The most successful advertising campaigns are those that target specific audiences. It’s the very reason why paid social media advertising is yielding such powerful results.
Anyone who has ever been caught in a downpour without an umbrella will tell you that saturation is a very bad thing. When you finally get home, it feels like every part of your clothing and body is sopping wet, cold and uncomfortable.
In marketing terms, saturation is also something that leaves customers feeling resentful and annoyed, yet when it comes to advertising, many businesses still embrace it.
Their thinking is, the more people you hit, the better the results – which sounds good in theory. So, dazzled by audience numbers, they blow their whole advertising budget on big media buys, often only to be disappointed by the results.
Savvy marketers know, though, that winning marketing strategies never result from a scattergun approach; that the most successful advertising campaigns are those that target specific audiences, where they are, and what they respond to.
It’s the very reason why paid social media advertising is yielding such powerful results for businesses.
What is paid social media advertising?
Paid social media advertising is a method of delivering ads or sponsored posts on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. They include regular posts, carousel posts, stories posts and even DM messages.
Display ads and paid posts are the most common form of social media ads, although how these ads present depends on the social media platform. Paid Facebook social media ads tend to look like regular posts or stories; Twitter ads take the form of a short line of text; and Instagram paid posts are visually led.
Regardless of the platform, most social media advertising will be labelled ‘sponsored’ or ‘promoted’.
Paid social media advertising is best when it’s part of an overall marketing mix, often including marketing assets such as search engine advertising, landing pages, and print collateral.
Paid vs organic social media
Organic social media posts are the posts that may, from time to time, show up in the newsfeeds of people who follow a business. The reasons businesses are increasingly using paid social media over organic posts are speed and targeting.
The frequency in which organic posts show up in newsfeeds depends on a complicated algorithm that considers factors such as how much a person has interacted with a brand previously. This means posts don’t always present in every feed, and if they do, it can sometimes take days to become visible.
Paid social media advertising posts show up instantly in the newsfeeds of the audience you select. It also allows you to deliver targeted messaging to specific groups, such as audiences based on location, gender or age.
The more targeted the messaging and call to action, the greater the response.
Why is paid social media advertising important?
It’s a rare business that doesn’t have a raft of social media profiles and paid social media advertising is the best way to stand out from the crowd.
Paid social media advertising allows an effective roll-out of your marketing strategy. Instead of posting organically and hoping customers see it, you’re taking your marketing efforts directly to them, carrying the messaging required to achieve your marketing objectives.
Paid social advertising is accessible to all businesses, regardless of budget – your spend can be as big or small as your budget allows. It also allows businesses to get the biggest bang for their advertising buck, allocating spending to specific areas at specific times.
Social media also allows businesses to target customers at every stage of the buying cycle, rather than taking a ‘one size fits all’ approach required by other advertising forms. You can target warm leads with one advertising post, leads with another, and returning customers with another.
Getting the most from paid social media ads
The steps you take in planning your social media advertising campaign will determine its success. Here are some tips:
- Set a clear objective: What is it you want to achieve and how is success going to be measured? It might be a certain number of video views; it could be a certain number of click-throughs.
- Define your audience: Understanding who you are talking to will determine the tone of copy and images used as well as the call to action.
- Review previous posts: Jump into analytics and check out how your organic posts have performed in the past. Was there a particular topic that got a greater response than others? What images, headlines and copy seemed to attract clicks?
- Keep mobile in mind: Remember that the majority of social media users access the platform via a device, such as a mobile or iPad, so make sure your ads are easily consumed on smaller screens.
- Test and analyse: The great thing about social media advertising is that you see how your ads are performing while they are running – use this information to pivot or tweak your ads for maximum results.
Once the advertising campaign has run, do a deep analysis and compare it to previous ad campaigns. This information should inform all future advertising efforts.
Want to explore paid social media advertising?
The easiest way to make sure your paid social media advertising campaigns powerfully deliver the results you desire is to call in the experts.
Assemblo is a full-service marketing agency based in Melbourne, with the knowledge and experience of paid social media advertising to create a marketing campaign that will help your business grow its brand and achieve real bottom line results.
To find out how we can help your business, give us a call on (03) 9079 2555 or send us a note via the contact form below.