It Pays to Pay for Paid Social

Ever look on Instagram or Facebook and notice there are ads that you feel are targeting you? Let’s say you move to a certain area, such as Colorado, and all the sudden you see ads pop up that promotes ski gear…what??? Where did this come from? How do they know where I live? Am I being tracked? Well, the simple answer to these commonly asked questions is: Paid Social Media Marketing.

Ok but what is it?

What exactly is paid social media marketing, you might ask? Well, it is sponsored ads that are specifically designed to target a business’s audience. This ensures the brand is at the forefront of the audience’s minds and keeps them engaged with graphics, videos, interactive slides, etc. Today’s technology allows social media sites to track consumer’s data, even down to the area they live, in order to best target consumers that likely will create conversions. Brands will place ads that appear on social media user’s feeds which all platforms offer a pay-per-click model which means the brands only pay for the ad when users engage with it – this is cost effective in the sense that not everyone seeing an ad will choose to engage. It is with the hope of the firm that users who interact with the content will then turn into conversions which will then turn into returning and loyal customers.

Conversion what?

Speaking of conversions, this is what happens when a consumer takes an action that you wished they would. For example, this could be filling out a subscription to a magazine, entering their information and signing up for email promotions, or even clicking a button the business wants visitors to click. A marketing tool that goes hand in hand with a conversion is a funnel. It looks something like this:

It is important to remember that not everyone who enters the funnel will be a conversion. That being said, you can create a funnel for multiple categories on one website page if you wish to track different conversions, which is essentially what a funnel is used for; tracking steps that lead to conversions.

Why you should invest in paid social

There are many reasons firms should invest in paid social media marketing. First and foremost, paid social increases brand awareness, as touched on before, which makes regular customers and also potential new customers familiar with your brand. It also reaches your target audience in an effective manner and makes sure those that view the ads are ones that actually want to see them. Keeping the audience engaged is extremely important to the effectiveness of the ad.

Building a better audience

Facebook is a master at targeting different audiences and how to correctly apply marketing tools to each.

First, there is the core audience. By definition, this is when a brand reaches people based on areas such as demographics, location, interests, behaviors, and connections. Firms would decide where ads are delivered based on these criteria. A firm would set the boundaries for where the ads are delivered and can target a specific group of people solely based on one of these criteria, if they wish.

There are also custom audiences which is an ad targeting option that helps the firm find existing customers and contacts that are already familiar with the brand. You can use engagement, app traffic, and so many more sources to create custom audiences.

Finally, Facebook describes people who will likely be interested in your business since they are similar to existing customers as “lookalike audiences.” When you create a lookalike audience, you choose a source audience, which are basically fans of your business and what you base your lookalike audience off of. You then determine commonalities of people within your source audience and create/produce an ad to people who are similar to them. If your source audience is made of your best customers rather than all customers, there could potentially be better results.

The powerful tool of using Facebook Ad Manager

Below are a few Facebook Ad examples of campaigns that I created:

Here, we see an Instagram ad for the business called "Plants for People" which, if you were to dive into the Instagram page and their own website, you would be able to notice that this company sells easy-care plants and guidebooks on how to care for your plants.

This is what the ad would look like on Facebook. By using Facebook Ad Manager, I was able to follow the steps in creating my own paid advertisement that allowed me to set a budget, targeted demographic, type of ad I wanted, start and end dates for the ad being promoted, as well as walked me through the process in selecting an ad objective. These steps made sure I was using the correct formats and made it so I could have my ad looking exactly the way I want. If you haven't tried out Facebook Ad Manager yet, I strongly suggest it!

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