Social Media Paid Advertising: Does it Actually Work?

Social media marketing keeps evolving. With so many options available, it can be difficult to know which is best for your company. Social marketing takes time and effort but with the right ideas and strategies, you can easily build a large audience, gain more traffic, and ultimately get the conversions you expect. The platforms you choose will have a significant impact on your eventual outcomes.

In comparison to organic social marketing, paid social advertising is growing more sophisticated with more options and more reach potential on virtually any platform.

In a discussion about paid social marketing on Founder Dating, members shared their personal experiences on the subject. These are selected responses on the effectiveness of social media paid advertising. 

1. In general, yes, it works.

That’s not a good channel for getting early adopters, but for the growth stage, yes. I’ve used Facebook and LinkedIn in this respect. Facebook generates much more impressions than LinkedIn, but LinkedIn’s impressions are of much higher quality (more relevant). That’s hardly surprising – Facebook is much bigger, but LinkedIn knows much more about its users.

Also, LinkedIn’s PPC price is significantly higher than that of Facebook, but some of the Facebook’s clicks seem to be caused by bots (there are several lawsuits on that matter, actually), so the effective PPC may be higher than it looks. The first time I tried paid advertising on Facebook, about 30-40% of the visitors that came via that ad were bots (didn’t even have Javascript on).

Others have reported even higher percentages. Ultimately, I’d say it doesn’t matter much which of these two you choose – what matters more is where your potential clients are (and what’s their LTV). If you are a B2B, then LinkedIn is probably the best choice of the two. Founder Dating User, Dimitry, Entrepreneur

2. It really depends on your target audience.

Where do they spend the most time (on which social platforms), and do they think of those spaces as professional places? That’s important because some people are active on Facebook, but don’t think of it as a place to interact with professional contacts or companies. Staci, Entrepreneur

3. I have had success in the B2B marketing with both LinkedIn and Twitter.

For my clients, Facebook has not been a fit (although it may be for you). With LinkedIn, you can do amazing targeting. It’s a great way to find real people, if you have a company name but no person. With Twitter, I’d also suggest doing more advanced ads where you don’t target your own followers, etc. Emily, Advisor

4. What are you looking to market?

As a B2B marketing software company, stick to Twitter and Linkedin. Facebook will only be useful in boosting “organic” Google love. If you’re marketing a content resource like a white paper, LinkedIn is the place to go, then twitter. If you’re promoting an app download, twitter can’t be beat. Social media paid advertising works in conjunction with a well-executed content marketing program (preferably with interactive content marketing). Bill, Advisor

5. I would suggest that you tie whatever campaign you do to a content marketing program.

We do a lot of B2C advertising on Facebook and have achieved solid ROI for our clients. It does not seem to work as well for our B2B efforts but those have been somewhat limited.

We’ve also used Linkedin and Twitter to some success (again B2C) but they haven’t seemed to have worked quite as well.

Facebook can be challenging to work with if you have any issues that need to be resolved. Twitter has been even more difficult just from a get my rep to give me the time of day. Too bad because there was a time I would have happily switched high six-figure spend to them.

We have also had great success using lead gen programs to acquire large number of targeted leads with a high propensity to buy our clients’ products (automotive). This should still work in a B2B environment, the lead numbers are just a bit smaller. Steve, Partner/CTO/CIO at a communications company.

6. I am in the software industry and we’ve paid for advertising on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. Here is what I’ve noticed:

Twitter: It works out great with downloadable content eg. offers for whitepapers, ebooks etc. However, always make sure your ads use Twitter cards that have images that have the title of the ebooks.

Facebook: Generally, I haven’t had much luck with finding the right contacts with Facebook advertising, while you may get a few people interested, Facebook doesn’t have a wide depth of access to people’s actual job titles and companies. Facebook generally has worked better for B2C clients in the past than B2B.

Linkedin: Linkedin is the most expensive of the three, however, their targeting options are much better. You can decide the job titles that you want, eg, managers, CMOs industries and even industry groups that you want your ads served to.

For example, you can quickly fill webinar or demo seats for your product with Linkedin ads and the leads maybe more qualified than what you may get from Facebook or Twitter since the targeting is better. Helen, Digital Marketing and Web Analytics Manager