Telegraph claims that one in every five adults spends an average of 40 hours online every week. Wondering how much of that time they spend on social media? It’s a staggering 33 percent! Moreover, 37 percent of the people shopping online find that social media has a major influence on their purchasing decisions.
So, if you are yet to take paid social media seriously, we recommend you read this post until the end. We’ll discuss whether or not paid social media is a worthwhile investment and the best tips you can follow to create successful paid social campaigns in 2022.
What is Paid Social Media?
Paid social media involves running advertisements or sponsored posts across social media platforms. The messages are tailored for a specific sub-audience. Some of the most common examples of paid social media strategies are pay-per-click advertising, display advertising, influencer marketing, and more. You can easily distinguish social media advertisements from organic posts as these have ‘sponsored’ or ‘promoted’ tags on them.
Is Paid Social Media Worth The Investment?
Should you invest in paid social media advertising? This section shortlists some of the top benefits of running paid social media campaigns in 2022. Here’s why you should adopt a paid approach to your social media advertising.
Amplifies Social Media Reach
Organic reach, as we all know, is declining steadily across social media channels. Facebook, in particular, is quite challenging to break through using any organic marketing strategy. Paid social media ads guarantee brands a place in the user’s feed. You can easily break through the noise – maximizing your impressions and overall reach.
Provides Accelerated Growth
As more and more brands jump on the social media bandwagon, marketing on the channel has become very competitive. Brands that rely solely on organic social media strategies lose out as most brands invest in paid social media ads to get faster results. Accelerated growth is a given when you nail your paid social media strategy.
Achieves Better Targeting Than Organic
Don’t just advertise – advertise smart. Above all, one of the most advantageous reasons to invest in paid social media ads is targeting. For instance, you can narrow down your intended audience using demographics like interests, gender, age, location, income levels, education, and more. In other words, your ads will only be seen by users that match your targeting preferences.
Converts Mobile Users With Ease
Pew Research claims that an average social media user spends 80 percent of the time online using a mobile device. In addition, 84 percent of online consumers (aged 18 to 29) use their smartphones to shop online. Paid social media allows you to tailor your ads for a specific device – giving you direct access to mobile users!
Generates Value For Your Money
Paid social media advertising fits any budget. Since it uses the PPC payment model, you only pay when social media users take the desired action or convert. As a result, you can refine your marketing strategies and targeting to drive better results and generate higher ROI. Hence, it is a cost-effective way to promote your brand.
Best Platforms to Run Paid Social Media Campaigns in 2021
If you have just started with paid social media advertising, you might want to focus on leveraging the top four social media platforms – 1) Facebook, 2) Twitter, 3) Instagram, and 4) LinkedIn. Let’s discuss these platforms along with examples of some paid social media advertising campaigns.
Facebook is the most powerful paid social media platform. It runs on a bidding system where the advertisers bid on a number of ads to be shown to their targeted audience. Facebook Ads help advertisers generate brand awareness and build leads. It even has a robust reporting and analytics feature to help you refine your paid campaigns. Here’s how typical Facebook advertisements look like:
Paid ads on Twitter work like magic. Why? Well, Twitter makes the differences between a normal and a sponsored post very subtle. They look very similar, making it easier for the advertisers to leverage Twitter’s 192 million monetizable daily users! The ad settings on Twitter largely depend on your advertising budget. Here’s what ads on Twitter look like:
Did you know that 84 percent of people discover new products and services through Instagram? If you are a brand that has just launched a product, it’s not a bad idea to run some Instagram ads right as the products hit the shelves. In addition, all you need to run Instagram ads is an Instagram business profile. You can even run Instagram ads through Facebook. Instagram ads allow advertisers to run ads with a budget starting as low as $1.
A haven for millions of professionals, LinkedIn is the social media platform to create professional connections, search for jobs, and more. Therefore, as an advertiser, you can use LinkedIn to reach certain professionals (mostly B2B) with targeted ads and to generate awareness or leads. Like other social media platforms, LinkedIn provides different ad types like sponsored, message, text, and dynamic.
In conclusion, organic reach is dying across social media networks. Therefore, we highly recommend you invest in paid social media advertising before the competition stiffens. Trust me; an online presence is just not enough in 2022. You have got to include paid media in your current social media marketing strategy. We have just scratched the surface with how to create successful paid social media campaigns in 2022! Wondering what it takes to create a paid social media advertising strategy? Connect with B Squared as we can create a paid social media strategy exclusive to your brand!
Are you going to invest in paid social media in 2022? Let us know in the comments below!
Kaitlin Wichmann
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