This is the first post in a series that uses social promotions as a benchmark against which we compare more traditional methods of achieving traffic, conversion and sales goals.

Marketers have many options to draw from when it comes to building website traffic and winning conversions, including SEO, paid advertising, content marketing, social promotions, and referral traffic from inbound links. Each method has its merits, and understanding those merits can help ensure effective resource allocation and focus when you’re building your marketing strategy.

So imagine you’re stranded on a deserted island with an arsenal of tools at your disposal to signal your situation to potential rescuers. You’d likely weigh your options and choose the methods most likely to achieve your objectives - building awareness of your situation, attracting potential rescuers to your island, and ultimately, inspiring a rescue.

Marketers face a similar situation. Among all the options available to achieve your objectives, you want to choose those most likely to produce the results you want quickly. Let’s take a look at display advertising to see how it performs and compares with social promotions.

Display Advertising is Ubiquitous but Not Usually Actionable

Paid display advertising is one of the oldest forms of digital advertising, showing up shortly after the web went mainstream in 1994. It offers highly targeted exposure for your brand on the web and, by giving your brand visual real estate on a variety of websites, can bring brand awareness even when a user doesn’t click through. The main problem? If you’re relying on display ads to promote your island rescue, be prepared to wait awhile.

According to Score.org, a typical person sees 1,700 banner ads per month, but clicks just .1% of the time. For every 1,000 people who see a particular display ad, less than 3 will click. And how many of those will complete a conversion action once they reach the website?

And yet, one third of small and mid-sized businesses buy online advertising (paid search and display ads), spending an average of $6,800 annually and expecting click-through on those ads. If you’re looking for brand exposure, then display ads may be useful, but if you’re looking for click-throughs and purchase intent, then display ads may not be right for you.

Social Promotions Inspire Action

If action is your intent, a more effective marketing strategy involves running social promotions – socially targeted campaigns that drive engagement, build buzz and convert at a high rate. These campaigns typically involve a prize giveaway, the submission of user-generated content and the involvement of public voting or judging. Taking place on social media channels, they make use of viral sharing to boost exposure and participation. Our data shows that 80% of users who visit sweepstakes-style promotions end up converting (entering the promotion by submitting at least their name and email address.)

According to Score.org, many businesses are shifting their money to social media – to the tune of 5.9 billion in 2013. And that’s because it pays off: the conversion – or click-through rate – on social promotions is high, resulting in leads, engagement and, ultimately, sales.  

Best of Both Worlds in Digital Marketing

This isn’t to say that a budget for social promotions should replace your display advertising budget entirely. Many of our customers run PPC ad campaigns to promote their social promotions, for example. Once participants become aware of the promotion, display advertising can be rolled back in favour of self-promotion, with incentives for participants to share the promotion with their networks.

Although display advertising is the longest-surviving promotional tactic on the web, it can end up being an inefficient investment of marketing budget due to low engagement rates from users. Social promotions offer a much higher converting alternative that participants will want to engage with, and can even be used in tandem with display advertising to drive the best results.

Ready to launch your social promotion? We can help. Our social promotions platform makes it easy to engage your customers across social channels. Contact us for more info.

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