It is Sunday early evening and you get a phone call from your boss asking you to start an urgent report that needs to be completed by the end of Monday. Surely this can wait until tomorrow, right? For most people, business usually does.

The right filters in your social media campaign

Knowing when the best time to start social media campaigns is vital. It can be extremely difficult to get your adverts exposed to only those who you want. For example, if your target market is first time parents, then you could advertise on day-time television so you can reach people who are on maternity/paternity leave. However you are also going to get retirees who also watch this type of television. Advertising online allows you to go one step further and lets you apply more filters to your campaigns. However you still need to get the balance right. Not applying enough filters means you will be reaching people who are not necessarily interested in what you are offering. Applying too many means you are excluding some of your target market.

Interacting with the wrong market

Let’s use our example above and say you’re trading B2B and start your social media campaign on an early Sunday evening. Your market is not necessarily going to be online at this time. This means that the users who have slipped through your filter net who are not necessarily your target market will start interacting with you ads and may start to eat up your budget.

Business to Business (B2B) Timings

One of my colleagues did some research into this and found out the best time to market to businesses is towards the end of the working week. Never start a social media campaign over the weekend or even on Monday mornings as employees are far too busy relaxing and getting ready for the following working week. He even found it is best to market to them closer to the beginning of the day than it is then end.

Business to Consumer (B2C) Timings

Consumers on the other hand are slightly different to businesses. This is because there are more consumers than businesses and thus are much more unpredictable. As such, there is not one set period to campaign to consumers, it really depends on who your market is. Generally, it is best not to start social media campaigns on a Monday or a Friday because people are too busy either with work on the Monday or relaxing on the Friday. The best time to market to consumers is generally in the evenings from 1900 – 2100 when they are winding down.

Monthly Timings

Generally consumers are paid by their employers towards the end of the month, so if you are a B2C business, then it would bet better to start your campaign at the beginning of the month. Bear in mind you may have a lot of stiff competition which may drive up the cost of your bids.

For B2B, it is really rather difficult to say as each business has their own budgeting process. Most rely on a quarterly system so it may be worth thinking about starting a campaign nearer the beginning of each quarter when each departments’ budgets are renewed and topped up.

Bespoke Social Campaigns

Not all marketing campaigns can stick to this, there are always exceptions to the rules. The above is only meant to be a guideline for the majority of businesses. For a more bespoke social media campaign, please do not hesitate to get in touch. Alternatively, pick our brains in the comments.