Social media has become a central hub for consumers. It’s where we interact, stay entertained, find inspiration and even make purchases. In an online world of seemingly endless new content, it can be difficult to stand out from the noise. Incorporating a paid media strategy into your social efforts will get you heard—using a paid media agency will take this one step further.
Let’s start with the basics.
What is paid media?
In the world of social media, paid media refers to sponsored advertisements within social networking sites. Paid media has a number of benefits over owned and earned media. Paid advertising is scalable, measurable, and delivers fast results. Brands can target specific audience segments such as age, income level, interest preferences, etc. Paid media allows for more than just selecting ideal customers; it can also reveal valuable audience insights.
Why use a paid media agency?
When it comes to social media marketing, it can be overwhelming to constantly keep up to date with the latest platform and algorithm updates. A paid media agency has dedicated teams of social experts who live and breathe all-things social media advertising. These teams work with brands to create an airtight paid media strategy that will help you reach and exceed your social media goals.
- Set realistic goals
It’s incredibly important to set realistic goals before launching a paid social campaign. Is your goal to increase brand awareness? Generate more leads? Drive website traffic?
Once you have determined your goals, and your entire team understands them, you can easily measure your success by identifying KPIs and metrics.
- Know your audience
It’s important to know who you want to reach with your paid social campaign. Defining your target audience will help you determine which platforms to advertise on, what type of content to create and what time of day to post.
- Keep an eye on the competition
Make sure you are consistently monitoring what your competitors are doing on social media. Take note of the content they’re sharing, the hashtags they’re using and the type of paid social ads they’re running. Use this information to create a more effective paid social strategy for your own brand.
You can use this information and their results to guide your own paid media strategy.
- Create compelling content
Your paid social ads should be visually appealing and tell a story that resonates with your audience. The best way to capture attention is by using strong images and video – which are more likely to stop scrollers in their tracks. If you don’t have prior experience as a business in creating engaging content, it could be worth getting some consultation from an experienced marketing company, who can help you to develop effective Targeted Paid Social Advertising Strategies whilst also improving your understanding of what makes an advert successful.
Be sure to include a call-to-action (CTA) that encourages users to take the next step, whether it’s visiting your website, signing up for your newsletter or downloading your app.
- Test constantly
You need to be testing different elements of your paid media campaign to see what works best for your brand. Try different ad formats, CTAs, images, videos and copy to find what resonates most with your audience. Once you’ve found a winning combination, you can replicate your success moving forward.
- Measure and analyse your success
The most effective means to assess the performance of your paid social campaign is by looking at your return on investment (ROI). This calculation will show you whether your effort was successful in achieving its objectives. Simply divide your total expenditure by total sales to get a measure of how effective your program was.
Make sure you are also analysing your results as your campaign goes on. This will help you respond to any required changes in real-time.
By following these tips, you can create a paid social campaign that will help you achieve your social media goals. Working with a paid media agency will take your campaign one step further, ensuring that you reach your target audience and exceed your expectations.