Image source: Joe the Goat Farmer
By Zachary Jarvis
Pay per click advertising (PPC) campaigns drive increased traffic to your website. However, PPC advertising has some inbuilt flaws.
First, people searching can be wary of clicking on paid advertisements. Second, PPC ads have very little space and time to show the distinctive advantages of the advertised product or service and to position the brand. Third, photos and videos are not permitted.
Content published in social media feeds overcomes these issues. Items in a feed seem a lot more organic than PPC does, especially if they tie in with the audience’s interests.
Social media offers an opportunity to create a genuine connection with the audience which isn’t just about sales. Marketers have a wide range of ways to show off their products and services, from simple photos to live streams and 360 video – and even a combination of creative media with Facebook’s Canvas.
So how can social help your PPC campaign?
Social media and search engine PPC can work very well together. PPC is a little like the digital equivalent of cold calling. You will get click-throughs, but less than 3% convert — 97% of impressions produce no response.
Unless you use social media.
By putting a code called a pixel on your website, you can track visitors to your website. Then you can use that information to track them on social media and remarket to them.
The nature of social media makes a post (especially if it has comments and social proof) feel much more like an organic recommendation than a PPC or display ad. You can also tailor your message based on how far customers have progressed in your company’s marketing and sales funnel. That means you can send different messages to someone who has just visited your home page than to someone who abandoned a purchase at checkout.
If you run an ecommerce store, you can even create a dynamic ad to show customers items they considered purchasing in their inbox. Coupling that with a special offer, discount or brand advantage like free shipping – can drive conversions. You can set various filters so you won’t waste money (and annoy customers) by putting display ads in front of people who have already converted.
In social media, you can also create a lookalike audience. These are people who have not heard of your business, but share the same demographic markers as those who have already converted — making them more likely to also convert. The social media benefits start with a strong PPC campaign that’s specific to your business.
Well-populated social media feeds combined with community management helps put customers who may have been previously lost back into the sales funnel. The community management component helps build a genuine relationship with your customers so they don’t just convert once. They come back time and time again.
Zachary Jarvis is a digital marketer and founder of Magnate, the social-first marketing agency with one goal: results.
