A recent study conducted by Forrester for social marketing platform Kenshoo Social showed that organic posting is the most popular social media strategy, whilst paid advertising is the most successful one. The study aimed to educate marketers on how to develop and activate the most effective social media strategy.
Forrester garnered the opinions of 105 large social advertisers, whose companies spend over $100,000 annually on social media ads. More than one in three social advertisers are not happy with their efforts, even though they use a vast range of both paid and organic tactics across several social websites.
These findings signal the growing need for more sophisticated advertising strategies in order to match objectives. Social advertisers, in general, are happier with the results they get from paid ads rather than from organic strategies, which generally include less expensive accounts, groups and branded pages.
The study also found that the most popular strategy is maintaining a branded page on business networks, blogs and social networks. Solely using branded pages though is not the most effective marketing tactic. More than 50% of marketers use ad rotation, but only a third of them use granular targeting like demographic targeting to reach their ideal audience.
With the huge number of users worldwide actively using Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest and Google +, social advertisers should pay for promoted content to drive sales and awareness, according to the report. Marketers who pay to promote their branded content are clearly happier with the awareness they create, as opposed to those who use standard ads.