Businesses are always looking for new ways to expand their reach and connect with new audiences. But making this dream a reality is challenging because there are so many options out there today.
One of these is “paid social.” But what is it? And how should you use it?
Fortunately, this post has some answers. We define paid social and then look at the best methods to leverage this form of advertising to create the best possible results.
What Is Paid Social?
Paid social is like PPC for social media platforms, according to Algebra Digital, an agency that deals with these services. The idea is to pay a fee to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or Twitter, and then they will place ads in front of relevant audiences interested in buying from your brand.
What’s nice about paid social is the number of formats available. You can choose from carousels, video ads, display ads, and sponsored posts, among others. Then, you can tweak ads in the various Ads Manager tools, allowing you to target audiences based on their demographics and behaviour, ensuring you waste as little money as possible.
The ultimate goal of these ads is primarily to raise brand awareness. However, conversions are also possible, depending on where customers are in the sales funnel.
How Should You Use Paid Social?
So, with definitions out of the way, how should you use this powerful advertising tool, exactly?
Fortunately, this section offers some answers. It explores the top strategies to use and how they can potentially help you dominate the market.
Know Your Audience
The first step is to get to know your audience. You need to understand their demographics, motivations, and behaviours before launching into an ad campaign. Once you have this information, you can tweak your targeting to ensure that ads reach the right people.
If you can create buyer personas to support your efforts, that’s even better. These give you a person you can keep in the back of your mind whenever you develop your outreach or marketing strategy.
Choose the Right Platforms
Next, you want to ensure you choose the right platforms so your ads can best connect with your audience. You don’t want to get into a situation where your ads are amazing, but they are just being posted on the wrong sites.
For example, if you run a B2B business, LinkedIn is generally the best option. It connects with professionals and allows you to advertise to decision-makers.
Likewise, if you’re trying to get the attention of younger people, TikTok could be better.
Once you have a platform, stick with it for a few months to see how things turn out. Usually, you’ll know whether it is working for you, especially if other brands in your industry use it for their outreach.
Make Your Ads Grab Attention
You also want to ensure that your ads can grab attention in an environment competing for users’ clicks. Something about them should stand out and make sense to your target audience, making them want to take the next steps.
The best way to do this on most ad platforms is to make your visuals compelling. Consumers are more likely to sit through an ad if they think it is relevant to them and it looks nice.
At the same time, adding a CTA is useful. These tell leads what they should do next, allowing them to take the next steps with you. The better these CTAs are, the more likely it is that you will gain traction.
Use Advanced Targeting
If you have enough data on your customers, you should also explore using advanced targeting. These techniques let you narrow down your audience even more, making it easier to only spend money on displaying ads to people most likely to buy from you.
Advanced targeting is usually available within Ad Manager tools. However, you can also use it by collecting data on who visits your site, how often, and what they look at. You can then leverage this information to present them with more compelling ads that encourage conversions.
Test and Optimize
Once you start using paid social, you should start testing and optimising your approach to check it works. Analytics can provide quick feedback to let you know if something is remiss.
These days, dozens of tools can track campaign performance for you. The easiest are those connected with the platforms, but you can also get third-party solutions with more proprietary features for deeper analysis if you need them.
