< Blog

The Difference Between The Three Most Popular Social Media Pay-Per-Click Advertising Options

The Difference Between The Three Most Popular Social Media Pay-Per-Click Advertising Options

Brian Fitzgerald
Brian Fitzgerald August 7, 2012
The Difference Between The Three Most Popular Social Media Pay-Per-Click Advertising Options

With all of the different types of pay per click advertising, hoteliers may get confused about which options are best for them. Today we will discuss the features and benefits of the three most popular types of pay per click advertising hotels can use on social media sites.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn pay-per-click is the most expensive social media PPC option, but also the best for targeting. Although you cannot target people planning vacations on LinkedIn, your hotel could target event planners or school administrators. But, if your property doesn’t host many events or school related functions, this PPC option may not be the best for you. The cost-per-click will depend on whom you target but for reference, when we ran a campaign it was around $2.45 per click.

Twitter

Twitter Advertising offers two options: promoted tweets and a promoted account. Promoted Tweets are just your tweets showing up to people who may have interest in what you’re talking about. This option gets your message out to a new audience but it doesn’t ensure that they will be your future audience. The promoted account option is a better option for long-term success. This option just shows your twitter icon on the left hand side of the page to people who may be interested in you. I like this form of advertising because it doesn’t only show promoted accounts but other accounts that you really may be interested in. When we tested out this campaign the average cost for a new follower was $1.05 and the average cost for a promoted tweet was $.50. In comparison to other PPC options these prices are pretty low and easy to manage.

Facebook

Facebook’s newsfeed algorithm is called EdgeRank and it helps to determine which updates you see and which you don’t see. One of the factors EdgeRank considers is updates that have a lot of activity like comments and likes. Because of this you are more likely to see a story about friends who reached a milestone, than you are to see a post about grocery shopping. Facebook has gone on record and said that, on average, status updates are only seen by about 16% of fans or friends. Because of this Facebook has introduced a new way for page posts to show up to more fans, Promoted Posts! Promoted Posts are a separate advertising option from Facebook Ads. Regular Facebook Ads are similar to Google’s PPC offering; they appear on in their own advertisements section so they don’t alter your Facebook experience. But they are different because you can add pictures, give users the option to RSVP to events and if you are running a contest, voting can take place within the ad. Like any other PPC the price will depend on whom you target but with Facebook ads I’ve seen cost per click as low as $.35 cents.

Pay-per-click advertising sometimes has a bad reputation for being intrusive but social pay-per-click campaigns are a great way to get your message in front of people who wouldn’t normally see your information but may be interested in what you have to offer. They are very targeted and don’t interfere with the normal usage of whatever site they are on. If you would like help setting up a social media pay per click campaign, please contact us. Come back later in the week when we talk about how to succeed using social media PPC.