Social Media Advertising in Cape Town
Advertising on social media in Cape Town is a relatively recent practice – and a popular one. Why? Because social media platforms have experienced a massive boom in the userbase in the last decade. Advertising platforms have always been a main source of revenue for such websites, as the services they provide are free of cost.
Social Media Advertising – A brief overview
When it comes to social media advertising, advertisers and people automatically think about the social media giant – Facebook. Founded in 2004, it has experienced success in the last 17 years. Paired with Instagram in 2012, Facebook has dominated the social media market ever since.
Advertisings have always been the bread and butter for social media platforms. However, since smartphones arrived and the internet became cheap in the last decade, these social websites have experienced a massive boom. And along with it, the advertising techniques.
In 2021, we are literally bombarded with ads. They may seem annoying in general, but they are effective. If you have opt-in for ad preferences, there is a good chance you are going to see a relevant ad that you might take an interest in.
Also, since you can log in on many websites through your social media accounts these days, social media platforms can also track their user activities with Cookies, just like how Google does. This helps such social media platforms to gather data and show better, relevant ads to their users. Although cookie tracking and privacy concerns is still a debatable issue amongst netizens today.
Do people hate Social Media ads?
If you ask yourself, and the people around you, high chance the answer you will be getting is yes. However, that does not mean social media ads do not work. In fact, they still work as effectively. Brandstatic and many other agencies claim so in their articles. Take a look: Do Facebook Ads Still Work for Business in 2021?
There are many reasons why people would hate social media ads. Let’s face it: even you hate them to some extent. It’s no doubt that we face social media ads every day. And even though they have evolved for the better in recent years, they are still far from being perfect. People may hate ads because:
- They are not relevant to what people are searching for.
- Your ad appears simply to a wrong target.
- Depends on how a person is feeling in general.
- Too repetitive
- Your ad campaign or content is not effective enough
Let’s see more about how you can advertise in South Africa.
Advertising on Social Media in Cape Town
Advertising on Social Media in Cape Town starts with identifying where exactly your target audience is. We have covered more about it here: Finding your Target Market. Furthermore, in our article about the Importance of Social Media for Small Businesses, we have mentioned the top five social media channels for your business. Let’s get to know about their advertising aspect one by one.
Related: Small Businesses and Social Media | Is it really effective?
WhatsApp is the #1 social media chatting app in South Africa. However, WhatsApp itself does not have its own marketing channel. Getting calls/messages on WhatsApp totally depends on third-party advertising channels – such as advertising your WhatsApp on Facebook or Twitter.
Facebook (and Facebook Messenger) are the two most used social media platforms in South Africa. A majority of digital marketers prefer this platform for its vast userbase and intuitive ad algorithm. Let’s understand more about Facebook Ads.
There are eight different types of Facebook ads:
- Photo Ads: The majority of advertisers consider this option. A photo and piece of copy content are used to make the ads engaging.
- Video Ads: Another best and most popular way of ads. Videos are more engaging in nature and Facebook has repeatedly reported about its effectiveness.
- Stories Ads: Ads in the Story section of Facebook. It can be a video or an image.
- Messenger Ads: Ads that are targeted at people that use Facebook Messenger – a separate chatting app by Facebook.
- Carousel Ads: A good advertisement option where they can promote multiple products or services with an interactive slideshow.
- Slideshow Ads: Slideshows are videos of images that contain useful information for the targeted audience.
- Collection: A good option for retail businesses where they can promote multiple products in one go. Viewers can browse and purchase these products at will.
- Playables: An advertisement option for apps like smartphone games. These will allow you to test a product out before downloading it.
Also, Facebook has a lot of options to define and customise an ad campaign. With a variety of dimensions and metrics, you can exactly define the region, your target audience, and the budget you are willing to spend on. There are many factors that come into play when you are defining your Facebook ads. This makes Facebook a popular choice for advertisers to advertise their businesses effectively.
Facebook ad goals can be as followed:
- Increase the conversion rate on your website.
- Get more people to contact you.
- More engagement with your Facebook posts – for the sake of improving brand recognition.
- Get people to click on your website.
Related: Advertising on Facebook in South Africa
Instagram ads is a creative way to promote your business. You can simply turn any Instagram post into an advertisement. Besides, since Instagram is owned by Facebook, Facebook’s own ad manager can also be used to create ads for Instagram. Similar to Facebook, you can also Advertisers look at Instagram as an influencing and creative platform. These advertising platforms also come with an inbuilt performance analysis tool.
Know more: Advertising on Instagram | Instagram for Business
Youtube
Youtube ads are nothing but a type of Display Ad. This mainly contains a banner ad or a video ad when it comes to YouTube. YouTube ads are a part of the Google Ads network and all the Google Ads parameters can be applied to YouTube Ads. You can also analyze how your ad is performing with Google Analytics, which is an important tool for marketers.
Related: Google Analytics – Goals & Reports
To run advertisements on Twitter, you will need a Twitter ad account. Twitter is a unique platform where people express themselves in real-time. It mainly functions on trends that aim to shift the winds in our society or promote awareness. Twitter ads function around that.
There are 5 ad formats in Twitter Ads:
- Promoted Ads: Standard marketing ads that can be used at any stage of the marketing funnel, come up with polls and conversion buttons, and has many sub-formats.
- Twitter Amplify: Allows the advertiser to use premium video content from different publishers to be used in their videos.
- Follower Ads: Promote a Twitter account to the target audience for improving brand recognition.
- Twitter Takeover: Advertisements in Timeline and Explore tab.
- Twitter Live: Real-time advertisements that are broadcasted at a predetermined time.
Know more: Twitter Ad Formats and Ad Features
Conclusion
Digital advertising is a significantly cheaper platform than traditional advertising, and social media is a huge part of that. Despite its disadvantages, social media advertising is still highly effective. All advertising platforms follow a similar pattern of choosing your goals, defining your target audience, and set your budget. The process of doing so is similar as well. However, what makes them different is how they function, and the kind of audience a platform has.
If you need social media management or digital marketing services, please feel free to connect with us. Digital Lime Green is a Cape Town based agency that provides affordable and highly cost-effective digital advertising solutions.