In 2012, Facebook page posts reached 16% of brand fans organically but in 2014, that number decreased to only 6% according to an analysis by Ogilvy.
This decrease in organic reach is due to the increase of content that companies and people on social media sites are posting each day. The only way a company will know for sure that a potential customer sees their ad is by paying for it.
With paid social media, you can increase your reach to your target audience from 2.7 million people to 14 million with organic posting.
This does not mean you should abandon posting organically, but you should think about investing in paying for social media advertising to reach even more potential customers.
Seek and sell.
Targeting customers through social media advertising has become very precise. You are now able to target the exact person you are trying to reach through paid advertising.
In 2013, Facebook and Twitter each came out with a new functionality, respectively called Custom Audiences and Tailored Audiences, enabling companies to reach the right pool of customers (or potential ones) by uploading emails of their existing user base and using that information to retarget those customers or target people with a similar profile, based on their social profiles.
How do I show ROI?
Paid social has evolved so much over the past few years that reporting on brand awareness and number of likes and followers is pretty much irrelevant.
Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter now provide pixels (basically a snippet of code) that companies can put on their sites to ensure they are tracking exactly who is converting and the resulting ROI.
With this new tracking feature, marketers can now work on optimizing their ads to increase conversions, or even end a campaign if they are not getting a good enough ROI from it.
Content. Content. And more content.
Traditional advertising is dead and content marketing has evolved. 86% of B2C marketers use content marketing and use four social media sites on average to distribute content.
Social media sites now offer different ways for people to promote their content and/or business, such as Facebook Promoted Posts, LinkedIn Sponsored Updates, and Twitter Promoted Tweets in addition to organic postings.
By having interesting and compelling content, you will gain more social followers and brand loyalty. Engaging content is one of the top 3 reasons people follow brands on social media.The main advantage is that your website conversion rates will increase.
The Content Marketing Institute research shows that website conversion rates are nearly six times higher for companies who have adopted content marketing.
The future is LCD-bright and if social media sites continue on the road of adtech innovation, the limit is beyond the clouds.