In this bespoke article by our members, Outpost, they discuss why it may be time for your business to consider using paid social.
The social media and advertising industry has experienced huge changes to algorithms over recent years. Platforms are increasingly pushing organic content out of news feeds and prioritising paid posts and posts with meaningful interactions (comments and shares) over vanity figures.
It’s no longer possible to reach a huge audience through organic content, and most of the posts are lost thanks to complicated algorithms. According to Sprout Social (2018) 70% of content goes unseen.
Paid social can be an effective tool for businesses and is now an integral part of the digital marketing strategy.
It reaps benefits including: increased brand awareness, increased traffic to site, visibility and engagement and increase in sales – if you’re not already using it, now’s the time.
Here we explore the benefits to your business’s marketing activities.
Targeted audience
Organic posts can reach the right and wrong audience; you have little control. Paid allows you to target exactly who you want based on your marketing objectives. By allowing you to specify which audience you want to target right down to gender, age, demographics and interests you are reaching a more valuable audience. Facebook also allows you to retarget social users who’ve already visited your website by installing the retargeting pixel on your site, meaning previous visitors will see ads for your business in their News Feed.
ROI
Brands can’t afford to rely on organic content anymore if they want to see measurable results. The usual objective of putting money behind a campaign is to increase sales and by doing this you will eventually start to generate ROI.
Content also plays an important role. If you push out the right content for your target audience, the ROI should increase.
The content has to be of interest and of value to the intended reader to have the desired effect on ROI. And that there, is a direct link between investment in understanding your audience and the content that needs to be created.
Going back to algorithms, putting money behind content will help you beat the algorithm and allow you to strategically target the exact people with the most relevant content. According to Divvit, paid social drives 25% more conversions than organic social.
Increasing brand awareness
Paid social can provide you with more eyeballs on your content quickly increasing reach. More than three billion people are now on social media, with the average person spending 135 minutes a day on these platforms, so building a strong brand presence is imperative (Disruptive media, 2018).
Increased brand awareness can lead to brand loyalty. When your business is constantly appearing in the News Feed, people may begin to associate it with the services/products you offer and you begin to lodge your brand name in people’s minds.
By segmenting an audience using demographic tools, paid social gets your message in front of your desired audience, increasing brand awareness and potential customers.
Increased reach
Again, due to complicated and ever-changing algorithms, organic reach is often very low. Paid ads can ensure your content reaches your audience and with increased reach, comes the opportunity of getting more conversions.
An increased audience reach also gives you an option to deliver quality content to many people who can easily be converted. Facebook favours relevant and meaningful content, and pushes down the feed content that isn’t classed as engaging. Authoritative and thought-provoking content will help make you look like a thought leader to your audience and will help increase reach.
Cost-effective
It’s a cost-effective way to promote your business and can be set up to fit any budget. Advertising on any platform can be paused/tweaked at any time.
Unlike conventional advertising, paid social allows you to target niche markets with ads that are relevant to them based on their personal data. After running a few ads and setting up some A/B testing you can analyse the results and refine your targeting, which should then drive stronger results and help increase ROI.
Facebook utilises a Cost Per Click approach meaning you will only be charged for the amount of budget you use every time your link is clicked on. Ideally you want a low cost per click to generate the highest return.
Mobile friendly
It seems like an obvious one, but the number of people using the Internet on a mobile phone has increased dramatically over recent years. And with 69% of people accessing social media on their mobile device businesses need to be present in front of their audience. (Disruptive media, 2018).
Conclusion
Social media strategies need to be tweaked to include a paid social strategy. Paid social allows you to amplify reach, enhance targeting, and drive people to your website to make a purchase. While it may take some testing to ensure your audience is refined as much as possible to meet your objectives, results will start to follow. Monitoring and tweaking is key in optimising your ads and achieving the best ROI you can.
And, if you need help or a chat about paid social, just drop us a message – info@discoveroutpost.com
