The 5 best social media platforms for marketing and advertising are Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest and LinkedIn.
If you’re a small business owner looking to grow, utilizing social media advertising services is your best bet in reaching your exact target audience and converting them into customers.
The question is, which social media platform do you advertise on? The answer to that depends on the nature of your business and who your target demographic is, which we’ll talk more about below.
For now, let’s talk about the six best social media platforms for advertising and how each benefits small business owners.
1. Facebook
The Facebook platform has over 3 billion active users and has one of the most advanced social media advertising platforms available.
This combination makes it the #1 choice for small businesses looking to grow through social advertising.
You can target a cold audience (which is an audience that’s never heard of your brand before) through interests, behaviors and demographics.
You can then retarget a warm or hot audience (which are audiences that have heard of your brand, interacted with your brand and/or purchased from you), to close the sale, drive repeat purchases, upsell and more.
You’re able to segment your audience so that you’re addressing them differently as they pass through the levels of your sales funnel, and you’re able to do so with specific, goal-oriented campaigns.
Some Facebook ad campaigns optimize for engagement and video views, while others optimize for on-Facebook leads and others optimize for website sales or website leads.
Not all ad platforms have the same extensive targeting options and capabilities. Some agencies specialize in Facebook advertising services, which can improve your ROI even further.
2. Instagram
Instagram is the second best social media platform to advertise on because Instagram and Facebook are owned by the same parent company, Meta, and therefore, Instagram ads are set up using Facebook’s Ads Manager.
The same powerful ad platform you use to run Facebook ads is the one you use to run Instagram ads as well.
Because of this, you have all the same effective targeting options and ad features extended to your audience on Instagram as well.
Plus, Instagram has over 2 billion users in its own right, making it easy for most businesses of any industry to locate their audience on there as well.
Instagram (and Facebook) are also home to Reels ads, the vertical short video ads that have become so effective for small businesses with no signs of slowing down.
3. TikTok
TikTok is the next best social media ad platform because of its growth rate and the nature of content on the platform.
TikTok was founded in 2016 and already has 1 billion users (compared to Facebook at 3 billion users founded in 2004).
It’s known for its viral nature and high consumer-brand engagement.
Because it tends to be a great platform for businesses to grow organically, it can be explosive for businesses that invest ad dollars into it.
The platform is known for attracting younger users, but Millennials, Gen X users and older all use the platform a considerable amount as well.
4. Pinterest
Pinterest is the fourth best social media advertising platform, especially for ecommerce store owners. Pinterest doubles as a social media platform and a search engine.
Users go on Pinterest and search for the exact things they want to see: outfit ideas, travel guides, home decor etc.
If you sell a product or service that’s highly searched for, you can pay for your aesthetic, beautiful ad to appear on the Pinterest feed for those relevant searches with Pinterest ads.
While Pinterest is smaller with 518 million users, the nature of the platform allows for the perfect blend of keyword search ads and social media.
So, you can ensure your ads are appearing when it counts: when the user is typing in a high-intent search.
5. LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a great social media advertising platform for those looking for candidates to hire and/or those wanting to target specific job titles.
It’s fifth on our list because Facebook allows you to target by job titles as well, and arguably anybody who is on LinkedIn is probably also on Facebook (and cheaper to find and target on Facebook).
However, because of the B2B nature of LinkedIn, you can sometimes find more niche job positions to target on this advertising platform than you would on Facebook.
So, depending on the nature of your business or the goal for your ads, LinkedIn can prove to be the better option for some companies.
Honorable Mention: X (Twitter)
X, formally known as Twitter, is the smallest of the platforms on this list with 368 million users, and its engagement rates tend to be lower.
We would recommend exploring one of the other advertising platforms listed above before venturing to advertise on Twitter, as it is not known for providing the biggest returns.
In order to choose the right social media platform to advertise on, you need to consider who your audience is, what your goals are and your budget.
You want to put your ads where your audience spends the most time. So while Facebook may be the most popular platform, maybe the majority of your audience spends all day on Pinterest.
In that case, it would make more sense to advertise on Pinterest. You also need to consider your business goals.
Facebook and Instagram make it extremely easy to track direct sales, leads and other high-intent actions. So, if you’re looking for direct conversions, you may want to advertise on one or both of those platforms.
Lastly, some platforms are more expensive to advertise on than others.
Because Facebook has the most users and sees a lot of engagement, it’s typically cheaper to reach someone on there than it is to reach the same person on a smaller platform like Twitter or LinkedIn.
You can learn more about social media advertising costs to help determine which platform makes the most sense for your specific business.
What is the best social media platform to advertise on?
The best social media platform to advertise on in general for small businesses is Facebook due its extensive targeting features and low costs.
What is the #1 used social media platform?
The #1 used social media platform is Facebook with over 3 billion users.
Which social media platform is best for advertising?
The social media platform that is best for advertising in general is Facebook because it has the most users and therefore gives most businesses the ability to target their exact audience for a low cost.
Which social media channel is best for marketing?
Facebook is the best social media channel for marketing and advertising because it has the largest user base of all the social media platforms, allowing businesses from all industries to find and reach their target market.
Instagram and TikTok are the best social media channels for organic marketing because they offer more organic solutions for growth than Facebook does.
How do I measure the success of my social media advertising campaigns?
You measure the success of your social media advertising campaigns by the goal with which you set them for, be it sales, engagement, video views or what have you.
If you got 1,000 views on a video but what you wanted was sales, then your campaign was not very successful. Whereas if you only got 10 views but got 3 sales at a profitable cost, then your campaign was successful.
What are some common mistakes to avoid in social media advertising?
Some common mistakes to avoid in social media advertising are failing to track metrics properly (including engagement, website traffic, leads and sales) and failing to A/B test ads.
You’ll need to test multiple ads in order to find the winning ad and audience that’s going to drive the most results for the lowest cost.
How much does social media advertising cost?
Social media advertising costs between $650 to $6,000 a month or more paid to the agency managing your account, with anywhere from $200-$50K in additional monthly ad spend paid to the ad platform.
How can I stay up-to-date with the latest social media trends?
You can stay up to date with latest social media trends by following Revenue Up Marketing and following our blog!
