WHY PAID SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER

With roughly two billion people on social media and the average person spending about 135 minutes a day on social media [1]  it adds up to… a whole lot of minutes in the day. Though we do love data, you don’t need us to do the math to know that social media can be an essential way to reach customers. But with so many brands online, it can be easy to get lost in the noise. However, paying a little bit can go a long way.

Paid social media can be just what you need to cut through the noise. In this post we’ll get into paid social media advertising’s benefits and how to implement a successful paid social plan. Let’s dig into it.

Why Should Your Digital Advertising Strategy Use Paid Social Media?

If we told you there was a tool you could use that could amplify your business’s reach, target a highly specific audience, and drive high quality traffic to your web presence, you’d pay for it, right? Paid social media is exactly that tool.

Paid social media also doesn’t need to cost an arm and a leg. It’s a highly customizable tool that can fit any budget and be tailored to specific objectives. It’s also an efficient device that can get to market quickly and yield findings and results almost instantly.

Paid Social Media vs. Organic Social Media: Dueling Forces or Complementary Tools?

Before getting into the benefits of paid social advertising, let’s define some terms. What makes paid social media different than any other post?

Those posts are also known as organic social media. Organic social media refers to any of the content you share for free on social media platforms— posts, photos, videos, stories, and more. It’s the bread and butter of what all users share with each other on their feeds.

Paid social media is the paid ads brands create on these platforms. It’s a promoted tweet or a sponsored post on Instagram. Each platform has slightly different advertising options and advantages which we’ll get into below. In general, paid social media can be a powerful tool because, unlike organic, a paid post is guaranteed a place in users’ feed.

Besides the obvious difference in budget, paid and organic can function in really different—though highly complimentary— ways. One is about relationships, the other is about solutions.
Your organic social posts are a place to nurture relationships with your audience, it’s where you can tell your brand’s story. Your paid social advertising can be engineered to reach a specific group of people with content that delivers a solution to a problem.

The Benefits of Paid Social vs. Organic Social Media

One obvious benefit of organic content is that it doesn’t cost anything—other than time—to create and publish. More than that, organic social media content offers the best way to nurture a genuine, longterm connection with customers. It’s a place to showcase your business’s values and story to customers with whom you already have a relationship. It also offers a steady stream of consistent web traffic that often has high returns long term.

Paid social media, on the other hand, is a tool for short term, targeted impact. Unlike organic social media which can take some time to gain views or clickthroughs, you’re able to engineer a paid post to reach the exact audience you want, when you want them to see it. You can use paid social media to reach new customers and audiences unfamiliar with your brand. With a rich set of analytics that come with paying for posts, you can also gain many audience insights.

Using Paid and Organic Social Media in Perfect Harmony

Because your organic social audience are people that already know your brand, organic posts should be about giving those customers new information or deepening an existing relationship. If you’ve got a new feature to announce, letting your true fans know first is a great move. If you’ve got an idea for user engagement, your organic feeds are the places to implement it. It’s a place to rally the troops, to preach to the choir, to talk directly to the people who are interested in your product.

Paid social media is all about reaching the person who needs what your company offers but doesn’t know you exist yet. They’ve got a problem and your company has a solution. Your paid social media is the way to connect them to you. You can use paid social media to grow your audience and your brand awareness. You can also use paid media to boost your best organic content or retarget your organic audience with new products or services even they haven’t heard about yet.

Integrating Organic and Paid Social Media Helps Maximize Returns on Your Online Advertising

When you build a house, you wouldn’t just use a hammer. It’s the same thing with paid and organic social media, they’re tools in an advertiser’s tool box that serve different functions but can both contribute to your business’s success.

Paid social media can help your business grow. Organic social media can keep your customers coming back. For long-term success, you’ll need both growth and loyalty. You’ll need both paid and organic social media.

Recent Findings Suggest Social Advertising Will Only Gain More Power

According to one study, 30% of Instagram users have purchased a product they first discovered on Instagram [2]. With the rise of social shopping and several new features to integrate shopping directly into social scrolling experiences, we predict this number will only climb. Creating paid social media content that allows users to discover then immediately acquire your products can give your business a huge advantage going forward.

A recent study also found that 43% of marketers also said that the decline of their organic social reach was their biggest challenge [3]. You might have also noticed that your posts aren’t getting the same traction they once did. Paid social media will only become more important to amplify and signal boost that content.

Using Paid Social Advertising On Every Platform

Every social media channel is different. Twitter offers short-form content, Instagram focuses heavily on visual content, Facebook has its own marketplace for shopping enthusiasts, and LinkedIn is the home of networking professionals. So depending on what your goals are and who you’re trying to reach, one platform may be better than others.

Instagram

At its core, Instagram is all about sharing photos. So, if you’ve got great visuals for your paid posts it’s a great place to advertise. With social shopping features, it’s a particularly good place for connecting customers directly to products in a seamless online shopping experience.

Facebook

With its array of advertising products and in-depth tools for audience targeting, Facebook can be an excellent place to expand your reach and amplify your brand. It’s also still the platform with the widest user base. If you need to reach a narrow audience, its targeted ads can be a laser-focused way to make sure your ad dollars are spent reaching exactly who you want.

LinkedIn

Given that its focus on being a professional network, LinkedIn is an ideal space for B2B marketing. If you have a product or service that serves a specific industry, LinkedIn is a perfect place for that. Also, if you want your company to be at the forefront of thought leadership in your industry, a boosted post on LinkedIn could get attention from the industry leaders that matter to your business.

Twitter

Twitter ads can often blend into a user’s feed and can be a great way to build brand awareness and drive traffic. Unlike on Facebook or Instagram, which can keep users on their platform, Twitter posts are much more oriented towards sending traffic out. If you’ve got content that connects to a trending topic, Twitter can be a great way to contribute to a conversation and capitalize on trends.

Tips for Your Paid Social Strategy

When executing a paid social campaign, there’s much to keep in mind. Here’s just a couple of tips to get you started:

Be clear about your goals

Are you trying to drive traffic to your site? Reach new audiences? Being clear about what you want from a paid social plan at the onset can save you time and money.

Know your audience

Who do you want to reach? What are their interests? What are their needs? With so many tools for audience targeting it’s crucial to have a clear sense of who you want to see your content.

Integrate your paid social strategy with your organic one

Thinking through how your organic social content and paid social content can work together could have a huge impact on the success of any campaign.

Test out different ideas

Most social advertising products offer ways to A/B test different types of paid content. By making use of these testing features you can really help you leverage learning for greater results next time. Monitoring the results will help you launch an even better campaign next time around.

READ SIMILAR POSTS