Paid social media guide

Social media might be where people go to doomscroll, share tractor memes, and watch goat videos, but for ag brands, it’s also prime territory for building awareness, engaging your audience, and generating leads.

It’s no secret the ag community is active on social. They’re liking, commenting, messaging, and yes, buying. From equipment dealers and input suppliers to animal health brands and rural lenders, you need to be part of the conversation.

And as organic reach drying up like a field in a drought, paid social is the must-have irrigation system to keep your funnel growing.

But here’s the thing: choosing the right platform can feel like picking a favorite child, or worse, choosing where to eat with a group of seven indecisive coworkers. With so many platforms and endless advice, how do you know where to start?

We’ve got you. This guide is your matchmaking for paid social designed for marketers working in the ag space. We’ll help you swipe right on the platforms that fit your goals.

What To Consider Before Hitting Boost
Before you spend a dime, here’s how to align your audience, creative, and goals so your social strategy actually works.
Facebook
Still a powerhouse for reach and targeting, especially if your audience skews older or you're running local campaigns.
Instagram
Visual-first and vibe-heavy. Perfect for brand storytelling, lifestyle content, and younger ag audiences.
TikTok
Where authenticity rules and trends drive engagement. Great for upper-funnel awareness and creative storytelling.
X (Formerly Twitter)
A platform for real-time reactions, B2B banter, and thought leadership if your audience is active, it’s worth a look.
Snapchat
A niche but loyal user base with hyper-local targeting potential. best for short-form, youth-focused awareness plays.
LinkedIn
The go-to for reaching ag professionals, decision-makers, and B2B audiences with credibility and intent.
YouTube
Long-form, searchable, and highly targeted. Ideal for educational content, product demos, and high-impact awareness.

Not all platforms are created equal. And not all of them are right for your brand. What works for a rural equipment dealer might flop for an animal nutrition company. The key is to align your platform with your audience and content. Evaluating a few key factors can help you find the platform (or platforms) that give your paid ads their best shot at success.

Here’s what to size up:

Demographics: Who is hanging out there? The platform’s users should match your ideal customer. Understanding your audience's age, gender, geography, interests, income level, or occupation helps maximize performance potential.
Content type: Each of the platforms outlined in this guide have their own unique layouts, placements, and engagements. Pick platforms that play to your strengths. Does your brand shine through video, images or a witty caption?
Placements: Where will you show up? Make sure the ad placements offered support your ideal creative types. Are you looking to run your videos and images in-feed, stories, reels, search results, sponsored content, or business explore? How many placements would you like to run in? Utilizing as many placements as possible increases the number of people who see your ad, which helps increase performance.
Unique targeting options: Some platforms know your audience better than their own family. Use that to your advantage. Whether you use custom audience or demographic information, social platforms can help you reach your target audience. Be sure to research what targeting options each platforms provides and how they can help deliver your message.
Average metrics: Some basic metrics to keep in mind include: how many people use the platform and how much time the average user spends on it? Before going deep into metrics like ROI, conversion rate, CPM, etc., understand how placements, creative types and placement units perform on the platform.

Now let’s get into the platform-by-platform breakdown. Think of it as your social media speed dating round.

Meta is the digital version of your hometown co-op bulletin board. It’s where rural communities stay connected, swap equipment tips and keep tabs on trusted brands. With targeting that can reach ag regions down to the ZIP code, it’s ideal for staying top of mind between seasons, especially when decisions about seed, feed or machinery are made months in advance. It’s also a popular place for event invitations, buying and selling items on Marketplace and messaging.

Demographics: If social media were high school, Facebook would be the class president who still shows up at every reunion. It's familiar, massive, and still has some serious sway, especially for reaching Millennials and up.
Content type: The Home of the Status, users share thoughts, feelings, links, reviews, and more. The platform also hosts Marketplace allowing users to buy and sell goods, Stories to share moments throughout the day, and Facebook Live for audience engagement.
Unique targeting options: Facebook's extensive capabilities include demographic targeting like age, gender, interest, job title, and location. They also include lookalike audiences, behavioral targeting, engagement based on who has interacted with your ads, and more.
Placements offered: Multiple placements, including Feed, Marketplace, Right Column, Messenger, Business Explore, Stories and Reels, Search Results and more are offered.
Average metrics: You can expect to see higher ROI on Facebook than other social media platforms as the conversion rates are high and costs are low. However, Facebook tends to see lower engagement than most of the other platforms.

Instagram is the display window. It’s where users, including farmers, ranchers and ag creators, share the life they’re living and loving. It’s visual, aspirational, and wildly popular among 18–34-year-olds. Plus, more than half of Instagram users follow their favorite brands. For ag brands, it’s not just about polished products. It’s about showing up real, relatable and rooted in the same dirt as your audience.

Demographics: People of all ages, especially adults, gravitate towards Instagram's visually appealing platform. However, the highest concentration of users range from 18-34 years old. Over 40% of male and female users within this age range rank Instagram as their preferred platform. Men use the site at a slightly higher rate.
Content type: Instagram is a visual platform that keeps text to a minimum. The most popular content types are image and video feed posts, reels, stories, and carousel images.
Unique targeting options: Since Instagram is part of the Meta family, the targeting options are a reflection of Facebook.
Placements offered: Multiple placements, including Feed, Stories, Reels, Explore and Shop. The platform is also rolling out new options, including Profile Feed, which appears when someone visits another user’s profile and scrolls through their content, and Search Results, which are ads shown in the results when users search keywords.
Average Metrics: The average user spends 33 minutes on the platform. Feed ads see a higher CTR (click through rate) than Stories, but short stories with an appealing narrative are generally preferred by audiences.

TikTok is where next-gen ag voices are thriving. From #FarmTok to behind-the-scenes looks at calving season or planting day fails, this platform brings rural life to consumers. If you want to connect with younger farmers, ranchers, or even ag students, this is the channel. It’s not about flashy dance moves. It’s about storytelling, authtencity and sharing life in the field 60 seconds at a time.

Demographics: TikTok is highly popular for Gen Z but still sees a strong representation almost evenly across all ages under 50. Just over half of TikTok users are female while 47% of users are under the age of 30.
Type of content: Short-form videos captivate TikTok users looking for entertainment.
Unique targeting options: Feel free to add on lookalike audiences while also focusing on demographic-based targeting like age, gender, location, household income, and spending power. TikTok can also target users based on behavior, interests, purchase intent, and hashtags. Additionally, they can target devices based on connection types, operating systems, device models, device price, and more.
Placements offered: Placement options include, For You Feed, TopView, In-Feed Video, Branded Effects and Search Ads, a newer option that shows ads in the results of the search tab.

Average metrics: TikTok subscribers spend an average of 58 minutes on the app. To keep an active audience engaged each ad group should have at least three creatives to avoid creative fatigue. Make sure your videos are vertical with sound that run 9-15 seconds.

Heads up: With the potential U.S. ban still looming, marketers should weigh the risks of investing heavily in a platform whose future is uncertain. It’s still a powerful tool—but keep your eyes on the headlines.

X is the digital equivalent of the morning stop at the local coffee shop where folks talk markets, weather, and what the USDA just dropped in its latest report. It’s the home of ag economists, Extension agents, and co-op communicators who keep the conversation going in real time in 280 characters or less. It's less about polish and more about being part of the moment.

Demographics: Most of X’s approximated 245 million users are male between the ages of 25-34 and spend about 34 minutes per day on the site. Twitter's demographics generate an opportunity to connect with a college educated audience who primarily live in urban and suburban areas.
Type of content: Home of the hashtag, users visit the site for news and current events shared in real time via short-form texts.
Objectives to Optimize towards: Through X, you can optimize towards awareness to maximize your reach, consideration through tactics like video views and website traffic, and conversions such as website conversions.
Unique targeting options: Target your users based on keywords, interests, movies, TV shows, events or conversation topics
Placements offered: Explore placements including Timelines, both home and profile, Search Results, Tweet Replies, Follower Ads and more.
Average metrics: People spend about 35 minutes per day scrolling X. Ad spend is dropping on the platform year over year but ad engagement is increasing. Include vertical videos to help increase reach and engagement. X is also a great platform for customer interaction. Set up an X account if you’re looking to improve customer service.

Snapchat is like that elusive friend who pops in, makes you laugh, and disappears before you can reply. It’s all about quick, visual content, mostly for Gen Z. Users gravitate to the app because of its emphasis on privacy.

Demographics: Snapchat is the most used platform for Gen Z, who comprise more than half the users. Less than 15% of users are older than 43.
Content type: Users share “snaps” in the form of images or videos under 10 seconds. Each clip can be viewed for up to 10 seconds before it disappears into oblivion. Snapchat stories s can be viewed for up to 24 hours.
Unique targeting options: Snapchat offers location and demographics targeting as well as lookalike audiences.
Placements offered: Options include, Snap Ads, Story Ads, Collection Ads, Commercials, Filter, Lenses and Spotlight Ads. Average metrics: Users spend about 27 minutes on the platform per day. Most Snapchat ads are viewed with the sound on making it vital to include quality audio. The Gen Z audience can recall an ad after watching only 0-2 seconds of the video. An enticing video with entertaining audio and captions can leave a great impression on your audience.

LinkedIn is where everyone is trying to look like they’ve got their life together. It’s the B2B powerhouse where ag businesses can connect with other professionals.

Demographics: This platform appeals to the average professional. 30% of working aged people in the United States have an account and half the users are millennials. That’s why it’s not surprising this is such a popular place for B2B Marketers.
Content type: People gravitate towards LinkedIn in order to see job openings, company and individual professional achievements, articles, and industry updates.
Unique targeting options: Industry, job title, experience level, and professional or personal interests.
Placements offered: Options include Feed, Right Rail/Destop Sidebar, Messaging, Conversation Ads, Carousel Ads, Event Ads and Follower Ads. Average metrics: Professionals spend about 7 minutes on LinkedIn per day. Marketers see high conversion rates compared to other platforms which increases their chance to purchase. Include images in your content to increase metrics like engagement and CTR.

Whether it’s adjusting a combine head or figuring out the best mineral mix for spring calving, YouTube is the tool shed of ag know-how. When people are looking for answers, they’re searching. That’s where ag brands can step in with useful, trustworthy content. If your audience is mid-funnel, YouTube’s where they go to learn before buying.

Demographics: YouTube has roughly 2.5 billion monthly users. Viewers skew slightly more male with a majority of users aged between 25-34.
Content type: YouTube is the host of a broad category of videos. Popular content people enjoy includes educational videos, political videos, sports highlights, music videos, gaming streams, vlogs, tutorials, podcasts, news, and more.
Targeting options: With YouTube, marketers have the ability to target basic demographics, detailed demographics – like college students or homeowners, as well as life events. You can also target based on Google searches, people researching your products or services, as well as retargeting those who have interacted with your brand through YouTube videos, ads or your website. The extensive targeting opportunities allows you to focus on an audience as broad or narrow as you’d like.
Placements offered: Non-premium YouTube subscribers typically view an ad before their video begins. Ads are placed in the form of skippable and non-skippable video ads, display ads, and sponsored ads that show up at the top of the user’s channel. Flexible ad formats and engaging content are why YouTube is a must for most advertisers.
Average metrics: YouTube's high engagement equates to viewers spending over 48 minutes on the platform every day. Videos that utilize vertical placements show increased conversions, up to 20% per dollar according to SproutSocial using YouTube Shorts when compared to landscape videos, Viewers can get irritated by constant non-skippable ads when jumping from video to video. Therefore, pre-roll skippable ads tend to outperform non-skippable ads.

Final Thought: One size doesn’t fit all

Choosing the right platform isn’t about picking a favorite. It’s about picking the right combination. The beauty of today’s social media landscape is that you don’t have to choose just one. You can reach people across platforms, with different content types and placements, all while hitting the right tone for the right audience.

So, experiment. Track your metrics. Make your ads as scroll-stopping as a tractor doing donuts in a cornfield. Because when it comes to ag marketing on social, the only wrong move is not showing up.

The Paid Social Dating Game

We did the matchmaking so you can get straight to results

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