What is your experience with paid social media campaigns?

Paid social campaigns can be tailored to any budget without compromising on reach or effectiveness. Facebook and Instagram offer flexible ad spend options, allowing brands to start with a modest budget and scale up as they grow. One of the most significant advantages of paid social media is the ability to target your advertising very specifically with demographic data, interests, behaviors, and even retargeting tools to reach the exact audience they want.

Paid social is one of the best ways to grow a business in the modern economy. I think CFOs should love paid social because it can drive predictable, scalable revenue growth. Whether in lead generation, e-commerce, or even general brand awareness, paid social works because of its ability to deliver performance marketing. That cannot be said for the vast majority of other channels you can advertise on. Even in this post-iOS14-world, paid social is still one of the best ways to scale a business. I would advise just not falling into the trap of paid social being the only way your business is succeeding. Build a brand that people love, and use paid social to create awareness, intent, and ultimately conversions!

Paid Social is the most cost efficient medium for demand generation at scale available to most businesses. In many cases its possible to address as big an audience as TV at a much lower cost. Given the visual nature of the medium its possible to drive both brand and performance metrics, again at large scale, which makes it a very useful channel for many brands. It is most effective for brands that sell products or services that have enough margin/ltv to afford the cost of the traffic, but are not too expensive so therefore considered purchases. This is why fashion and gaming are the top verticals. For many brands in fashion and gaming its their biggest marketing investment by far.

In my experience, paid social media campaigns matter because they offer targeted reach to specific audiences, drive brand awareness, and provide measurable ROI. They enable businesses to tap into detailed targeting options, ensuring that the right message reaches the right people at the right time. Additionally, they offer invaluable insights into consumer behavior, allowing for strategic adjustments and refined targeting.

Performance tracking and visibility Improved engagement and interactivity Faster results and lead generation Wider reach Enhanced brand awareness Promoting new deals, content, and events

Make sure you're promoting on the platforms where your customers are. Check sites like Semrush and Similarweb to see where your competitors are getting traffic to ensure you're not missing something.

In order to effectively plan for successful paid social campaigns, you need to have a foundation rooted in research. Competitor research, market research, consumer research, and KPI research are required to ensure predictable success. Understand what your breakeven ROAS or Marketing Efficiency Ratio goals are. Understand what your scaling parameters are. This needs to be based on variable costs associated w/ an order like COGS, merchant processing fees, shipping profit/loss, etc. You need persona research to inform your creative and landing page strategy. Without understanding the reason why people should buy your products, or who should be buying them, you're not likely to find success. Prepare accordingly!

Setting the expectations right is the key to a fruitful Social Campaign. Your product/service segment decides the social channels and budget of your campaigns as the costs varies on the basis of your target audience and affinity of audiences on the social platform. Once these things are in place, the content you’re going to insert in the paid ads will be the winner for you. It is your weapon to create a lasting impact in the viewers mind so that they don’t only watch your Social ad but also remember it and take action. The third important step is tracking through available analytics tools and taking informed decisions on the basis of the data.

Paid social media campaigns are like dipping your toe into the water to gauge the temperature. You first want to see if you can get any conversions. Once conversions start rolling in, the focus shifts to achieving a reasonable cost per conversion (CPA). Then you see about scaling the campaign while maintaining a good CPA. Every niche is different, and there is no escape from testing, testing, and testing to figure it out.

To plan a successful paid social media campaign, start by setting clear objectives, identifying your target audience, and choosing the right platforms. Allocate a budget, create engaging content and ad creatives, and use precise targeting options. Remember to do research on your competitors to check on which ads they are running and how they are performing. Monitor performance, make data-driven optimizations, and regularly report on your campaign's results to ensure it meets your goals.

Businesses often underestimate the power of creativity and video content in paid social media campaigns. Creative ads that capture attention and engage viewers are essential for successful campaigns, and video content is particularly effective in this regard. Additionally, businesses often neglect the upper funnel of social media marketing, which involves reaching new audiences and generating brand awareness. By focusing on creative content, video, and upper funnel strategies, businesses can significantly improve their paid social media campaigns and achieve their marketing goals.

Execution for paid social should be looked at a a series of ongoing, never ending experiments. Run experiments across strategy, campaigns and creative to constantly work out what is good (do more) and what is bad (do less). Experiments should be run both in and outside the platform as platform data and a/b tests in platforms alone are highly missleading.

Make sure to set KPIs, which will be a guiding light on the types of ads to create in terms of variations, headlines, copy, call to action, and the ad creative. Continuously monitor ad performance and make necessary adjustments, such as tweaking budgets, optimizing ad content, and refining targeting.

Keep it simple! Who do you want to reach? Subscribers, sales, leads, donations, reach? What do you want to pay for a customer or a sale? If you know what you want to reach and what you want to sell, you can start!

First, clearly define your campaign goals, such as increasing brand awareness or driving sales. Next, understand and identify your target audience to ensure your content resonates with them. Choose the most appropriate social media platforms based on where your audience is most active. Develop engaging content tailored to each platform, keeping your campaign goals in mind. Set a realistic budget and allocate it wisely across the platforms and the campaign duration. Make sure tracking tools are in place to monitor the campaign's performance, allowing for real-time adjustments and optimization. Finally, analyze the campaign's results against your initial objectives to measure success and gather insights for future campaigns.

Ensure you have key KPIs for every level of the funnel to track: - Audience & Creative Performance (thumb stop rate, video hold rate, click through rate) - Website Performance (add-to-cart rate, initiate checkout rate, conversion rate, average order value) Ensure you have these metrics in your dashboard and easy to retrieve. Understand how to pivot & iterate based on subpar performance. Understand the benchmarks you'll be tracking against.

There are a number of different ways to take in monitoring paid social media accounts. I would say that these are my top 3 must-do-everyday tasks: 1. Open and view ad campaigns from each level. Campaign, ad set, and ad level. I do this because there will be times when a campaign is labeled as 'active' but upon viewing the ads themselves, you may have rejections to address. 2. Track how you monitor campaigns through a shared sheet with your team. My team uses a Google Doc to track who has reviewed what account for the day. 3. Take note of campaigns with creative fatigue or learning limited notices. These can be used to help optimize future planning on campaigns.

There are various ways to monitor paid social media campaigns, and highly depend on what your goals/objective of the Ad. Eg if running a campaign to promote App downloads, you are likely to direct to the download platform. If promoting a video, you will most likely check on video plays Now, to monitor, keep checking your CTRs, CPC, website visits, app downloads, etc etc.

Several people have spoken about monitoring on the back end (KPIs, analytics, measurement), but planning for monitoring comments, questions, or messages is just as necessary. Ensure you have the monetary budget you need to make your ad hit your goals and the correct time budget to account for the increased community support needs that your ad may generate.

Don’t be fooled by all of the paid social hype. Paid social is not always: - Huge inflow/purchases - Low CAC - Top-performing ads - Easy times When it is, ride that wave! But a lot of paid social is actually: - Endless research into creative strategy - Customer research - Testing the ad creative - Testing the ad format - Website and CRO research - Lots (and I mean LOTS) of data analysis I think it’s easy to get lost in all of the noise that is shared about how amazing some ad accounts are doing. The reality is this is not always the case. I think this is especially important for younger growth marketers and media buyers to understand, and not let the eb and flow of paid social affect you.

To enhance paid social media campaigns, begin with clear objectives and a deep understanding of your audience and goals. Craft compelling ad creatives and optimize your landing pages for conversions. Regularly test different ad elements and adjust budgets wisely. Monitor performance data, stay updated on platform changes, and adapt your strategies to effectively reach and engage your target audience.

As a marketer, you need to understand the tactics that you have available to you for testing. Without understanding a roadmap of testing components, you're unlikely to predictably achieve success. When you find success, templatize it for future ease of retrieval/reproduction. Some of my favorite tactics to employ: Shopify Audiences, Server-sided CAPI to augment Event Match Quality Scores, Performance PR, and more.

Pay close attention to the results of your a/b tests, and make tweaks to your ads based on what they're telling you. If your ads are earning higher CTR but no conversions, your problem might be with the landing page. Make sure your landing page creative and messaging is aligned with your ad creative and messaging.

Optimize your creative to have the greatest impact on the audience you are trying to influence! Start by having a deep understanding of the user experience in each platform and how they engage with ads in those environments. For video content make sure you understand: ? average video playtime ? % of users that will only see the first frame ? % of users where the video reaches the first 2 seconds, 1st quartile, halfway through, etc. ? % of users that will have sound on an audible A shocking number of social ads have very limited ability to drive impact because the creative was not appropriately developed or edited for the environment those ads are delivered

You need to be regularly reviewing campaign analytics to understand which ads are performing well and why. Continuously test and tweak your ad creatives whilst reallocating your budget to the best-performing ads and platforms. Investing more in what works can maximize your ROI. It's always good to observe your competitors' successful tactics and consider how you can adapt them to fit your brand's unique voice and goals.

Show the results of your a/b tests and what you learned from them. You should also be able to show not only the data (impressions, engagements, clicks, etc.), but show your understanding of the story that data is telling you, and what you did with that information to benefit the brand.

Paid social media campaigns should have different objectives from organic ones. Don't confuse the two. They can inform each other, but she be viewed as synergistic components, not identical ones.

No amount of paid campaigns would be successful if you fail at nurturing the leads. Ask your team what action will qualify your target audience as a lead. Define it upfront. Now devise a strategy that will allow your target audience to become the lead. Think of all possible content format a person qualified as lead would see, number of times they would see, define the period in which they will see. Each of this is very important because one bit extra in these can put them off, but one bit extra can also make them buy, depending on whose hair is on fire. Always A/B test, learn which product work in which channel. Build organic content at the outset and increase the frequency too.

Social media channels knows so much more about their users, compared to channels who doesn't require a log in for usage. That advantage is very important for you as an advertiser to use. Example: If you have a clear conversion on your web or app, then you should go for buying the conversion target on your campaigns. And if your campaign manager suggest for you to use several creatives for A/B-test, then follow the advice.

It's important to know when to pause or pivot on a paid campaign. Paid campaigns are usually build to increase your potential audience and drive brand/offer awareness, but over-serving your ads can create a negative experience for your targeted audiences. If you have a large disparity between reach and impressions, you may have too small of a target audience, or too much budget for the campaign. You only have one shot to make a first impression. It's important to get it right!

For those concerned about 3rd party cookie deprecation and its impact on your ability to reach audiences on open-web campaigns, consider paid social as an alternative. There is a big difference between 3rd party cookie deprecation and 3rd party data! For markets where data-driven audience targeting is available, many of those audiences can be ported to your social campaigns using an identity graph. At least audiences that are built sourcing offline data such as purchase-based audiences used in industries like CPG and Retail.