In today’s digital marketing landscape, social media marketing is pay-to-play. The algorithms that determine which posts show up on feeds grow more complicated every year. Paying for social media ads guarantees a prime position in consumers’ online spaces.
Both Gen Z and millennials spend over 2.5 hours a day on average browsing social media. Engagement is high on apps like Instagram, TikTok and Facebook, as users like and swipe rather than passively viewing content. Paid social media advertising services also give your business hard data that you can use to optimize your advertising strategies across mediums.
When buying social media ads, you essentially pay Facebook or another social media site to run targeted ads for you on their platform. These ads can be posts that look like an organic part of a user’s news feed or rotating carousel ads on the side of the news feed. Images, videos and slideshows with accompanying text are all possible paid social media ad options.
Many social media sites, including Facebook, allow you to easily set an ad budget for your entire campaign. You can split this budget up between specific ads and adjust spending at any time.
When you buy paid social ads, you’re also paying for the algorithm’s impressive ad targeting capabilities. You can set paid ads to appear for specific age demographics, genders, income brackets, and geographic areas. Social media paid ad platforms generate real-time data on how well your ads are performing, including how your marketing dollars translate to clicks and sales.
Projections show that businesses worldwide will spend over $200 billion on paid social media ads in 2023. Numbers that massive don’t appear out of thin air.
Direct-to-consumer products can get even more power out of paid social media advertising. Paid ads allow you to make the most of a limited budget, targeting ads to consumers most likely to buy.
One survey showed that 76% of people purchased a product that they saw in a social media post. Since many users check social media multiple times a day, paid ads create a brand impression that sticks in your target audience’s mind.
Chances are, your business already has a dedicated social media page and presence. Engaging content, consistent branding and amassed followers on your brand’s page can make your products appear in users’ news feeds naturally, so why pay for ads? There are a few reasons.
As the social media space becomes more crowded, this organic advertising isn’t guaranteed to appear in feeds. Paid ads don’t replace organic social media presence, but they can direct more users to your organic social media pages. In return, organic social media makes your paid ads feel more legitimate and trustworthy. These two strategies must work together to give your brand a strong social media presence.
Now that you’ve seen how paid social media advertising services lead to brand outreach and growth, here’s how to get started.
Choose Your Objective
Paid social media ads are infinitely scalable and customizable. The first step in planning a paid ad campaign is identifying your company’s unique objectives.
Are you aiming at the top of the funnel, trying to get the word out about your product? Or do you need to aim at the middle or bottom of the funnel, converting potential customers into brand loyalists? A top-of-funnel strategy involves more ads in feeds, while lower-funnel strategies can target users who have already visited your brand’s website.
Pinpoint Your Target Audience
Maximize your social media ad spending by putting your content in front of the demographics most likely to buy. Narrow down an age range, gender, location and income bracket to start. The more specific you can be about your target audience, the better.
Paid social media ads allow you to pick more than one target audience. With analytics, you can see firsthand how often any given market will click on your ad. Incorporate a balance of proven demographics and experimental ones so you can adjust once the data comes in.
Set Your Budget
A higher paid social media ad budget will generally yield better results. Higher budgets allow your brand to experiment with targeted campaigns to reach new markets. They also help to elbow competitors out of shared audience’s feeds.
Align your budget to your overall advertising objectives, keeping in mind that a return on ad spending is 3:1 or higher. It is possible with paid social media advertising services that you can also easily adjust paid ad spending on the fly, so your budget doesn’t have to be set in stone.
Craft Your Campaigns
Don’t underestimate the importance of quality content in your paid social media ads. Content can show off your product while communicating your brand’s values for deeper engagement. Social media users are constantly aware of their online persona, so align your branding with your target audience’s ethos to make the right impression.
Adjust With Real-Time Data
Paid ad platforms on social media and Google provide a smorgasbord of data on all of your campaigns, all delivered in graphs and accessible formats. Here are just a few of the figures Social Media paid ads can provide for your business:
These numbers can transform your business’s entire advertising strategy in digital marketing and beyond. Use this data to assess how your ad content is resonating with consumers and which campaigns have the highest returns.
Digital marketing trends change every month, which makes it hard to craft a winning strategy while managing every other aspect of your business. At Pactx, our digital growth experts can leverage paid social media advertising services to boost any direct-to-consumer business. Contact us for a consultation.
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