So you have a WordPress blog, and you want to reach as many people as possible in a short amount of time? Well, then you’d better start promoting your blog!
But first, you have to decide which platform you’re going to be promoting your website on, and there are quite a lot of factors to consider. That’s precisely what we will be tackling in the rest of this text – we’ll try to answer the question, which are the best ad platforms to promote your WordPress blog.
If your ad is going to be effective, it needs to be able to reach a large number of people. The Internet is full of websites that allow you to reach millions with just a click, and all you have to do is choose where to start. So, let’s compare the behemoths of today’s online world and see how you can advertise on them. The results should be exciting.
Let’s start with the most popular social network in the world – Facebook. Facebook has a very fine-tuned system of creating and delivering ads that allow advertisers to choose very precisely what kind of users they want their ad to be shown. Apart from age, gender and location, advertisers can add a variety of other filters such as interests, devices a person is using, colleges they attended, the line of work they’re in… everything that can be seen in persons’ profiles and activities on the network. Because of that, it is possible to reach an audience that is very likely to engage with what you’re offering.
Another advantage of Facebook is the way these ads are constructed. Not only is it very easy to put one together, but it can be compelling because their creators can use pictures that stand out or even blend perfectly with your news feed.
Because of all these factors, Facebook ads can be extremely efficient and provide excellent value for your money. Think about it; you can find exactly the kind of people who will be interested in what you’re offering and then make your presence known to them. And since the required budget for a campaign is just one dollar per day, literally everyone, no matter how big or small their business is, can start promoting themselves on social media.
After the most significant social network, let’s go to the biggest search engine. Google conducts quite literally billions of searches every day, so the pool of potential customers you can tap into if advertising here is incredibly massive. However, Google does things a bit differently.
Google Adwords is the name of the platform through which advertisements advertise on the search engine, and it is a PPC (Pay Per Click) platform. In other words, advertisers are charged if a user clicks on their ad. But first, they have to outbid all other competitors who are interested in the same keyword.
This does not necessarily mean that the size of your wallet is a guarantee of a successful campaign. Quite the contrary, Google wants to see high-quality ads too because this way, the overall experience of their users is better and they are more likely to continue using their search engine.
However, using Adwords means focusing on text-based advertising. For other types of promotion, such as banner advertising, Google has its Display Network ready. Here you also put in bids, but the total amount varies depending on how many criteria a user sees your ad matches – the better the match, the higher your custom bid is.
Back to social networks again. This time, we’re focusing on Twitter. Although it’s not as popular as Facebook, Twitter still has tens, if not hundreds of millions of users and some very interesting specificities.
First of all, it’s interesting to take a look at who is using Twitter, especially when it comes to the age category. While all age groups are almost equally represented on Facebook, Twitter is overwhelmingly used by people born in the late 80s and early 90s. Yes, if you’re targeting millennials, Twitter is where you’ll find them.
Another thing that’s worth pointing out is that Twitter allows you to target your ad more precisely. Considering what we said about Facebook ads earlier, that’s quite an accomplishment. The secret is in Twitter’s hashtag system – you can set up your ads to target specific words and hashtags in tweets and also users who interacted with those tweets.
But what may very well appeal to advertisers the most is that Twitter only charges you when what you want to achieve with your ad happens. In other words, if you’re going to gain followers, you will be charged when you get a new follower, if you want clicks to your website, you’ll be charged when people click, etc. There is also no minimum budget requirement you have to meet, which is excellent for smaller advertisers.
What about Instagram? Well, with more than 800 million users, it’s quite a big platform, more significant than Twitter. Add to that the fact that this network’s users are, on average, by far the most active users of all social networks, and you have yourself a potentially very lucrative pool of options. Do keep in mind that here, as in the previously mentioned Twitter’s case, millennials are the most dominant demographics, and by a significant margin.
When targeting your ad, you can add a call to action buttons to it, which is a lovely touch and can do wonder for the effectiveness of your add. This is undoubtedly one of the reasons why the audience here is so much more likely to act once they see an ad. However, it should be noted that the options for actually targeting your audience are not as detailed as on Facebook.
As far as prices are concerned, the minimum you will have to invest depends on what you want to achieve. If it’s just impressions you’re after, a single dollar is a minimum; if you want clicks, 5$ is the lowest price for an Instagram ad, and if you want an app download, it’s 40$. So, the minimum is bigger than Facebook’s if you want your audience to engage with your ad, but given how willing they are to do that, it could very well be a good investment.
Last but not least, we have Reddit, the most extensive collection of forums on the Internet. With more than 430 million active users, it certainly has a lot of marketing potential, although that’s still a lot lower than Facebook or even Instagram. However, there’s a catch!
The number of users is growing. And fast! Some estimates predict Reddit will double its ad revenue in the period between 2019 and 2021. Not only that, but more than 12% of all internet users in the United States will have a profile there by 2023. Reddit is currently the fifth most popular website in the US. It should also be mentioned that the people using Reddit are predominantly male, about two thirds if not even more (mostly younger audience, of course). Therefore, if you want to reach out to the American public, young male Americans in particular, Reddit is probably the best way to do it.
As for the type of ads supported, Reddit accepts text, image, and even video ads. Its targeting options are quite detailed because not only can you target things like location, interests, and devices, but it is also possible to target a particular subreddit, even decide at what time of day this will be done. Similarly to Google, the price is determined by a bidding process, and you can bid for three things: Cost per click, Cost per impression, and Cost per view. The minimum price is set to 5$ per day.
Overall
We’ll stop here, although there are certainly other platforms that could be mentioned in this context. YouTube and TikTok are just a couple of examples. But we could go on like that for quite some time, so we decide to cut it here.
There are many parameters to take into consideration when deciding where to advertise yourself, and the potential reach and price are just some of the factors. However, when considering the price, you will want to have information about how much does it cost on average to get a click, 1000 impressions, etc.
This may vary greatly depending on the industry you’re targeting (Google has some very interesting data on this topic), especially if you’re bidding for the advertising price, so plan accordingly. See what you need, what you want to accomplish and who you want to reach out to and then choose the appropriate platform for your marketing campaign. Good luck!