Moving away from Facebook ads to diversify paid social in a changing market

The world is changing, but marketers aren’t. For the past few years, Facebook advertising has been the king of paid social.

With billions of users to target and a somewhat advanced advertising proposition, most brands have used Facebook ads to their full advantage to reach a diverse audience at scale.

But, with the rise of TikTok and other social media platforms, Facebook should only equate to a portion of your ad budget, rather than 100%. This is because times are changing, and the newer generations are adopting the social channels of their time. 

This is the reason why Facebook instead of being an innovator has shamelessly copied key features from the likes of Snapchat and TikTok to stay relevant to a younger audience. But is this enough to bring new users to the channel or is it a retention strategy?

While Facebook has been copying organic features of its competitors, over the past year TikTok, Snapchat and Pinterest have been upgrading their advertising platforms.

Advertisers get more analytics and an easy interface for building ads, plus, with more users on these platforms than ever before, now is their time to shine. 

Above: TikTok users over time

Above: Pinterest users over time

Above: Snapchat users over time

Facebook users over time

From the above graphs, it’s clear to see that more users are adopting other platforms, especially TikTok which is dominating with over 1b users worldwide.

We’re unsure how long it’ll be until it passes Facebook (if ever), but with fun and engaging content that users love, we’re sure it will one day. 

Be where your audience is

As with all ad strategies, you have a clear customer journey and a set of personas you’re ready to target. But are you choosing your platforms to align with these? Or are you choosing the simpler option of Facebook?

So, let’s look at a few other platform alternatives that you could add to your ad budget next quarter. 

TikTok

We can’t stress enough why TikTok ads are great, but here are a few reasons given by Tiktok for business: 

1. 88% of TikTokers love discovering new content while using the app. 
2. 61% of TikTok users feel that advertising on TikTok is unique compared to top social and video platforms.
3. 52% of TikTok users say they find new products from ads on TikTok. 

With 90% of TikTok users opening the app on a daily basis and the majority playing videos with sound on, your ads will have maximum impact on the user. 

Plus, TikTok ads hardly look like your traditional Facebook style ads. They’re engaging, fun, creative and look like a TikTok video most of the time which keeps users watching. 

Myth: TikTok is only for teenagers. This statement is completely false, as actually the majority of users (35%) are 19-29yo. With users from all over the globe with different hobbies, personalities and psychographics, your ideal customer is on TikTok. 

Snapchat 

Although with fewer users than Pinterest and TikTok, Snapchat still has 293 million daily active users and it reaches 75% of millennials and gen-z! So, if you’re targeting this audience, Snapchat should be included in your ad budget. 

As with TikTok, Snapchat offers immersive, full screen ad placements and encourages advertisers to create ads that are engaging, original and innovative. 

You can start advertising with Snapchat from just $5 per day and you can target by location, demographics, interests, and devices. 

The Snap Pixel, similar to the good old Facebook pixel, lets advertisers track a user’s journey to measure campaign success, even giving you the ability to re-engage with the most prospective of users. 

Pinterest 

This almighty search engine has over 400 million monthly users all looking for inspiration. Can your brand provide this? 

According to ads.pinterest.com, 83% of weekly pinners have made a purchase based on pins from brands, plus interestingly, 10% of pinners earn over 125k per year (40 million people!). 

Pinterest is host to a huge array of demographics all looking for inspiration, with 33% of pinners over 40 years old. Whoever your ideal customer is, they might just be hiding out on Pinterest. 

The most popular categories searched for on Pinterest are: 

1. Home décor
2. DIY and crafts
3. Entertainment
4. Education
5. Art
6. Women’s fashion
7. Food and drinks
8. Beauty
9. Event planning
10. Gardening

Does your brand fit into one of these? If so, Pinterest ads might just be an option for you. 

Creating content for TikTok, Snapchat and Pinterest 

When it comes to creating content for your ads, now is not a time to hold back your budget. In fact, if you don’t have the budget for creative, we recommend taking some out of your ad budget to allow for this.

Good creative is key to success when it comes to ads. If your creative is poor, you might as well not run the ad in some cases. 

You can either create the content in house, pay a professional team to create it, or even work with a few influencers. 

Here are some top tips to create engaging ads: 

• User-generated content is king.

This content looks real, not salesy and creates trust with the viewer. 

• Understand what content your ideal customer loves to consume 

And then recreate it. Don’t try and reinvent the wheel if you don’t need to. Do your research and get to know your audience on a deeper level to provide them with ads they love to see. 

• Use your best organic content 

If you have organic content that’s dominated, use it as part of your ad campaign. If it works, it works. 

• Lean on trends 

Trends are huge across TikTok, so if you’ve got the capacity and budget to jump on trends as part of an ad campaign, we highly suggest you do it. 

Why have a cross-channel strategy?

It’s highly unlikely that the first time someone sees your brand, they’re going to buy. This is where touch points come into play.

A figure that’s thrown around the marketing space is 7 touchpoints before someone buys from your brand, so keep this in mind when planning your strategy. Plus, it’s been proven that if people see your ad on more than one platform, they’re 2x more likely to buy from you.

People go onto different platforms for different reasons, at different times, with different frames of mind. Let’s bear this in mind when planning. 

For example, people may scroll Instagram when they’re bored and looking for a quick hit of dopamine, but then someone may search Pinterest when they’re feeling inspired and want to find a new home product. 

With Pixels you can re-target your potential customers on platforms you think they’ll most likely be in the right frame of mind to buy. Plus, with continuous monitoring and experimentation of your ads, you can adjust them to work in collaboration with one another to get the best ROI.

Google Analytics on the other hand will allow you to see your audience demographic to provide you with data to support channel decision making.

Retargeting is also an opportunity for you to build a stronger relationship with your potential customers, as many people aren’t likely to buy the first time they view or click on an ad.

Therefore retargeting allows you to build trust with people who may have never heard of your brand before seeing your ads, and expose them to your USPs. After all, the more we see something, the more we tend to like it.

Let’s look at some brand examples

M and M Direct.com 

M and M direct.com are using both Facebook and TikTok to advertise. The video on Tiktok has over 1.2 million views, follows a trend and doesn’t look salesy. However, the Facebook one is a generic clothing ad with nothing special to grab a buyer’s attention. It would be interesting to see which ad performed best. 

@mandmdirect

Running low on outfit ideas? Don’t worry we’ve got you covered🤫🔥 ##mandmdirect ##bigbrandslowprices ##UKFashion

♬ original sound – CARLA FLORENCIA

Snugsofa.com

Snug Sofa is using a multi-platform ad strategy using Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok (and potentially Snapchat, but I haven’t been served their ads yet… I tried). 

Their ads vary on different platforms, but are all visually engaging and on brand. An excellent example of a brand using an array of social media platforms. P.s. They’re using Google Ads too. 

@snugsofa

How would you style your Snug? Rate this look out of 10. ✨##snugsofa ##sofa ##pinterestdecor ##homedecor ##interiorsoftiktok ##foryoupage ##sofainabox

♬ TROPICAL UPLIFTING MOTIVATIONNAL SUMMER RUN – whitecedar

1. Diversify your ad strategy to be where your audience are 
2. Personalise your creative to the channel and audience
3. Re-target across all platforms 

If you need full ad support from strategy and implementation to management and optimisation, we’re a paid social agency with a specialist team who would love to hear from you, reach out to hello@honchosearch.com. 

Read our Ariat Clothing paid social case study

Resources

oberlo.com

wordstream.com

blog.hubspot.com

businessofapps.com

businessofapps.com

statista.com

businessofapps.com

ads.tiktok.com