Paid Social Media

Hey everyone, I hope you had a fun 4th of July! In last week’s blog, we discussed the importance of inbound and content marketing to create and distribute value to our audience. Today’s blog will focus on the importance of paid social media. I’m almost 100% certain that you’ve seen paid social media. Remember going through your Facebook feed and seeing posts with “Sponsored” on them? Yes, that’s right, “Sponsored” equals paid social media. As Digital Marketers, we must understand how to properly use paid social media to guide our consumers through the purchasing funnel. Stay tuned to find out more on paid social media. 

What Is It?

Paid social media advertising refers to any paid content used on a social network. In other words, paid social media is a tool used to convey your content to a large audience. This form of advertising is great at building brand awareness. This method exposes your content to people who are already interested in your product or service.

There are various social platforms that you can distribute your content on, but each social platform has its pros and cons. It’s important to choose the platform based on the objectives of the campaign and the audience you are targeting. Each social platform offers different forms of advertising for example, Twitter Promotes Trends, LinkedIn has Sponsored InMail, and Facebook offers Carousel Advertisements.

Investing in Facebook Advertising

Facebook is the most popular social platform, with over 2 billion monthly active users! Advertising on Facebook is affordable since you set your limit. Once the advertisement hits your set limit Facebook stops showing your content. You are in control of the amount you're willing to spend. 

Facebook Targeting Options

Another reason to invest in Facebook advertising is that the platform contains enormous amounts of information about its users. As a marketer, you can benefit from this by targeting potential customers instead of the general audience. Facebook has three options to construct your audience:

• Core Audience: Allows you to segment the audience based on demographics, location, interests, and behaviors.
• Custom Audience: Uses Facebook Pixel to segment the audience into existing customers and existing contacts. 
• Lookalike Audience: Helps to identify consumers who have not engaged with your content but are similar to your customers or contacts.  

Facebook Advertisement Formats

A plus to promoting your content on Facebook is that it has many advertising formats. The formats are perfect for business to keep their content fresh and new. Facebook offers a total of six formats:

• Video Ads: Are used as a flexible way to advertise since they work across all types of objectives
• Canvas Ads: Provide an interactive full-screen experience for mobile users where they easily view the content.
• Collection Ads: Allows companies to tell a story and display relevant products and features. Ideal for all campaigns because they allow consumers to discover, browse, and purchase.
• Carousel Ads: Allows companies to display a maximum of ten images or videos within a single advertisement. An interactive format encourages consumers to swipe through for more information.
• Slideshow Ads: Are cost-effective while providing similar elements as video advertisements. Slideshow ads use motion, sound, and text to tell a story.
• Photo Ads: Perfect way to increase awareness of who you and what you do by using imagery and a compelling story. Works best for tangible products.

Strategic Planning

Define the Objective

Advertising is not all about selling! It’s important to think about your goals when creating your advertisements. Use your goals to decide how you are going to measure the campaign. Key performance indicators (KPIs) to consider are engagement, reach, and conversion rate. Advertising is utilized in three ways:

• Awareness: Generates interest in your product or service. This method increases the visibility of the brand.
• Consideration: Draws in consumers to learn more about your brand. This method increases engagement, web traffic, and leads.
• Conversion: Encouraging consumers interested in your business to purchase or use your product.

Select the Appropriate Platform

As mentioned before, each social media platform is different and has its pros and cons. Use the objectives to decide who you want to target. Each platform has a different cost associated with it. Use your budget as a guide to allocate money towards the correct platforms. Researching your target audience will help to optimize your budget.

Start Testing

Remember, a Digital Marketer is a scientist in disguise! During this phase, you will put your lab coat on and start testing different advertisements using a small audience sample. Sound familiar? If the answer is “Yes” it’s because we already discussed this process in a previous blog. Use A/B tests to refine your advertisements over time to optimize your marketing efforts.

Select the Appropriate Filters

Social media platforms contain valuable information about their users. Use the information provided to select the correct audience to target. Target them based on age, likes, interests, jobs, location demographics, etc. Refining the target audience helps reach the ideal customer. The more refined the audience, the more control you will have over your budget.

Mockup Advertisement

I chose to use Instagram as my platform because the audience I chose to target are younger sneaker-heads. Sneakerheads refers to individuals who love the sneakers and the culture surrounding them. In my post I chose two variations of the Air Force 1. The purpose of my post is to create a conversation (awareness) of the product. Pacific_kickss can benefit from promoting their content to an already interested audience leading to more engagement.

Conclusion

Paid social media is a great way to give your content an extra boost. Having high amounts of paid advertisements alone will not lead your goals. Remember you should continue to put out engaging content that resonates with your audience. Combining all we’ve discussed through the last couple of weeks is a recipe for success. Till next time, thanks for reading!