Here Is Why You Should Consider Implementing a Paid Social Strategy

A Little About Paid Social

Social media is in its hayday - as frequently used (if not more) than past forms of mass media such as telegrams, newspapers or long-form video. Thus, it is important for digital marketers to reach their existing and prospective audiences utilizing social media. This brings us to the idea of paid social. Paid social media, as opposed to organic, is simply digital advertising - paying companies such as Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn to run ads to targeted audiences who would likely be interested in the product.

So, we're all familiar with advertising at it's core as it's something we experience in our social media consumption on a daily basis. But why pay for ads when everyone says "organic is better" and organic social helps us with CRM?

Firstly, paid ads can reach a much larger audience. The idea of "paying to play" is illustrated here, paying for placement in high traffic areas speeds up the process. Leads are generated faster, business goals are reached quicker, and the business stays relevant and modern with a social commerce strategy. According to Smart Insights, purchasing via social media is a growing trend, with 40% of social media users deciding what they want to buy based on things they've seen on social platforms, such as reviews.

The sweet spot here is to integrate paid and organic social into your marketing strategy. Utilize the exceedingly better metrics from paid media to try and learn more about not just paid posts, but insights about organic as well. Use the data to understand when a paid ad might be necessary (such as pushing a major campaign or a sale) versus when an organic might be better (slower lead times okay, long-term relationship is the higher level focus). This venn diagram below summarizes the goals of both organic and paid social in a few key areas to help you decide which approach might be better for a given objective.

Influencer Marketing

Continuing with this idea of paid social, I want to discuss an important sub-type within this umbrella: influencer marketing!

Influencer marketing is simply your brand paying an influencer or content creator, someone with "authority" as Google would call it, to talk about how into your product or service they are. The goal here is to create that relationship element with the customer - by seeing someone they look up to and respect use a product, it makes them want to buy this product more.

By design, this means the advertising can be very targeted, and influencers can feature products that may be related to their own content. If Emma Chamberlain starts talking about a new oat milk she really likes adding to her Chamberlain coffee, her viewers will flock to said oat milk.

And think about how successful McDonald's is with their celebrity meals - anyone recall the Cardi B & Offset meal?

What makes influencer marketing stand out from other types of paid social is this personal connection. By reaching enough of the right people, having an influencer can drive much more in sales than something like a Facebook ad or a billboard. The audience isn't dumb - they're aware their favorite YouTube personality is being paid to talk about Vincero watches. However, many won't endorse products they don't at least somewhat like, and something as simple as hearing an influencer just talk about a brand might be enough to drive a sale.

WWU MBA Program Proposal

This next section is a proposal to the Western Washington University MBA program on why they should incorporate paid social into their marketing strategy:

1. Organic Isn't Enough Here: The people attending Western and around Western are aware of the MBA program. Professors talk about it, students talk about it, the walls of Parks Hall and Academic West scream about it with print ads. Paid media works wonders on reaching new people that are interested in receiving their MBA's. Placing paid ads on Google, LinkedIn, and even YouTube (think about all those UTI 30-second ads) to just make more people aware of the MBA program would likely see results.
2. Other Are Already Doing It: I queried a very simple search in Google to see what my options are for an MBA in the state of Washington. I googled "MBA Washington" and included below the search results. Eastern Washington University came up first with a paid ad, with Foster (as I expected) coming up after along with WSU. Paid ads such as this aren't necessarily classified as paid "social", though I felt it was worth pointing out this gap when MBA prospective's are searching for their options.

3. Influencers CAN Work Here: Not every influencer needs to reach the level of people that celebrities like Emma Chamberlain or MrBeast do. In fact, there is a sub-class of influencers called nanoinfluencers who reach less than 1000 people that still offer value. Consider how the MBA program could utilize testimonials from current or graduated MBA's to explain real-world benefits of signing up for the program, and why WWU's in specific. Could be cool!

Incorporating strategies such as these, along with others such as retargeting, by promoting next-steps in the MBA process (such as awareness to simply looking at the application/prerequisites) and help improve engagement between prospective applicants, existing members, and the program.