Let’s address the elephant in the room. Paid Social’s value and effectiveness for hyper-targeted campaigns has changed since Apple’s IOS changes in 2021. That change has caused the targeting within Meta’s suite of social networks (Facebook, Instagram, Whats App) to not be as “targeted”. With 96% of us opting out of sharing our personal data with Meta, Zuckerberg and crew no longer know if our relationship status changes, if we have moved to a new city, or picked up a new love for curling with our buddies on the ice.
Here’s Why Social Still Matters:
There are still an estimated 3.9 billion social media media users in 2022 and an estimated 4.4 billion users by 2024. Facebook’s users have plateaued; but Instagram’s user base is still growing. Smart advertisers know they need to be where their customers are, which is why we expect an estimated $134 billion to be spent on social media advertising in 2022. You’ve heard us say this at almost every conference we’ve attended in the last six months, so say it with us:
“There are three-plus marketing budgets for every business. Print, digital and social. You need to own all three, if you want to be considered the trusted media and advertising consultant to your clients.”
As long as consumers flock to social media, there is a need for advertisers to market through those channels.
Answering the CTR Question:
The average CTR (Click Through Rate) on paid social campaigns in 2022 is less than 1 percent. That means, for every 100 impressions an ad gets, 1 person will click on the advertisement. That is down considerable compared to pre-pandemic and pre-Apple changes. But that doesn’t mean that advertisers don’t benefit from having a paid presence on social.
Facebook has the highest CTR with an average of .9%. Instagram has a paid social media CTR of .22%. With the change in CTR, we suggest you and your advertisers shift your view of paid social from a direct response or lead gen marketing tool to a branding and awareness tool. That is why you’ll hear your January Spring Sales Director and our training focus in on the power of reach and frequency when it comes to paid social. You’ll see those metrics highlighted in our performance reporting, alongside the more traditional metrics: impressions, clicks, CTR. Reach helps.
Social Media campaigns help you monitor how many people are seeing your ad. Even if they don’t click while perusing their newsfeed, we have made an impression that could cause them to seek you out later. Frequency is the number of times your ad is seen by each of those individuals that we are reaching. Our best practice is 3x per day. Sound like a lot? Not really, when you consider that in order to break through the clutter and noise, you have to show a branded ad to someone as many as 16 times before they are ready to engage.
Let’s dig a bit deeper into CTR. When you look closer at Facebook, you can see how paid social ads perform, based on industry:
- The Legal services category has a 1.61% CTR
- Retail has a 1.59% CTR
- Apparel has a 1.24% CTR
- Beauty has a 1.16% CTR
Congratulations, if your CTR is over 1 percent, your advertisers are doing an excellent job cutting through the noise and you are helping them reach their customers.
Ryan Dorhn says us, “Show, Don’t Tell”. We agree. We’ve built our sellers a big ‘ole database of case studies from every category. It includes, paid social, programmatic, paid search, targeted eblast…everything that January Spring helps you bring to market.
We’ll round out this discussion on Paid Social CTRs, by showing you how campaigns perform under our management.
Case study:
A high-end steak restaurant ran an awareness campaign from January 2022 through April 2022 with a total of 63,133 impressions and 1,978 clicks, an impressive 3.13% CTR.
Selling tips:
Start by demonstrating how you/we will measure the key metrics of the campaign: reach, impressions, clicks, CTR. Then dig into the importance of creative in telling the advertiser’s story and engaging potential customers. Wrap up your presentation with assurance that we will monitor your campaign weekly, optimizing for the best performance. Lastly, set an expectation with your advertiser around the performance of their campaign…and ask for the sale 😊