Do you know how your client can advertise without spending much money ? Social media. If you want to boost the cost-​effectiveness of advertising in 2023, social media should be on your radar, including some channels that your client may not have considered in the past. TikTok is gaining ground, especially among small businesses. Free, or low-​cost applications, like Pinterest and Snapchat are more cost-​effective than Facebook and Instagram. Here’s what you need to know to make the most of your client’s social media advertising dollars in 2023.

Social Media and the Effectiveness of Advertising

Cost-​Effective Social Media Platforms

TikTok

Before you say, “TikTok is for kids!” let me stop you. Yeah, TikTok may have started as a platform dominated by Gen Z. But the pandemic drove bored and curious members of other generations to the app. So, now, it hosts users and creators of all ages. And TikTok helps advertise a variety of products, from athletic wear to household goods to vehicle accessories and everything in between. If you want to boost your client’s effectiveness of advertising, you won’t rule out TikTok.

According to research from the Meta Ads Benchmark Report by tinuiti, TikTok impressions are 42% cheaper than on Meta platforms (Facebook and Instagram). So, the cost-​effectiveness of advertising on TikTok speaks for itself. So much so that small businesses in particular are jumping on the bandwagon in order to save thousands on marketing, according to an article on AdAge.

According to various small businesses interviewed by AdAge, advertising on TikTok has many benefits:

• Organic reach that saves marketing dollars
• Effective revenue generation
• Increased ability to reach new customers

And when videos on TikTok do well, users share them to other social media platforms, including Facebook and Instagram. Businesses of all sizes could reap these benefits if they knew how to effectively reach consumers on TikTok.

Snapchat and Pinterest

You know which other social media platforms are more cost effective to advertise on than Meta platforms? Snapchat and Pinterest. Impressions are 61% cheaper than Meta on Pinterest and 30% cheaper on Snapchat. According to a previous SalesFuel blog post, featuring data from GWI, your client should consider advertising on these platforms if they’re targeting:

• Pinterest: Gen Zers and millennials (although all age demographics are fairly evenly represented on this app)
• Snapchat: Primarily Gen Z and secondarily millennials (with little emphasis on Gen Xers or Baby Boomers)

Facebook and Instagram

While Facebook and Instagram impressions are more expensive than those on TikTok, Pinterest and Snapchat, you can’t deny the effectiveness of advertising on these channels. And they’re still not terribly expensive.

The Reels feature, in particular, is important on these two social platforms. According to tinuiti, “On Instagram, Reels share of ad impressions rose from 3.9% in Q2 to 4.7% in Q3, while on Facebook the total share of impressions attributed to either Reels or Reels overlay ads more than doubled from Q2 to Q3. Advertisers testing creative on Reels have found the UGC-​style ads similar to TikTok videos perform best.” Well, would you look at that! To boost effectiveness of advertising even more, you can repurpose your client’s TikTok videos on their Facebook and Instagram reels. Time saved for you and your client’s marketing and social media teams is also money saved for the company.

In short, a healthy mix of social media platforms can boost the effectiveness of advertising for your client, but be sure to give previously underappreciated platforms such as TikTok a chance.

More Information

How well do your client’s target audiences respond to ads on social media? Which social media platforms are they most active on? Get the answers to these questions and more by looking up your client’s target audience’s profile on AudienceSCAN on AdMall by SalesFuel.

Photo by Andrew Le