° Over 36 percent of respondents indicated that social media marketing would be the priority for their ad budget this season. ° 68 percent of holiday spend among businesses surveyed will go toward digital channels like search engine marketing, digital display ads, Amazon and the aforementioned social media marketing. ° Business owners and their marketing teams will frequently be incorporating geotargeting into their holiday campaigns. 84 percent of advertisers acknowledged location-based marketing would have greater importance in their campaigns this season. 28 percent of respondents said they would use this tool in every campaign during the holidays, meaning that many marketers will reach consumers by developing target audiences. ° Facebook was selected by 42 percent of the SMBs surveyed as their primary digital channel for ad spend. Given that Instagram is owned by Facebook, 59 percent of SMBs said that the two platforms would get the majority of their digital ad spend. 8 percent actually stated that their advertising budgets decrease during the holiday season. What all of this means While Facebook and Instagram have powerful audience targeting features, they also allow advertisers to create custom audiences from other data sources. Entrepreneurs selling products and services directly to consumers should feel comfortable not only using social media for advertising, but also taking advantage of all of the targeting tools available on each platform.
There is a clear business case to be made for entrepreneurs to advertise on social media and combine it with geotargeting as their best strategy this holiday.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
°Consumer Confidence Index numbers haven’t been this high prior to a holiday shopping season in 18 years, according to the Conference Board. In this context of high-buying intentions, my location marketing firm Reveal Mobile surveyed 260 small- to medium-business owners and managers to see how they planned to allocate resources to maximize this 2018 holiday shopping season’s potential.
Here are the key takeaways from what we learned:
Social media will be the winner of holiday ad spend.
° Over 36 percent of respondents indicated that social media marketing would be the priority for their ad budget this season.
° Creating and executing campaigns and finding targeting audiences has become increasingly simple on Facebook and Instagram, and our research reflected this trend.
Digital ads will overpower traditional ones — by a large margin.
° 68 percent of holiday spend among businesses surveyed will go toward digital channels like search engine marketing, digital display ads, Amazon and the aforementioned social media marketing.
° Leading traditional channels indicated in the survey included TV advertising (15 percent), print (14 percent) and radio (3 percent).
° Business owners and their marketing teams will frequently be incorporating geotargeting into their holiday campaigns.
- 84 percent of advertisers acknowledged location-based marketing would have greater importance in their campaigns this season.
- 28 percent of respondents said they would use this tool in every campaign during the holidays, meaning that many marketers will reach consumers by developing target audiences.
Of the digital advertising channels, marketers said they preferred Facebook.
° Facebook was selected by 42 percent of the SMBs surveyed as their primary digital channel for ad spend. This is a very high percentage, considering the backlash and…
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