Ja Morant has quickly become a superstar. The Memphis Grizzlies guard has a unique skill set and is often the most gifted athlete on the basketball court on any given night.
His high-flying slam dunks have taken the internet by storm over the past couple of years, and he has helped lift his team to multiple playoff appearances and a division title. Last July, the Grizzlies rewarded Morant with a five-year supermax contract extension.
The contract included incentives which entitled Morant to nearly a quarter-billion dollars if he met certain thresholds this season.
Now, Morant has garnered a significant amount of attention on the internet, but for reasons that have nothing to do with his on the court feats.
Morant briefly flashed a handgun at a strip club near Denver in an Instagram Live video on March 4. The ensuing fallout resulted in an eight-game suspension without pay for conduct detrimental to the league, the NBA announced Wednesday.
But the impact of Morant’s actions could further cost the star athlete an estimated $39 million.
Per an NBA rule known as the “Derrick Rose Rule,” a team can pay 30% of its salary cap to any player that signs a maximum Designated Rookie extension, if that player meets certain qualifications.
The select qualifications include a player winning the MVP award, two Defensive Player of the Year awards in the past three seasons or two All-NBA team appearances. At least one of those qualifications has to be met before the max contract kicks in for the player to receive the salary bump.
Morant already has one appearance on the All-NBA team to his credit, and appeared to be on his way to a second appearance until the incident earlier this month.
According to Spotrac, a second All-NBA team appearance would result in the value of Morant’s extension jumping from $194 million to $233 million.
The issue is that Morant might not play in enough games this season to qualify for an All-NBA team. If he plays in every remaining game after he returns from his suspension, Morant would finish the season with 65 games played.
“I feel like in the past we didn’t know what was at stake,” Morant said during a sit-down interview with ESPN’s Jalen Rose on Wednesday.
The Grizzlies have managed to hold onto the No. 2 spot in the Western Conference while Morant has been away from the team. Memphis is hoping to make a deep playoff run this upcoming postseason — with the help of Morant.
If you pay attention to business news—and even some national news—you’ve likely heard that 2021 inflation is coming. Or maybe that we’ll be spared until 2022.
But that’s wrong. 2021 inflation is already here.
Wait, what?
Is Inflation Coming Soon?
Economic predictions are, of course, never guaranteed. But per the New York Times, “there’s enough evidence to believe that a further upturn in inflation is coming.” But inflation isn’t all bad. Once the stock market calms down, an inflationary period is often the best time to buy stocks.
Per Inflation Calculator, the trouble started in March of this year. In January and February, inflation was at 1.4 and 1.7%, respectively. Then in March, it crept up to 2.6%. In April, it was already 4.2%.
Then in May, it hit 5.0%. And now, through August, it hasn’t gone below 5.0%.
That’s more than a little troubling.
But What Exactly is 2021 Inflation?
Or, inflation in any year?
Per Investopedia, inflation is “the decline of purchasing power of a given currency over time. A quantitative estimate of the rate at which the decline in purchasing power occurs can be reflected in the increase of an average price level of a basket of selected goods and services in an economy over some period of time. The rise in the general level of prices, often expressed as a percentage, means that a unit of currency effectively buys less than it did in prior periods.”
In plain language, inflation is best understood through an example. In 1970, the standard cost of a new car was a little over $3,500. Yet in 1980, the average cost was $7,000. And in 2010, it was a little over $29,000. While the Covid-19 pandemic reduced prices, it didn’t reduce them even to 2010 levels. In 50 years, the average price of a new car went up close to ten times!
What Does the Federal Reserve Do?
If and when inflation strikes, the Federal Reserve will most likely raise short-term interest rates. The reason is to make it more attractive for banks to lend money. During an inflationary period, lenders will demand higher interest rates as compensation for the decrease in purchasing power of the money they are paid in the future. The Federal government will also sell off US securities. This takes money out of banks. And since the banks have less to lend, it forces the banks to raise interest rates.
Why Are We Experiencing 2021 Inflation Right Now?
What we’ve got right now is a near-perfect storm of circumstances, and it’s incubating the 2021 inflation we’re seeing.
Remember the Great Toilet Paper Shortage of 2020? Remember that container ship that was stuck in the Suez Canal? The former was due to hoarding. And the latter caused some disruptions, but those were supposed to be done.
Not so fast. If you’ve had to have any work done on your home in the past year, you’ve experienced how slow and difficult it is to get lumber. This basic, vital commodity can still be obtained—but it takes longer. And delays cost money. Because those costs are passed on to the consumer, prices rise. Hence, 2021 inflation.
Reason #2: COVID-19
Well, of course. The pandemic doesn’t cause inflation by itself. But our country (as of the day writing this blog post) is missing over 600,000 people from the workforce.
When labor is scarce, it helps to raise salaries. This is because workers have gotten into a better bargaining position.
When there aren’t a lot of jobs and too few and too many workers to fill them, then the employer is in the catbird seat. They can set wages, and often those wages can be low. But the opposite is true right now. With businesses awash in jobs, but not enough people to fill them, potential employees are starting to dictate terms.
And their terms include higher salaries.
Health Care Workers, a Special Case
In addition to people trying to dictate better terms, we also have an issue with healthcare workers. Every day in the news, you see stories of health care workers who are just plain fed up. It could be that they’ve seen far too many COVID patients die, or they are angry at people who aren’t vaccinated, or they refuse to be vaccinated themselves. In any of these circumstances, this means that they just plain don’t want to work. They are ready to throw in the towel and leave.
And what is especially interesting about this is that nursing in particular was only until recently considered to be a recession-proof profession. Hospitals, nursing homes and more could barely fill job openings.
But now they really can’t fill job openings.
Retail and Hospitality Workers: Another Special Case
For people who normally make either minimum wage, or make some of their money in tips, the pandemic and its resultant pauses in our lives has led a lot of them to reconsider their career choices. People are also considering that if they need to enforce a mask requirement, then they may have few to no tools with which to do that. These people are tired of being abused, particularly for a very low salary.
So they want more money. And they’re tired of working three jobs to be able to feed their families and make rent. They’re just plain tired.
Reason #3: People Restarting Their Lives
In addition to hospitality and health care workers, there are a number of other people who don’t necessarily fit into those buckets. But during shutdowns in particular, they reassessed their lives. And some of them realized that they didn’t want to do what they had been doing. There’s nothing wrong with this. People change their careers all the time. But what we’re seeing right now is a wholesale change in hundreds of thousands if not millions of people.
Because, at times, those people are used to higher salaries, they are trying to demand them even if they need to start over at the bottom.
Social media and the regular mainstream media don’t help. If they tell people that they can get more money to do any kind of work, then job seekers will start demanding higher salaries, and continue to do so. No one will want to demand a lower salary, of course.
As a corollary to people changing their lives, there are also people who may have thought that they wanted to perhaps change things. But they weren’t ready to jump in headfirst. As a result, they’ve created side hustles of various kinds. With eBay, Etsy, Upwork, and various other sites where you can sell or offer your services online, people are spreading their wings and trying to do something different.
A businessperson might decide that because they make incredible muffins, that they should go into the bakery business. But chances are the bakery business is not very easy to succeed in. So instead of quitting their day job, they bake muffins on the side, and ship them. They can do so without an office, and can quit pretty much whenever they need to.
Higher Starting Wages and Decreased Supply Equals 2021 Inflation
Prices are going up. Whether it’s because of shortages, or potential workers demanding higher salaries, either way, prices are rising. Hence, 2021 inflation.
How Does 2021 Inflation Change How You Run Your Business?
The first obvious reason is that the cost of supplies is increasing. There are parts of this country where gasoline costs over $5 per gallon. And shortages of other supplies, such as lumber (mentioned above), means that everything takes longer to do. If you would normally complete, say, ten jobs in a week, but you can only complete eight now, then you will have to pass your added costs onto the consumer. And since you still need to pay rent, feed your family, and perhaps make payroll, you’ll raise prices.
If you raise prices, then other people will as well. And around and around we go.
The Inflationary Cycle
Inflation will cut into your profit margin unless you raise your prices.
If your business customers raise their prices, that perpetuates a cycle of price increases. Government clients may start to rack up municipal debt. Individual customers might buy less, and they may even take their business elsewhere. But since inflation hits everyone, chances are they won’t find a safe haven with lower prices at your competitors’.
How Can Your Business Ride Out Inflation?
You will need business capital. This is the money or wealth needed to produce goods and services. All businesses have to buy assets and maintain their operations. Business capital comes in two main forms: debt and equity. Getting capital for business financing should be your concern.
Business financing is the act of leveraging debt, retained earnings, and/or equity. Its purpose is to get funds for business activities, making purchases, or investing. With lower retained earnings and perhaps less equity, it’s a good time to leverage debt. One way you can do so is to request a credit line increase, particularly if you’ve been a good credit customer and have paid your business’s bills on time.
Building and improving your business credit is a great way to help your business ride out inflation. Buying on credit means you can wait a bit (although not forever) to pay for goods and services. If prices go down, particularly during a grace period where you don’t have to pay, you’ll do better. But better terms will only come to your business if your business credit is good.
It’s already here, but it may get worse. And, no matter what, it’ll come back when it’s finally gone. So here are some ways to get your business ready.
Your money won’t go as far. So before inflation hits harder, it should be a good idea to invest in new equipment if you need it. This may mean leveraging accounts receivable or using merchant cash advances to get capital now so you can act before inflation skyrockets.
It may also mean equipment financing and/or equipment sale and leaseback. So you can spread payments out over time.
And build business credit. Because if prices are going to rise, you want to buy from starter and other reporting vendors before that happens.
Getting Through 2021 Inflation Now, and Coming Out Better on the Other Side: Takeaways
As prices continue to rise, and demands for goods, services, and workers goes unfulfilled, inflation has the potential to worsen before it gets better. Act now. Secure larger ticket items your business needs before they become more expensive. If you need to hire, see if you can offer non-salary incentives to help break the cycle, such as offering more vacation time to new employees. And work to build your business credit before you need it, to better weather 2021 inflation and beyond. Good business credit is an asset that won’t lose its value, no matter what the economy does.
Here is a common situation many startups face. They have no money, but they have to do marketing.
What can they do?
Instead of focusing on costly marketing methods, such startups must focus on low-budget marketing hacks.
The beauty of growth hacking is that it engages alternate methods of growth, methods which are sometimes lower cost.
Where marketing and engineering meet, growth hacking happens.
Obviously, growth hacking isn’t free. Strictly speaking, none of the techniques in this article are “free.” Anytime you involve people, employees of the company, there will be payroll and associated costs.
But here’s why these (mostly) free marketing techniques are so powerful. They don’t require a huge marketing budget. All you need is some time, some savvy, and the kind of focused and driven perspective that smart marketing requires.
1. Get Links from Your Service Providers
To rank well, a website needs high-quality backlinks. Where do you get these backlinks? Obviously, buying links is not advised. What should you do?
If you’ve built partnerships with service providers or business partners, you have an instant source of untapped link potential. Reach out to these service providers and ask them to link to your website.
You gain a few nice links, and all it cost you was a few minutes of emailing.
If you find such mentions in online publications or websites, email the site editor and ask them to provide a link. You might discover plenty of brand mentions all over the web.
A quick search and a few emails later — presto. Free backlinks. The good kind.
3. Host a Webinar
Free webinars introduce your brand and product to a wider audience. The more appealing the topic, the better you’ll attract interest.
Webinars take time. You’ve got to brainstorm topics, plan the webinar, and spread the word. The benefits, however, are top-notch.
4. Cross-Promote
One explosive method of marketing that some companies use is cross-promotion. Cross-promotion allows you to partner with related businesses who can market your services, in exchange for marketing their services.
For example, if you are providing consulting services for online business owners, you may recommend that they use a certain web designer to create their website. The web designer is your cross-promoting partner. This web designer works with business clients, and she points these clients your way for consulting services.
It’s a win-win, and apart from a signed document and an easy conversation, it doesn’t require much work at all.
5. Be a Blog Commenter
The idea of marketing is to make your brand presence as well known as possible. One way of doing so is by commenting on blogs. Here’s how this works:
Identify the top 5 blogs in your niche.
Read and comment on the blogs on a regular basis.
As people see your name and associated brand, they become familiar with it and perhaps even curious about it.
With every comment, you’re establishing a persistent brand presence. Just make sure you’re not making dumb comments. Customers’ perception of your brand is shaped by the quality of your comments.
6. Help a Reporter Out
Occasionally, you’re going to come across some newsworthy information in your niche or business. Sign up for Help a Reporter Out (HARO). It’s a free service that reporters often use to find stories. If you have a story you can help a reporter out, and gain publicity.
7. Network in Person
Don’t neglect the opportunity to market in person. You’ll meet great people in person whom you may never come across online.
Every person you meet is another marketing possibility. Obviously, you don’t want to go around shoving your business into people’s faces, but as the issue of work comes up in conversation, tell them about it.
As much as they’ve been sullied and scammed, online contests are still a great way to get low-cost marketing publicity. Giving away the cliche iPad, cash prizes, or other merchandise is an easy way to gain some viral potential and improve your brand’s image.
9. Build a Referral Program
The best forms of marketing are those that you can set up, turn on, and grow — organically, automatically, and without too much effort. A referral program or affiliate program may not work for every business, but it’s worth a try.
Creating an affiliate program essentially turns your customers into a de facto marketing department. You don’t spend marketing money unless they first make a sale on your behalf.
10. Tweet Up a Storm In Your Niche
Twitter is a killer marketing platform. With its instant reach and massive output, Twitter can produce high levels of referral traffic, plenty of brand exposure, and nonstop social buzz.
What I suggest is following at least ten influencers in your niche, following their followers, retweeting their tweets, and mentioning them in comments. As you associate with their platform, you’ll begin to build your own platform.
Marketing back at your own customers is relatively easy and low-cost. The benefits are extraordinary.
12. Get Cozy With Niche Influencers
Within every industry are a group of power players. They control the conversation, shape the contours of the market, and reach a huge audience.
Make these people your friends. You don’t need to be schmoozy about it. You can be direct. Providing them with a product or partnering with them on a project are simple and mutually helpful ways to grow your brand and ride their wave of influence.
13. Claim a Hashtag
Hashtags are the billboards of the Internet. Since hashtags are now available on every major social platform, you can create a hashtag for your business and use it everywhere you post.
A hashtag is a searchable and interactive extension of your brand and has the potential to spread virally.
Everyone knows that content marketing is effective for inbound marketing. If you’re not careful, however, content marketing can be expensive. How can you gain more content without blowing your entire marketing budget?
The answer is user-generated content. Motivate your existing fans and customers to tell their own story and write content, and you’ll instantly open the floodgates to tons of fresh and engaging content that your audience will love. Your fans will be creating and sharing content for you.
16. Talk to Your Fans
Customers and fans love to be loved. The way you show that love is by retweeting, favoriting tweets, liking the comments, and sharing their status. Don’t simply expect that your social media presence is going to work for you. You have to work for it, by talking to your fans.
They will return the favor and engage at a deeper level.
17. Produce High-Quality Press Releases
Press releases have passed their heyday as an SEO tool, but they still hold sway in marketing. If you use a source like PRWeb, you’ll be out a few hundred bucks anytime you pop out a press release.
A source like PRLog.org, however, is free of charge. The amount of syndication you get may not be as high quality, but it’s something. And, hey, it’s something for nothing.
Just be sure to write very high-quality releases, and nofollow any links back to your website.
18. Hack Craigslist
Craigslist is one of the most popular websites in the world. Airbnb and its high money valuation used Craigslist to skyrocket its growth. You can use Craigslist, too. Try using Craigslist’s geographic focus to target specific areas and markets.
Make sure that you’re complying with the site’s terms of service. Use Craigslist in the way that it was intended. Violators will be banned from the site.
19. Blog
I can’t create a list of marketing techniques without mentioning blogging. A business blog is an indispensable strategy for online marketing. Use it, work at it, and make it work for you.
If blogging is awesome, then guest blogging is doubly awesome. When you post an article on another blog, you are instantly gaining that blog’s audience. The cost of guest blogging is free, less the time you spend. Create a killer article, appeal to the blog’s audience, and you may be invited back to contribute more.
I’ve used guest blogging with incredible success. My 300-and-counting guest blogs are still paying me back in terms of referral traffic, leads, and customers.
21. Create a LinkedIn Group
LinkedIn is free, and yet it gives you incredible marketing opportunities. Many professionals use LinkedIn as a static social media tool — a place to put up their resume, and not much else.
LinkedIn is so much more than an online resume. I’ve used LinkedIn to publish content, connect with powerful people, and build a marketing group with thousands of members.
All of this cost me zero dollars and zero cents, but the marketing upside has been incredible.
22. Give Free Help to Others
If you make marketing all about you and your business, you’re going to be frustrated and unfulfilled. Try giving to others, free of charge.
Obviously, you’re not a charity; you’re a business. But why not give away a product, an hour of your time, or a membership for a customer who can’t afford your services?
Some of the best business opportunities I’ve had were consulting gigs with customers who couldn’t pay. These opportunities have been beneficial in ways that I couldn’t have predicted.
Even today, I give away virtually all of my content without charge. Doing so is fulfilling for me personally, and it provides an opportunity for improved marketing.
Some ideas for free marketing include guest blogging, link building, creating social media groups built around your industry or brand, commenting on other blogs, and creating your own blog.
Is it possible to do marketing for free?
Yes, there are plenty of marketing techniques that are completely free.
Does guerilla marketing work?
When done correctly, guerilla marketing can help increase brand awareness.
Is it free to market on social media?
There are plenty of ways to market for free on social media. You can create groups, engage with influencers, use popular hashtags, create content with CTAs to your website, and more.
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Free Marketing Techniques Conclusion
Marketing doesn’t have to break your bank, blow your budget, or cost you thousands of dollars. Like I mentioned at the beginning of this article, marketing can require nothing more than the investment of time.
Last year, Facebook made over $84 billion in revenue. Where do you think the majority of that revenue is coming from? If you guessed Facebook ads, you’d be correct.
Facebook advertising offers endless opportunities to interact with your target audience on a conversational platform. With 68 percent of Americans logging onto Facebook a day, if you’re not advertising on the platform, you’re missing out on some big opportunities.
Now that we’ve established the value of marketing on Facebook, you’re probably wondering how much do Facebook ads cost? Can I squeeze the platform into my paid social budget?
The average Cost Per Click (CPC) is $0.35 globally and $0.28 in the U.S.
The average Cost Per Like in the U.S. is $0.23.
The average Cost Per App install in the U.S. is $2.74.
The issue is a number of factors can impact the cost of Facebook ads. So the average cost doesn’t tell you a whole lot about how much you can expect to spend.
3 Factors That Impact Facebook Ad Costs
While there’s no set fee per ad type, there are a variety of factors that determine the cost of a specific ad, including ad type, bidding, and metrics.
Below, we break down the different components that work collectively to determine the price of your Facebook ad.
Facebook Ad Type
Facebook’s business platform gives marketers a variety of options to reach their intended audiences and retarget site visitors.
Much like other paid social campaigns, when charting your Facebook ads campaign, you need a clearly-defined budget. Your cost per result is defined within your bidding strategy (we’ll get to that in a bit). To ensure you don’t exceed your budget, Facebook also offers two cap options: a campaign spending limit and an account spending limit.
Here are the different types of Facebook ads you can use to achieve your campaign goals.
Page Post Engagement Ads: Reach a larger audience beyond your business’ Facebook page by using this tactic. These ads help you drive engagement on specific posts, stretching reach. By generating more activity on your posts, you gain more likes and followers who react positively to your brand or content. However, these campaigns can drain your budget if not enacted effectively.
App Install Ads: These ads aim to do exactly what their title suggests—drive app downloads. Rather than highlighting individual features, these ads often demonstrate the app’s function and purpose.
Video Ads: Historically, video ads earned 135 percent more organic reach on Facebook compared to their stagnant counterparts. Facebook video ads can educate your audience about a product’s value and drastically increase reach.
Local Awareness Ads: Hoping to increase attendance for a free event or store opening? Local awareness ads are your new best friend. These ads drive brand awareness in specific regions, targeting users via location.
Offers: By setting off-site offer downloads as a campaign objective, you can customize your ads with specific calls-to-action. The offer ad should direct your audience to a landing page on your website that allows them to complete that action promised in the call-to-action.
Carousel Ads: Carousel ads are hosted on Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. These visually stimulating ads allow you to share a narrative through up to ten images. When done right, these creative ads can drive up to ten times more traffic in three months. If your audience tends to react positively to an interactive experience, these ads are the way to go.
Image Ads: If you’re looking for an easy-lift ad, image ads are probably the route to take. These simple visuals are common, but don’t count them out: they can be extremely effective. With a visually arresting image and accompanying text, you can craft an effective ad that drives your audience to take action.
The type of ad you select can impact the cost of your Facebook ads—which makes sense when you consider that making a sale is more valuable than, for example, getting a page like.
Ads that drive direct actions (like app installs) or sales tend to cost more than ads aimed at increasing brand awareness.
Facebook Bidding Strategy
You’ve set a budget and determined which ad will work best for your upcoming marketing campaign.
Now what?
It’s time to dive into bidding.
When you bid on Facebook ads, you are entering into competition with other advertisers for the valuable terrain that is Facebook ad space. The platform uses an auction to establish which users interact with specific ads.
How does Facebook determine who sees what ads?
It all starts with the competitive value of your bid. That metric is derived by adding the sum of your maximum bid to your ad’s quality and relevance score.
Quality score is a metric that represents how interested an audience member would be in your ad. Facebook estimates this figure as your ad performs, weighing the positive and negative to assign this figure.
To determine relevance, Facebook assigns a score based on the perceived interest of your target audience.
These metrics can be found in Facebook Ads Manager, and you can adjust your audience as needed to impact their standing.
Now that you understand what impacts who sees ads, let’s talk about the two types of bids—automatic and manual.
Automatic: When you select automatic bid, Facebook spends your entire ad budget to maximize your results. For those who are unsure of bid price, Facebook suggests going this route. Despite this recommendation, there’s more room for control when you take bidding into your own hands.
Manual: When you select manual bid, you have more autonomy over ad delivery and can enjoy better results for a lower cost than with automatic bids. With this method, you have options when it comes to optimizing ad delivery:
Using manual bidding, you can optimize ad delivery for the specific desired result. Facebook’s delivery system and auction optimize for the desired action within each campaign objective.
When manually bidding for actions like conversions or clicks, there are two options to choose from maximum or average:
With Maximum bid, you set the highest possible price you will pay for a result.
With Average bid, your price fluctuates as an average, not a cap, giving you greater flexibility to reach your intended audience.
Automatic bidding might be a better choice if you are just getting started, but manual bidding does provide more control. If you are new, I suggest starting with automatic bidding—you can set a maximum budget to prevent overspending.
Facebook Ad Costs: Metrics to Track
How much you spend on Facebook Ads should also be dictated by historical performance. To assess how an ad performed in the past, there are a number of metrics you can look at, including:
Cost per Click (CPC) and Click Through Rate (CTR): From CPC, you learn how much the average click from your Facebook ad to your website costs. CTR represents the percentage of individuals who interacted with your website after interacting with your Facebook ad. With a high CPC, you’re going to want to check your CTR.
If you see a low CTR, that means your creative isn’t working, you’ve picked the wrong ad type to use on your audience, or your targeting is off.
These metrics serve as indicators of success. Check them frequently to ensure you’re not overspending on clicks that don’t result in action.
Cost per Action: Actions can take a lot of different forms—a video play, a click, a form fill. By assessing your ad’s CPA, you can get a pretty good indicator of performance. If you can lower that CPA, you can anticipate more conversions and drive revenue with the same ad spend.
For a more contextual understanding of your CPA, measure it alongside your ad set spend and frequency. Individually, ad metrics give you a tile. Collectively, they give you the mosaic of the true value of your ad.
Conversion Rate: Your conversion rate is the percentage of people who completed the sales cycle by interacting with your ad and ultimately making a purchase. Your conversion rate is the most important metric—it truly lets you know if you are meeting your goals.
While there are many metrics you can find through your Facebook ads dashboard, these three provide insight into valuable data points that can tell you if you are overspending on your Facebook ads campaign.
When you ask how much do Facebook ads cost, the answer actually lies within the question: how valuable are my Facebook ads?
What Should You Spend on Facebook Ads?
The amount you should spend on Facebook ads is relative to the business you’re promoting and their specific goals. However, there are a few factors to take into account when identifying a definitive figure, including your budget and overall marketing goals.
In general, a marketing budget should fall between 5 percent and 12 percent of revenue. If you’re looking to jumpstart growth, maybe you’re closer to that 12 percent. If you’re looking for sustained growth, you’re probably closer to that 5 percent.
Your Facebook ad budget should be split into three sections.
20 percent to engagement, education, and audience building
60 percent to promoting your offer and generating conversions
Allotting your budget in this fashion diversifies your ads, so you use lead-generation and content-focused ads together to drive Facebook ad success.
You should also consider your overall goals. If your goal is to increase sales, it might make sense to spend more money to drive sales higher. On the other hand, if you want to increase brand awareness, it’s likely a better idea to have a set budget per month and reassess occasionally.
Conclusion
With 73 percent of United States Facebook users logging on daily, the social media platform is definitely worth a second look.
Whether you’re new to Facebook advertising or a seasoned veteran of the platform, choosing the right ad format for your marketing strategy can make or break the campaign.
After you select and optimize your ads, it’s time to let your budget guide you the rest of the way.
Keep an eye on your performance through the metrics discussed above, and don’t be afraid to make adjustments.
Have you tried Facebook ads? What was your average cost?
With an advertising audience of 353 million, Twitter is an ultra-effective free advertising tool. Still, as you probably know, the social networking site also provides plenty of paid advertising opportunities that let you target your followers, automate your bids, and promote your business. When used properly, these ads enable your brand to gain visibility and …
With an advertising audience of 353 million, Twitter is an ultra-effective free advertising tool. Still, as you probably know, the social networking site also provides plenty of paid advertising opportunities that let you target your followers, automate your bids, and promote your business.
When used properly, these ads enable your brand to gain visibility and attract more followers, click-throughs, and app downloads.
But how much do Twitter ads cost? Are they worth the cost?
You’ll find it hard to find a definitive answer to this. Naturally, the cost of Twitter ads varies for every marketer. They’ll differ depending on the aims, strategies, types of ads you use, and the price you’re willing to pay per bid.
The good news is that Twitter has advertising solutions available for all business sizes and budgets.
I will explain the different Twitter advertising options below. These factors contribute to your Twitter ads costs and finish with the metrics you should track to measure your campaigns’ cost-effectiveness.
Let’s start with the factors that influence the cost of your Twitter ads.
5 Factors That Affect the Cost of Twitter Ads
Several factors contribute to the total costs of your Twitter ads. This includes the type of adverts you’re using, the billable actions, your marketing techniques, your bid amount, and of course, the budget you have available to you.
Let’s look at these elements in more detail, starting with ad type.
1. Ad Type
Twitter offers three different main types of ads: promoted tweets, trends, and accounts.
Promoted ads: if you use Twitter, then you’re likely to have noticed these. Promoted tweets appear in your timeline, and you’ll see them tagged as “promoted.” You can retweet, share, and like promoted tweets the same way you would with regular tweets.
Promoted tweets can increase visibility and engagement. These Twitter ads’ costs will depend on how much you bid, but prices vary from $0.50 to $2 per billable action.
Promoted Trends:at $200,000 a day, promoted trends aren’t for everyone, but if you’re a large corporation with established, engaged followers, these ads could prove worthwhile for you.
Twitter Promoted Trends ads combine video with Twitter’s Explore function and show on Android, iPhone, and TweetDeck, and Twitter displays these ads for 24 hours in its Trends list.
The purpose of these adverts is to spark conversations and reach Twitter’s considerable audience. Specifically, Twitter suggests using them for new launches and promotions to increase awareness.
Promoted Accounts:when you’re on Twitter, you might notice some suggestions of other accounts to follow. Typically, these ads are suitable for users who want to increase their followers or announce a product launch. Promoted accounts cost vary from $2-$4 per follower.
2. Billable Actions
When you advertise on Twitter, the ad costs will also depend on your billable actions. Naturally, every marketer will have different objectives for their campaigns, so the type of billable actions you want Twitter users to take won’t be the same as another marketer or business owner.
For instance, you may want to get more followers, encourage app installs, or get click-throughs to your website, while another business owner might want to focus on video views.
There’s no set rate for these actions. As a business, you decide how much you want to pay through Twitter’s auction model. Once a Twitter user clicks through to your website or installs an app, or takes another billable action, Twitter will charge you.
Billable actions include:
followers
installs
engagements
video views
pre-roll views
3. Auction Bids
One of the biggest influences on your Twitter ads cost is the amount you bid. As with any other auction, the highest bidder wins. Even if you’re willing to pay just a cent more than your rival, your ad will get shown.
However, if winning auctions is your goal, don’t overlook one crucial aspect of success with your bids: focus on your ads’ quality, as Twitter will pay attention to this, too. What that basically means is the higher the quality of your ads, the better the engagement, and the lower your costs.
What does Twitter mean by “ad quality?” In Twitter’s own words, it means adverts that are:
resonant
relevant
recent
In other words, make sure your ads are engaging, targeted, and up to date.
4. Bidding Types
You can choose three types of bids on Twitter: maximum, automatic, and target bidding. Each of these types can influence your total Twitter ad costs in different ways.
Maximum Bidding
With maximum bidding, you set your top bid in the same way you would for any other online auction. You won’t need to spend your maximum amount on every bid, just enough to win against your nearest competitor.
Automatic Bidding
Automatic bidding is Twitter’s default option. You decide your budget, and Twitter will make the bid for you. There’s just something to consider with automated bidding, though. Although it might seem a good idea to leave it all to Twitter, you’ll spend through your budget pretty fast this way.
Target Bidding
Target bidding allows you to select your target cost-per-link, but it’s not for every ad campaign. Twitter limits its target bidding for website visits and followers.
When you use target bidding, you’ll base your campaign around what you want to achieve. For example, if you’re a new business, you might choose to get clicks through to your website.
You’ll select the price you want to pay for your target bidding when you’re starting your campaign on Twitter. If you’re looking for guidance, Twitter will show you real-time pricing before you place your bid.
5. Advertising Campaign Types
Twitter gives you six campaign types to choose from. They are:
followers
websites clicks and conversions
tweet Installs
app installs and re-engagements
video views
leads on Twitter
Your Twitter ads cost will depend on which campaign you select and what you hope to achieve from your advertising. For a more precise idea, Strike Social gives an excellent example of what this could look like in practice:
website visits campaign: $1.68–$10
followers campaigns: $2.50–$3.50
tweet engagements campaigns: $1.50–$2.50
app installs or re-engagement campaigns: $1.95–$3.25.
awareness campaigns: $6.00–$8.00
Metrics
As with any other advertising campaign, measuring your key metrics lets you understand your ROI. Only then can you work out whether you’re getting fruitful results and growing your business, or whether you need to make some changes.
However, not all metrics are equal when it comes to social media.
The metrics that you’ll want to focus on most are the ones that encourage engagement, increase conversions, and how much this costs you per click. That means concentrating on metrics like your CPCs, CPFs, and CPEs.
According to WebFX, you can expect your main metrics to look something like this:
Click-through Rate
The click-through rate is at the top of the list for many marketers. It lets you measure engagement and see what’s working. According to AdStage, Twitter has an average click-through rate of 0.86.
Engagement Rates
Engagements come in many forms including, comments, retweets, follows, and replies. In case you’re wondering what your engagement rate should be, this depends on your niche, according to recently published research by Rival IQ.
The research shows that higher education leads the way with a 0.087 percent engagement rate. This is followed by:
0.071 percent for sport teams
0.068 percent for the food and beverage sector
0.062 percent for the alcohol industry
There are a few surprises among this data, with tech and media, fashion, and media sectors among the industries with the lowest engagement rates.
Conversion Rate
Your conversion rates show you the return you’re making on ad spend. You can track this through your Twitter account. Just go to ads.twitter.com, login, then:
Click “Tools” from the drop-down menu at the top of the page.
Scroll down to “conversion tracking.” If you can’t see this, it might be because you don’t have a credit card on file with Twitter.
Agree to terms and conditions.
Select the “Generate a website tag for conversion tracking.”
Copy the code into your website.
If you’re not sure how to use coding, Twitter talks you through it on its pages.
Twitter Analytics
Twitter has an analytics tool that will show you how your organic and paid-for tweets perform. Keep track of these. If your organic tweets perform better than your paid advertising, you will want to refine your campaigns.
To use Twitter analytics, just go to your Twitter account and click the “turn on analytics” option. This will show your:
mentions
new followers
impressions
profile visits
Other metrics you’ll want to concentrate on include your:
Cost per follower. Your CPF needs little explanation: it shows you how much it costs you to gain a new follower.
CPM is your cost per mile. It measures your rate per 1,000 impressions.
Cost per download (CPD) or cost per install (CPI) shows you what each install costs. On Twitter, the average per install is $2.53.
Cost Per Click /Cost Per Action: When you’re paying for billable actions like click-throughs, followers, or app downloads, you’ll want to know how much this costs you on average to manage your budget.
What Should You Spend on Twitter Ads?
There’s no set amount that you should spend on Twitter. The site offers a mix of advertising items at differing prices, and it’s all about considering which is best suited to your business.
However, before you can decide how much to spend on Twitter ads, you’ll need to consider what you’re trying to achieve with your advertising campaign.
For example, a small business trying to promote its craft products might find that promoted tweets are enough to get click-throughs and conversions. In contrast, larger companies building on their existing audience are likely to have a more significant marketing budget and want to take a different approach.
It will also depend on:
Industry: As the stats from Rival IQ shows, some sectors attract more engagement than others, meaning the types of campaigns you run may need to differ depending on what industry you’re in.
Audience: Knowing what you want from a campaign is just one side of the story. Your audience is something else you should consider. If you already have an audience on Twitter, you’ll know the kind of content that engages them and gains you the most conversions.
Budget: How much Twitter ads cost ultimately depends on what you have available in your budget. To best plan your budget, ensure you understand all there is to know about bids, auctions, and billable actions.
Ad score: Twitter combines your bids with your ad quality to come up with your ad score. A superior ad score may reduce how much you pay.
How Much Do Twitter Ads Cost?
Ultimately, the answer is, it varies depending on your goals, strategies used, and the budget available to you. As Twitter explains:
“How much you pay in your campaigns is up to you. By setting up your budget during the campaign setup, you can control your Twitter ads costs.”
With Twitter, you can customize your adverts to suit your individual needs, and there are no minimum costs.
When you’re setting up your adverts, Twitter will ask you to set your total budget and daily maximum. Twitter’s general guidance is to set your budget at a price you’re comfortable with, but even if you don’t have the marketing budget of a multimillion corporation, a little can take you a long way.
Conclusion
Your Twitter ads costs will vary depending on several factors, including the strategy you use, the billable actions, and the type of adverts you choose.
Depending on your brand’s size, not all Twitter’s advertising options are ideal for every business.
A small business with a limited budget isn’t likely to want to spend massive amounts. In contrast, a corporation will have a significant marketing budget at its disposal and be willing to spend much more.
However, with no minimum spend and the ability to target an audience, you may find Twitter ads are a useful tool for gaining visibility and promoting your brand.
Do Twitter Ads work for you? Which strategies do you use?
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