Favorite Paid Media Tactics

You probably know the difference between Owned, Earned, and Paid Media. But as a quick refresher, in the context of social media, Owned Media would be the messages and content you post on your social media feeds organically. Earned Media would be when your customers and followers choose to share your social posts with their own friends and followers. When these posts aren’t getting quite enough visibility, you can choose to put some money behind the posts by ‘boosting’ them or even converting their content into paid advertising placements. This is Paid Media.

What are some of our favorite Paid Media tactics to spread a message and increase engagement and sales?

Boosting Posts

For that social media content that needs a little help reaching your target audience, you can put some money behind it by boosting it on Facebook and Instagram (or “promoting” it on Twitter). This function allows you to specify a daily or campaign-lifetime budget, the duration of the boost, your goal for this post (add followers, increase engagement, drive traffic, etc.), and even includes demographic audience targeting.

Social Media Ads

Placing ads on social media platforms is fairly similar to boosting a post in terms of setting budgets, duration, goals, and audience targeting. But placing an ad gives you more options for when and where your ad will appear on each platform, and also provides far more robust reporting for measuring its effectiveness.

Influencer Marketing

Rapidly growing in popularity, influencer marketing is when a social media influencer works with a brand to promote its products, making brand mentions and endorsements to improve brand recognition. In return, the influencer is compensated with cash or with free products or rewards. Choosing the right influencer will add significant authenticity or ‘social proof’ to your message and establish a direct connection to your audience.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Ads

Moving away from social media, PPC is internet-based advertising specifically used to direct traffic to an individual website via search engines. The advertiser pays the publisher when the ad is clicked by a user. Dominated by Google and Microsoft, PPC marketing accounts for about 65% of clicks and PPC visitors are reportedly 50% more likely to make a purchase than organic visitors.

Ad Retargeting

Digital display ads allow you to format your content into many different sizes and place them on a wide variety of platforms and websites. A crucial opportunity with display ads is retargeting (or remarketing), where visitors are tracked after they visit your (or your client’s) website. These visitors are then shown your ads in other places across the internet, reminding them of your message and coaxing them back to your site.

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These are just a few of the many ways to put some budget behind your message and increase its reach and effectiveness. While Owned and Earned Media are great (and inexpensive) ways to reach your target audience, Paid Media is often required in order to jump-start engagement and drive serious traffic. The methods above are just some of our favorite techniques to put money behind your message and ensure a successful campaign.