What is Paid Social Media? 

Paid social is a form of advertising done on social networking platforms. It’s a fantastic way of capturing new subsets of customers and can be done by boosting organic posts or setting up independent ads that appear on your target market’s feed.

It differs from organic social, because you’re able to reach an audience that isn’t already following you and knows about your business, but still allows you to target new people who are definitely interested in your products. 

It’s a well-used and key digital marketing strategy for many businesses – in fact, it’s believed that as many as 30% of all companies were spending on paid media in 2022, and it’s expected to make up 33% of all digital ad spend in 2024. 

The most popular channels for advertising, include:

• Facebook and Instagram (also referred to as Meta)
• YouTube
• LinkedIn
• TikTok 
• X (formerly Twitter)
• Snapchat

What are the benefits of using a Paid Social strategy? 

There are so many great reasons to use Paid Social as part of your paid media strategy, ultimately businesses use Paid Social for increasing their revenue, promoting their brand / increasing brand awareness and visibility (you’re quite literally buying guaranteed reach), and increased engagement from potential customers.

However, it also offers many other perks that are worth considering too. Such as:

• Refined targeting capabilities:
  Each channel has its own core demographic of users, and this should be considered when you’re developing your strategy (we’ll go into more detail on this later!). Still, you can also narrow down your targeting by breaking down your customers by locations, demographic, interests, and even job titles. 
• Lots of AB testing opportunities
  This is great for optimisation, allowing you to improve your ads over time. You can test different assets (will a video work better than a flat image, for example), trial different ad copy, or even test if your ad resonates better with different audiences. 
• Experimentation:
  Advertising on social media allows you to experiment with your tone of voice and preferred content styles across different channels. If your company is wanting to experiment with a more playful tone of voice for example, you might try TikTok to test this out and see how it’s received in an environment it’s best suited for. 
• The insightful data and knowledge you can learn
  As your ads learn, you, as a result, learn too. The data you get from your advertising can help shape your future strategy and even help you find new audiences you wouldn’t have considered before, or apply your learnings to other areas of your marketing.  

Think this could be a good strategy for your business? Great! Let us help you with where to begin. 

What is the best channel for me to focus on?

Contrary to popular belief, it’s important to note that you don’t need to be on every single channel out there to do well on Paid Social. By knowing your audience well, you can refine your strategy, and garner amazing results by working smarter rather than harder. 

Each channel is suited to different audiences, so it’s a good idea to not only do some research on the channels but also your current and target audiences before you begin. 

Some things you could consider when conducting this research are:

• Who already buys your product? You can use your current customers to develop or expand on your target market. 
• Demographics: What might their age, gender, occupation, gender, etc be? Are they a decision maker? This is key for when you’re considering your targeting approach. 
• Interests: What are their hobbies, spending habits and values? This can help with targeting and messaging. 
• Online habits: Where (what channels) are your audience likely to spend most of their free time? What types of content do they enjoy? What websites do they like to visit?
• Pain points: What are their biggest challenges or frustrations (and how can you help them with this?). What influences them to buy? This can really help you later when it comes to developing the ad copy and assets. 

Doing some research on your target market before you start advertising not only saves you time, but it can save you thousands of pounds in budget each year. You don’t want to spread yourself too thin; reserve your budget for audiences that will convert for you.

Some marketers might push for having your brand on all of the channels for “brand awareness”, but at Door4 we are firm believers that your most important audience is the ones that actually want or need your product – you only need to know your audience to know where you need to be to reach them.

Here’s a brief overview below to point you in the right direction when it comes to considering the channels you could explore: 

Meta:

Facebook is one of the easiest ones to get started on and can get you results quickly. It is the most widely used social platform worldwide and has the most diverse audience that you can target easily, so it’s a great place for most brands to start with. You can also develop ads in the form of videos, images, carousels, etc., giving you versatility in how you want to show off your product and speak to your target market.

You can also choose different objectives to suit your campaign: Traffic (driving traffic to your site or page), engagement (encouraging likes, comments etc of your ad), awareness (how far you’d like the ad to reach), leads (requires an action from your market, be it filling out a form, clicking a CTA, registering for an event or signing up to something), app promotions, or sales (gain more customers, increase sales or generate revenue). 

Instagram is part of “Meta” (linked to Facebook), so works in a similar way by also allowing you to tailor your campaign to your specific objectives, but it’s more of a visual platform (and should be tailored more to mobile users). You can reach your target market in Stories, Reels, through the Explore page and more. The demographic is skewed to being slightly younger than the Facebook audience, but for best results, you should test both channels and see which works best for you. 

TikTok:

TikTok is great if you have a product to sell, and have a core KPI of sales/conversions – the audience on this channel is usually a younger demographic, but is highly engaged and ready to buy. It’s a great channel to create a community and make sales (with 1 in 3 TikTok users having bought a product after seeing an ad on the channel) and can give you the ability to go viral overnight with very little effort required. You can advertise on TikTok through video, images, carousels, or shopping ads. User Generated Content does well, or using an influencer strategy, as this audience is highly impressionable and enjoys seeing authentic social proof from people they already know/recognise and trust, before making a purchase. 

LinkedIn: 

LinkedIn on the other hand is more suited to a B2B audience, or one where you’re targeting professionals (knowledgeable workers, decision makers, executives and industry experts – allowing you to target based on 200 characteristics such as: demographics, job titles, seniority, specific companies and more). LinkedIn offers a few methods for advertising: in-feed ads, sponsored messages, dynamic ads (based on a user’s profile), and text ads. It’s a good idea to use LinkedIn organically before you begin advertising, so you have an existing footprint on the channel; try boosting an organic post as a test to see how this performs before jumping straight into advertising. 

For all of these platforms, however, these trends might vary by region or industry, so make sure to know your audience before you begin!

Ready to keep going? We have two more parts coming soon!

Author: Carly Tallentire, Account Manager, Door4