Advertising in Singapore: The Best Social Media Platforms for Business

‍What's Online Advertising?

Online advertising is the art and science of using the internet to distribute advertising messages to a specific target audience or demographic. The procedure aids in generating a tonne of traffic for your website and can significantly increase the visibility of your business.

Promoting marketing materials using various web platforms, including social media, digital assets, search engines, and so on, is known as internet or online advertising. This method of promotion places you in front of potential customers. The main objective is influencing your audience to take a specific action, like purchasing.

Types Of Online Advertising

You could feel overwhelmed if you're new to online advertising. A plethora of activities and procedures go into internet marketing. You should be aware of the many online advertising categories from the beginning.

Social Media Advertising

Social media advertising uses numerous social media platforms to promote and sell your goods and services. Before you think about running ads on these networks, you will require a complex social media marketing approach. You can use prompted tweets, user-generated material, posts, or a full-fledged advertising campaign on various social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and the like.

‍Email Marketing

Successful web advertising campaigns are influenced by email marketing. It enables you to stay connected with clients. With the help of these emails, you may cold call potential clients and win them over.

Content Marketing

An excellent form of advertising is online content marketing. It involves putting a brand message in front of the appropriate customers. The aim is to increase organic traffic to your site by enhancing its SEO. It is possible to purchase the placement of your communications on reputable websites. You can only increase your content marketing ROI by using sponsored ads.

Mobile Advertising

The new norm now includes smartphones. As a result, marketers are using smartphones to advertise. Do you? Make an effort to develop a sound mobile marketing strategy. Before you go, you must familiarise yourself with mobile apps, advertisements, push notifications, and SMS messaging.

Display Marketing

A display ad appears on websites owned by other people. Users are directed to your website when they click links to your videos, photos, or information. You must consider user experience (UX) while designing a landing page; otherwise, your efforts could be in vain. You should use retargeting or remarketing for the ideal display ad formats.

Search Engine Marketing

Your website will be more visible online through search engine marketing. In contrast to SEO, SEM is more closely related to PPC. To show up on search engines, you must pay. By doing this, you'll rank higher in search results. The search for you will be simple for your clients.

What Makes Digital Advertising Unique?

Digital advertising stands apart for a variety of reasons. Consider how it would be possible to use social media platforms to their full potential. According to Google, users submit more than 3.5 billion inquiries every day. Think about these figures in terms of your company as an advertiser and what they signify.

At the same time, more than 90% of users tend to trust the companies that appear first in search results. This indicates that paid advertisements have the potential to put your business where your most promising clients turn to when they require a solution to a problem.

Why not invest in online advertising when over 30% of Google searches are for goods and services similar to yours? Did you know that 35% of "near me" searches result in the searcher visiting your store? Now that you understand why online advertising is exceptional and effective.

Using the appropriate message, internet advertising guides you to the relevant prospects. Even though you've experienced traditional advertising, you know it falls short compared to digital marketing. Online advertising strategies are 50 times more convincing and successful.

Digital advertising unquestionably has several facets. It requires a varied approach depending on where you advertise and how you approach it. Thanks to the versatility of web advertising, you have the freedom to decide what is ideal for your company and prospects. Remember that some forms will be better depending on your specialty.

While some organizations will be content with Google AdWords, others think linked or Twitter advertisements are the best choice. You must conduct in-depth research on your specialty, the target audience, and the competition. It aids in your understanding of digital advertising and its potential benefits.

It's important to remember as you go along that choosing the proper channel and methods will lower your internet advertising spend. Your advertising efforts and plans are only effective if you slip up and use the correct platforms. Remember that success with Google advertisements does not necessarily translate to success with Facebook or other online advertising.

Top 5 Social Media Platforms for Business:

1. Facebook

First and foremost, unsurprisingly, statistics proved that Facebook has the biggest number of adverting audiences in Singapore. Despite the critics and disappointment of some users regarding what Facebook did, the Facebook's fans are still attached to the platform, making it the most used social media.

3 main reasons why you should use Facebook for business:

1. Your customers are on Facebook: With the number of Facebook users, you can tell that the Facebook pond got a lot of fish to catch.
2. Cost-effective solution: Facebook ads are cheap and flexible. In the event where you are short of money, you can adjust your daily Facebook budgets accordingly.
3. Outstanding targeting system: Whether it be by age ranges, behaviors, connections, demographics, interests, languages and locations you can be as precise with who you want to target.

Pros

• Easy to set up, use and control from a variety of devices
• Allows you to communicate publicly or privately in real time
• Allows organic tracking
• It's integrated with Instagram allowing you to share striking images

Cons

• Privacy issues
• Marketing campaigns can be time-consuming
• Especially strict rules on running contests
• Has become very ad-focused

2. LinkedIn

Depending on your business, if you are looking for a B2B ad network, or targets consumers based on job titles, LinkedIn might be the right channel to help your business attract customers and grow. At a glance, LinkedIn and Facebook have similarities in the setup of its advertising platform and opportunities.

3 reasons why you should use LinkedIn for business:

1. Reach more professional audiences: Probably the most distinct feature of LinkedIn that differentiates in from other platforms is the audience. Users on the platform tend to be older, more educated and have a higher income. So if your target audience is as so, LinkedIn could be your best bet.
2. Allows you to narrow target: You can set your ads target based on industry-specific variables.
3. LinkedIn Lead Accelerator: This feature allows you to track your highest potential customers and offer more targeted ads specifically towards them. This will help you better nurture your leads on their way to becoming customers.

Pros

• Allows networking opportunities and prompts direct business relationships
• Enables sharing of knowledge and expertise
• Ability to post blog-length articles to showcase expertise

Cons

• The B2B focus means the audience is limited
• Ads can be poorly targeted, leading to a potential overload of irrelevant content

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3. Instagram

IG is a photo and video-sharing social networking service owned by Facebook, Inc. By that definition itself, it makes it so much simpler for businesses to promote on Insta. Not much content writing skills needed, just some insta-worthy pictures, to be uploaded frequently.

3 reasons why you should use Instagram for business:

1. Describes brand identity: Instagram is a visual platform. And a visual feed can reflect your brand's identity and uniqueness that differentiate your business.
2. Stay up-to-date with trends: You can use it to promote causes or simply generate interest by posting holiday-specific content.
3. Collect feedback and data: The platform has a feature for you to make polls and get you to engage with your customers closer. Simply ask a question and make polls and collect data to gain insight from your followers.

Pros

• Simple to use
• One of the fastest-growing social networks
• UCG on Instagram is very powerful
• Appeals to a wide audience
• Can be used as a sales platform

Cons

• Links don't work in captions
• Limited integration capabilities

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4. Twitter

Advertising your business on Twitter enables you to promote single tweets or entire campaigns for specific objectives. Just like Facebook's Ads Objectives, Twitter offers 8 objectives for you to choose:

It is true that Twitter ads are unique and somehow operates differently than other platforms.

3 reasons why you should use Twitter for business:

1. Only pay for success: If your campaign is for people to install an app, you only pay for the number of successful apps downloaded. If your campaign is to run followers, you only pay for the number of people who start following your account. The same thing goes with everything on Twitter.
2. Keyword targeting: While Facebook only offers topic targeting, Twitter allows you to target people who have used a specific keyword or hashtag in the last seven days.
3. Tweet Engager Targeting: Instead of going for everybody on Twitter, you can target those who actually engaged with your tweet.

‍Pros

• Easy to set up and use
• 280-character limit keeps messages to the point
• Easy to search the network for content using hashtags
• Tweets appear in Google results
• It can be used as a sales platform

Cons

• The volume of messages can lead to information overload/fewer of messages.
• Not the best platform for showcasing visual content
• Twitter metrics no longer display on share counters.
• Short messages can be limiting

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5. Snapchat

If your business is targeting mostly the older groups, advertising on Snapchat won't be recommended. The graph below shows that the average Snapchat users are between the age of 13-35.

3 reasons why you should use Snapchat for business:

1. A massive number of the influential audience: Millennials, people aged 17 to 36 who have $600 billion in annual buying power. Which is a generation of influencers, whom people look up to for the latest in food, fashion, music, and culture
2. Snap Pixel: This feature permits you to track users' interaction with your website. You can learn more about which categories they browse or the purchase they make from Snapchat, you can optimize your campaign accordingly.
3. Feature multiple products: Collection Ads allow you to feature multiple products in a shoppable format. Users can easily tap on the product within the ad if they want to learn more about it.

Pros

• One-on-one engagement
• Reach a younger audience

Cons

• Limted user engagement
• Time constraint as one video is maximum 10 seconds
• No resharing option

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6. Pinterest

Users of this visually appealing website can save and display content by "pinning" it to categorizable digital bulletin boards. A personal user might, for instance, have a food board where they pin recipes, another board where they pin photographs, and so on.

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3 reasons why you should use Pinterest for business:

1. Easy to add specific information: Rich Pins are unique pins that Pinterest uses for business. Brands can use Rich Pins to add specialized information to their pins, such as product specifications and location maps.
2. Great for niche businesses: Pinterest is wonderful for niche businesses but might only be appropriate for some businesses. The DIY crafts, fashion, exercise, beauty, photography, and food topics on the web are all trendy.
3. Influential audience: With just 10,000 users when it was founded in 2009 (and went live in 2010), there are currently 291 million active members. While millennials make up the majority of these users, more than half are women between the ages of 25 and 54. In addition, men make up around 40% of new users (and that trend is continuing to rise).

Pros

• As users are encouraged to discover content for themselves, more emphasis should be placed on actively engaging your audience.
• Images are hyperlinked to the original source
• The selective following adds appeal to the audience

‍Cons

• You need to ensure your imagery is well-chosen, and optimized and that the design is sharp
• Audience demographics can be limited

7. YouTube

Individuals can browse, upload, rate, share, and comment on content on the Google-owned YouTube video-sharing website. The website serves as a sizable centre for news and entertainment.

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3 reasons why you should use YouTube for business:

1. Highly Creative: Many YouTube businesses may have creative, artistic, or educational aspects. It's essential to have a specialized video editor creating content because the platform values innovation greatly.
2. Influencer Collaboration: YouTube users have engaged audiences, so businesses collaborate with them for product placement & promotion.
3. User Friendly: YouTube hosts about 2 billion monthly users because watching videos and learning is only a few clicks.

Pros

• Remains the world's second most popular search engine after Google
• Allows you to connect more directly with your audience
• Users don't need to follow you to discover your content
• Can be found in search engine results

Cons

• Quality and editing need to be top-notch; the results can be embarrassing if done badly
• Requires greater planning and time investment than other channels

8. WhatsApp

What makes WhatsApp so potent? Almost 180 countries use it, making it the most popular messaging application. Additionally, people read these messages with a 98% open rate.

3 reasons why you should use WhatsApp for business:

1. Easy to share updates: Permits businesses to update customers about their purchases and customer care. Growing your business using one of the most popular social apps is becoming more strategic and practical thanks to the availability of two apps for small businesses and enterprises (the WhatsApp Business app and WhatsApp Business API, respectively).
2. Private and personalized: Direct messaging is ideal for personalised customer care and personalised offers. You can send personal account passwords, change orders, and offer support with a private, one-on-one chat.
3. Send more relevant marketing messages: The opportunities for interaction with WhatsApp for business are virtually endless. You can send messages for two-step authentication, status updates, reminders, and outbound announcements (notifications).

Pros

• Secure & Trustworthy
• Automate responses to customer queries
• Diverse & Interactive content Formats

Cons

• Does not provide enterprise data protection
• Does not protect against data loss
• Limited Integration

Here is a summary of the strengths and weaknesses of all social media platforms

Types of Ads for different social media platforms that help businesses grow:

Image Ads

The majority of social media advertisements fall into this category. Almost all social media platforms allow for image advertisements. They can be seen in banners, sidebars, and news feeds. They work well on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Pinterest, where visual content predominates.

Image advertisements are excellent for raising awareness of your brand or a product since they quickly capture the audience's attention. You can put a call to action on the advertisement like "Buy Now" or a link to a specific page on your website.

To maximize the effectiveness of various kinds of social media advertisements:

• Use good-quality pictures
• Keep text to a minimum
• Strive to match the tone of the material in your posts because this makes it easier for the audience to connect the ad with your company

Video Ads

A vital marketing tool is a video. Every significant social media platform allows for video ads. They are particularly successful in capturing the attention of your target audience since they are visually appealing. For instance, marketers are now utilising films as a tool for shopping in live-streaming shopping events. They are increasing their sales at their live shopping events with the best live-stream video shopping platforms.

Podcasts, webinars, and other video-based projects receive more significant funding from marketers today. Also, with the proper SEO strategies, your video advertisements can rank in the search engine results, increasing engagement and view-through.

With your video commercials, you might also collaborate with influencers. All you have to do is use an Instagram engagement estimator to locate an influencer in your niche with high engagement. Then, you may collaborate with them to make an interesting film for your audience and increase the reach of your advertisement.

Ensure that your video only conveys one potent message. The performance of short videos, ideally under a minute, is generally superior. In order to provide a powerful message, don't be afraid to extend it a little.

It is preferable to leave this to a social media manager skilled in strategic communications because they can determine the ideal length for a given video.

‍Carousel Ads

Using carousel social media advertising, you can display multiple marketing videos and/or photos in one ad. A headline, description, Link, and CTA are all allowable for each image or video. Facebook and Instagram are the social media platforms with most of these advertisements. Carousel advertisements can be used to promote real estate, various product characteristics, a brand's history, behind-the-scenes images, or any other suitable product or promotion.

Facebook even offers a function for optimization that prioritises showing your top-performing carousels. But, choose not to use this function if the order of the cards is necessary to convey a tale. Ensure the photos or advertising you use in your carousel are visually similar to maintain consistency when using these social media ads. To generate leads, connect your photographs or videos to a landing page.

‍Story Ads

Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook all support story ads. They allow you to promote your goods or services in between user stories. These social media advertisements are perfect for time-sensitive advertising because Stories only last a few seconds. Stories are excellent for spreading awareness because of their increased visibility since they are displayed at the top of users' newsfeeds.

Make your Stories ads as interactive as possible to make the most of these social media advertisements. Create a creator account. It will give you profile growth insights and assist you in determining the most persuasive advertising message for your Stories ads.

Message Ads

Most social media advertisements appear in a user's news feed or Stories; however, Facebook Messenger ads and LinkedIn Sponsored InMail appear as messages. During conversations, Facebook Messenger adverts appear in the user's Chats tab. Users can automatically tap on the advertisement to start a chat with your business if they're interested. Or, the message may lead them to your website's pages for products or services.

Keep your statements concise and essential to make the most of these kinds of social media ads. But how do you track down the leads which require messaging? You can use a CRM to tr