If you want to try social media marketing as part of your affiliate marketing efforts, there are obviously two main players on the market that you should look into first – Facebook ads and Twitter ads.
But which is best? Which can be the better performing platform for you? Are your customers distributed evenly between the two? Let’s answer some of these questions today.
More Money With Facebook
A report issued by Resolution Media indicates that advertisers spend 127 percent more ad dollars with Facebook than with Twitter.
This number surely gives us something to think about, and suggests that Facebook might be a better place for our budgets, but we have to remember about a couple of things. First of all, Facebook still has a lot bigger audience than Twitter, so the fact that brands spend more there does make a lot of sense.
Secondly, the data used by Resolution Media comes from brands like: Pepsi, Lowes, State Farm, McDonald’s, HP , Pier 1, Hertz and FedEx. Those are all huge brands and they have their specific goals and campaigns, which don’t necessarily have to translate into other markets and niches.
Twitter Delivers Better Results
The interesting thing about the social advertising space is that despite most of the funds are being invested in Facebook ads, it’s Twitter that delivers better results (as noted by the same study by Resolution Media).
The company shared:
Twitter ads generate clicks at a much higher rate as advertisers integrate them tightly with broad trends and conversations, serving up straightforward messaging and content directly into relevant conversation streams. Importantly, Twitter ads appear within a less cluttered environment than Facebook ads, in the user’s Twitter timeline with few additional advertisers.
What’s the difference in performance? As reported by Ad Age, the ad engagement rate at Twitter is said to be around 1-3 percent. The usual CTR for an ad at Facebook is currently around only 0.019 percent.
New Payment Models at Twitter
Looking into investing in Twitter? There’s one more reason to do so. The standard payment model at Twitter was to pay when a user interacts with your ads in any way. This includes things like retweets, @replies, favorites, and clicks.
The new payment model allows to pay for just what interests you from a business point of view. And this doesn’t just go for retweets vs. favorites, for example. It actually goes a lot deeper. With the new model, you can specify landing pages on your site that the visitor must reach in order for you to be billed by Twitter.
And apart from landing pages, you can also choose models based on app downloads, getting new followers, or having the user opt-in with their email address.
Withe these new payment models, Twitter wants to capitalize on the 4.5 million small business accounts that they report to have. (In comparison, Facebook has more than 30 million such accounts.)
Do It Yourself?
The last question worth answering is whether you should experiment with social advertising yourself or find a partner, such as adQuadrant and their social advertising solution.
Doing things on your own can surely be more affordable, but working with another company can save you from having to always be on the lookout for new methods and tactics.
In the end, what matters is a positive ROI and growing your business over the long haul. So it’s only up to you to choose the approach that fits you best.