you can use on the ad. This may be a generic one off your social media or website or you may design on specifically to be used on that advert. You can also select groups of people you want to show your ad to based on their interests and also their location, gender and age.

The Covid pandemic has bought massive disruption to many businesses. Some have been forced to close their doors for months on end, and if they were not able to trade online, this may have meant they couldn’t earn any sort of income.

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have helped a number of businesses immensely during the pandemic and particularly throughout the various lockdowns. If they didn’t have a website, it gave them a way of communicating with their customers and selling their products and services online. Having a website created is by far one of the best ways to build up your business online but it can be expensive and can always take some time to get it up and running. This is something that just was not feasible for many businesses and therefore unless they used social media, they could not continue to trade. Some of the social media sites work better for certain businesses than others. Facebook can be great for selling products, taking bookings and updating your community of followers as to what is happening. LinkedIn is great for networking and essentially word of mouth type marketing and Instagram is ideal for those that want to showcase their work in the form of images.

The last 15 months have been a challenge for us all. Some businesses and freelancers have thrived and others have found it tough, or maybe not even made it through. One industry that has done well is the world of online marketing. Although initially some businesses cut back on their marketing, worried about cash flow, they very quickly realised that they needed to be investing in improving their online presence in order to continue trading. With the UK going in to lockdown and having restrictions imposed at different times throughout the year, it was vital that businesses could communicate and trade with their customers online. If they didn’t have a website then they would either need to have one built or use one of the other marketing platforms such as social media. The social media sites have proved vital to thousands of businesses as with them, they may not of been able to do any business at all. Even when restrictions are lifted, it will be a good idea to continue with this sort of online marketing as the world of online retail is ever growing and unlikely to stop.

An online marketing company or freelancer will be able to advise you on where to invest your budget to get the best return on your investment.