By Doug Brown 
Many factors make social media marketing and advertising so attractive. There is an opportunity to reach a vast audience base. 2022 statistics show that 4.7 billion people use social media. With the right tactics, you can reach thousands.
Second, there is no limit to social media use. You can open accounts on all the platforms if you want.
Finally, social media provides plenty of free marketing and advertising opportunities. You can use them to increase brand awareness and drive traffic to your platforms.
But have you considered including paid social in the strategies? If yes, it helps to do so in the right way. And, we will share a fantastic guide for profitable ads for your business.
Paid Social Media; Why It Is Worth Considering
As we said, one of the strongest points of social media is that there are tons of free opportunities. But, you can only achieve so much if that is the only avenue you decide to use. Paid social media provides an excellent boost to your organic efforts. It also:-
- Provides a guarantee to increase your reach
- Allows for better customer targeting, unlike free tactics
- Social Analytics from paid social can provide invaluable insights for better advertising
- There is a chance for better engagement, thus more conversions with paid social.
It is important to note that the marketing and advertising landscape has changed. There is a larger focus on performance marketing.
So, what is performance marketing? It is a results-driven digital marketing strategy. That means brands must see a return on ad spend (ROAS) for every dollar they spend on advertisements.
The service providers must show tangible proof of success in whatever they are doing. This could mean the number of clicks or conversions on the social ads. And paid social provides one way to achieve this.
How to Get the Best Out of Paid Social Advertising
Alt Text: Infographic explaining how to get the best out of your social paid ads and your performance marketing campaigns
- Determine Your Paid Social Advertising Objectives
Start by determining what your advertising objectives are. It could be to increase reach, boost traffic, create awareness, etc. Your goals will help you decide on the best social network and tactics.
- Decide On the Priority Platforms
Social media marketing 101 will tell you to pick one or two platforms to optimize on. The challenge of trying to be everywhere is that it can get hard to manage all of them. Think about where your audiences are most likely to be.
It helps to start with a good understanding of social media channels in terms of reach and demographics.
If you, for example, sell baby products, a platform like TikTok may not be the best. Go where parents are most likely to be. And that would include Facebook or Twitter.
The advantage of sticking to 2 or fewer platforms is that you can better use your social media advertising budget.
- Define Your Message
Once you identify where your audiences are, the next stage is to define your message. Indeed, that is one of the most critical steps for performance marketing. Remember, what you tell the audiences has the power to transform them into customers or have them running to the competitors. The best way to develop and define the message is to understand the target audience well.
- What are their pain points?
- Are there gaps in product or service delivery that you can fulfill?
- Is your service or product providing a solution to identified needs?
- How different is your offering from the competitors? Focus on what makes you unique.
Once you pick on the salient points, it becomes easy to craft relevant messages.
- Decide On the Paid Social Ads You Will Use
Looking at all the major platforms, you will notice that they all give advertising options. You want to utilize the most likely to engage with the target audiences.
Let’s say you want to reach younger people. Videos and beautiful images will most likely capture their attention. Professionals or older demographics may need a bit more information. So, you can include a bit more text.
The options include:-
- Facebook ads are fantastic for creating brand awareness due to their reach. The platform is popular across demographics, meaning you will find all ages on it. You can use photo ads, video ads, stories, slideshows/carousel ads, messenger ads, and more.
- Instagram ads are great for awareness, consideration and conversion. The demographics are primarily millennials and Gen Z. You can use the same avenues as you would on Facebook. But remember, these demographics want quick information. High-quality pictures and minimal text is the way to make your paid social ads more effective.
- Snapchat is very popular with younger audiences. The larger percentage is below the age of 25. You have paid social options like snap cards, story ads, collection ads, and Snapchat commercials.
- LinkedIn is a professional network. Advertising options include sponsored content, email, text ads, etc.
Do research your desired platform and see what kind of advertising options they have. That makes it easy to allocate a budget to the most effective.
- Allocate a Budget
Set aside a budget for your paid social media marketing tactics. Typically most of the ads are on an auction basis. As is the case with performance marketing, determine the results you want to get. The ad manager interface will then recommend bids as per our stated goals. You can do this for:-
- Cost-per-click (CPC)
- Cost for every 1000 impressions (CPM)
- Cost per conversion
- Cost per video view, and more.
Improve the chances of getting better results for your bids by:-
- Ensuring high-quality ads
- Having proper campaign objectives
- Proper targeting of your audience is
- Location-based targeting
- Time of day or year you push your sponsored content
- Placement of the ad content within the marketing channel.
- Leverage the Power of Your Organic Posts
It is safe to assume you already post content on your social media platforms. Take note of the analytics to know which ones attract the most traction. You can then use high-performing messages to increase the effectiveness of paid search ads.
Final Thoughts
Paid social provides an excellent complement to free advertising on social media. Start by determining goals. Next, pick a priority platform on which to optimize.
Also, define your message so that it resonates with the target audiences. Finally, pick the most effective paid social strategies and leverage the power of your organic posts.
SME Paid Under
Sitetrail Research Team