Investing in Paid Social Advertising

Paid social media advertising is a method of displaying ads or sponsored marketing messages on social media platforms that target a specific market.

This could be anywhere from using promoted tweets on Twitter, to sponsored content on Instagram, to carousel ads on Facebook. Basically, any paid content on a social network is considered paid social.

Why should businesses invest in paid ads?

Organic social media is necessary for building customer relationships and authenticity, but adding paid social to your strategy will help businesses reach their goals faster and more accurately.

Paid ads allow businesses to analyze measurable results to reflect on the performance of their paid efforts. In addition to this, a "pay to play" method of advertising allows businesses to be flexible in their marketing attempts to either target their existing audience, or extend their reach to new potential customers on a large and cost-effective scale.

With targeting features, it is easy to position paid ads based on defined interests, engagement, and demographics for a successful campaign placed in front of the right audiences that are most likely to convert.

Facebook Paid Ads

Specifically on Facebook, they offer 3 unique tools that help businesses define their target audience.

1. Core Audiences allow you to focus your ads based on users in a desired demographic, behavior, interest or location.
2. Custom Audiences are used to help your ads target existing customers that have already shown interest in your business.
3. Lookalike Audiences help your ads find new users who are similar to current customers that are most likely to respond to your ads.

Demo

With Facebook Ads Manager, you are able to easily customize an ad based on your business goals. To demonstrate how easy it is to create a targeted ad on Facebook, consider you are a dessert bakery business in Bellingham, WA and you want to generate more awareness and traffic to your website.

For The Sweet Spot Bakery, we have selected a goal of getting more website visitors from users who are likely to click on our URL.

Facebook determines these users by finding people with similar interests in desserts, baking, Bellingham residents, etc., and creates a core audience to show our ad to. By adding a description and a call to action button on the face of the ad, it is more likely that users will click on the "See Menu" button and be directed to our website which increases our visitors.

Paid social media ads are becoming a staple in marketing strategies across small and large businesses. Paid social untimely increases accuracy and speed to market to make the best use of your money.