Love it or hate it, social media is here to stay! More than half the world’s population (that’s 4.62 billion people) now actively use some form of social media, with 424 million new users signing up for online networking services in the last 12 months alone.
As a marketing professional, you simply can’t afford to ignore the advertising opportunities offered by paid social media. Through effective paid social advertising you can:
- reach a huge audience over various social channels, spread across the digital landscape;
- market directly to that audience, targeting specific demographic and psychographic criteria;
- create powerful, engaging content that not only encourages lead generation, but also builds brand awareness and consumer loyalty.
Where to Begin..?
In spite of the vast number of opportunities and potential benefits of paid social advertising, the practice is notoriously complex. Neither a simple process nor a strict science; a creative, confident and knowledgeable strategic approach must be taken to all aspects of ad creation, competitor analysis and audience targeting. For most individuals and small businesses, accounting for all these elements is time-consuming and inefficient – this is where a paid social agency like The Bank can help!
At The Bank, we believe that retaining a professional paid media team as part of your paid social budget is invaluable. Economies of scale give digital marketing agencies like ours the ability to manage a number of paid search campaigns; by pooling our talent and expertise we ensure the goals of our clients are met, and they are left free to do what they do best: run their businesses!
Still not sure whether a paid social team is right for you? Give us a call today to arrange a chat with one of our social media experts, and in the meantime take a look at our guide to all things social media advertising:
Developing a Paid Social Strategy
If you’ve never had any experience building a paid social marketing campaign, it can feel overwhelming – with so many different platforms and advertising formats available, it’s hard to know which route to take for the best return on your investment.
At The Bank, we encourage our new clients to start their marketing strategy journey by fleshing out a few key points:
Business Goals
An easy one to start off: what do you want to achieve through your social media campaign? Or, to put it another way, what will make your paid social advertising campaign feel like a success?
Increase Brand Awareness
If your goal is to simply raise awareness of your brand, you may want to invest in placing your paid ads on the platform with the largest total reach. Alternatively, you could consider running ads across a wide range of social platforms.
Drive Website Traffic
Driving traffic to your landing pages is the easy part – ensuring that increased traffic is from relevant users is the tricky bit! You need to consider which platform and ad format will allow you to showcase your business in a way that will grab your audience’s attention and make them want to click through to your site.
Customer Acquisition
For smaller businesses and those in the B2B space, it’s essential to establish trust through your social media ads. In order to generate legitimate leads, the ad platform and ad format you choose should allow you the opportunity to show off your credibility, your authenticity, and your experience delivering the highest quality products and services.
Increase Sales
If you run an e-commerce company, turning paid social ads into sales is the number one goal. For this, you need to consider your ideal audience (more on that in a moment…), as well as their capacity to make that purchase. For instance, let’s say your product has been designed for 18–24 year-olds – is it better to target this demographic directly via TikTok, or present it to their more affluent parents as a gift idea on Facebook?
Target Audience
If your business is already on its feet, defining your target audience is probably something you’ve given a great deal of thought.
For the new businesses out there, you want to gain a clear understanding of who is your ideal customer. Consider some of the following demographic and psychographic criteria:
- Age
- Location
- Gender identity
- Ethnicity
- Education
- Income
- Values
- Desires
- Goals
- Interests
- Lifestyle choices
With this information, you can develop a smart paid social strategy, and gain a clearer understanding of which social media platforms and media types you can use to target them effectively. There aren’t necessarily any right or wrong answers here, but effective campaigns start with a deep understanding of your target audience, and the types of paid social campaigns which are likely to speak to them.
Advertising Budget
It’s incredibly easy to go over budget with paid social campaigns. Ideally, you should work closely with your digital marketing team to ensure your ad spend is in line with your business goals and performance expectations.
Remember, your paid social media campaign is only one element of your brand’s marketing mix; you need to factor in all other paid search avenues (Google Ads, Bing ads, etc.) when deciding how much you can afford to invest specifically in paid social ads.
Social marketing success comes only from a well-constructed budget – don’t let your business fall into the trap of over-spending!
Social Media Platforms: In Summary
Armed with a detailed understanding of your goals, your target customers, and your advertising budget, you can start thinking about which social media platform is going to work best for you.
Below, we’ve brought together some key facts about each of the major social media platforms. Take a look, and give us a call if you’d like additional information from our experts.
Facebook Advertising
Demographics and Usage
- Active monthly users: 2.91 billion
- Largest age group: 25-34 (31.5%)
- Gender: 43% female, 57% male (no data on other genders)
- Average daily engagement: 33 minutes
Notable Ad Formats
- Stories: Customisable, edge-to-edge ads which create a call-to-action for mobile users.
- Messenger: Use your ads to speak directly to potential customers via the Messenger app.
- Slideshow: A presentational ad format, utilising motion, sound and text.
Pricing
Facebook Ads – Pros and Cons
- Pros: Unrivaled targeting capabilities; superior Ads platform; detailed reporting and data analytics.
- Cons: Huge competition; high investment; some formats offer comparatively low conversion rates.
(For more detailed information about Facebook advertising, see our dedicated page here.)
Instagram Advertising
Demographics and Usage
- Active monthly users: 2 billion
- Largest age groups: 25-34 (31.2%); 18-24 (31%)
- Gender: 48.4% female, 51.8% male (no data on other genders)
- Average daily engagement: 29 minutes
Notable Ad Formats
- Instagram Stories: Sandwiched between followed user content, paid stories provide significant audience enagement.
- Reels: Building on the success of TikTok, Instagram’s Reels feature allows for the development of high-impact mini video ads.
- Instagram Shop: For retailers looking to capture impulse purchases, Shop adverts include price information and checkout links.
Pricing
Instagram Ads – Pros and Cons
- Pros: Scope for creative marketing and strategic thinking; effective and impactful ad formats; opportunity for influencer collaboration and content creation.
- Cons: Focus on photo and video advertising media provides less opportunity for ad copy and text-based engagement; over-saturation in some markets.
(For more detailed information about Instagram advertising, see our dedicated page here.)
LinkedIn Advertising
Demographics and Usage
- Active monthly users: 810 million
- Largest age group: 25-34 (58.4%)
- Gender: 48% female, 52% male (no data on other genders)
Notable Ad Formats
- Sponsored Messaging: Target potential customers through their messaging inbox.
- Lead Gen Forms: Pre-filled forms designed for lead generation.
Pricing
LinkedIn Ads – Pros and Cons
- Pros: Professional user base; offers methods for establishing credibility; opportunities for B2B companies to effectively target decision-makers.
- Cons: Narrow user base; expensive to access detailed marketing tools and analytics.
(For more detailed information about LinkedIn advertising, see our dedicated page here.)
Twitter Advertising
Demographics and Usage
- Active daily users: 211 million
- Largest age group: 18-29 (42%)
- Gender: 38.4% female, 61.6% male (no data on other genders)
- Average daily engagement: 31 minutes
Notable Ad Formats
- Twitter Amplify: Allows advertisers to align their ads with premium video content from relevant publishers.
- Twitter Takeover: Gives brands access to the high-engagement Timeline and Explore tabs of Twitter’s platform.
Pricing
Twitter Ads – Pros and Cons
- Pros: Low initial investment; allows for interaction with customers; instant audience reception to ads and campaigns.
- Cons: Requires a time-sensitive strategy; high price tag for premium ads such as Takeover.
Snapchat Advertising
Demographics and Usage
- Active monthly users: 319 million
- Largest age group: 15-25 (48%)
- Gender: 54.4% female, 44.6% male (no data on other genders)
- Average daily engagement: 25+ minutes
Notable Ad Formats
- Collection Ads: Showcase for a series of products, allowing shoppers to browse and buy.
- Lenses AR Experiences: Memorable, interactive augmented reality advertising format.
Pricing
Snapchat Ads – Pros and Cons
- Pros: Low cost; offers direct connection with consumers; comparatively low business engagement means less competition.
- Cons: Difficult to offer repeat engagement; narrow user base.
TikTok Advertising
Demographics and Usage
- Average monthly users: 1 billion
- Largest age group: 10-19 (25%)
- Gender: 61% female, 39% male (no data on other genders)
- Average daily engagement: 89 minutes per day
Notable Ad Formats
- Brand Takeover: Full-screen video ad presented to users opening the app.
- Branded Hashtag Challenge: Collaborative brand-engagement advertising format.
Pricing
TikTok Ads – Pros and Cons
- Pros: Growing demographic of young users; options for creative, highly targeted ads; flexible budgeting options.
- Cons: Difficult to establish brand credibility; limited options for multi-platform advertising.
Benefits of a Paid Social Agency
As you can see, the number of social media platforms available to advertisers is huge; as is the number of considerations a business must make when developing a paid social strategy.
In many cases, it’s best to leave these decisions up to paid social experts. By portioning some of your ad spend towards investing in a social media advertising agency, you effectively leave all the difficult decisions up to someone else. Let’s take a look at some of the advantages of hiring a dedicated paid social advertising team:
Campaign Strategy
At The Bank, our team of experts use an integrated approach to campaign strategy development. We conduct in-depth research into your specific niche, relying on our extensive experience and industry-leading data-driven analytical software to come up with a strategic approach that will increase engagement, build brand awareness, and increase profits.
Audience Targeting Criteria
When it comes to building a loyal audience, you want to ensure your content marketing is aimed in the right direction. If you already run a paid social or pay-per-click (PPC) campaign such as Google Ads, you may be familiar with data reporting software. By using services such as Google Analytics and Meta’s Ads Manager, we can ensure you’re paid business’ paid search and paid social media campaigns are heading in the right direction!
Social Audits
With campaign and audience targeting strategies in place, your paid social agency can conduct a full audit of your business’ social media channels and active PPC campaigns. By examining your current approach, we can highlight possible areas for optimisation and improvement, as well as attempt to unify all your paid social campaigns and digital marketing endeavours.
Website Optimisation
When developing a social media advertising campaign, it is essential to ensure all your web presence is up to standard. At The Bank, our SEO and website development team will ensure your site content is ready to convert the leads generated through your social ads into sales, as well drive organic traffic and build backlinks on its own.
Content Creation
We will cover this in more detail below, but the creation of ad content is an important part of your digital marketing services. Your dedicated marketing agency team at The Bank will work with your business to create target ads which will speak directly to your new customers.
Performance and Optimisation
From the small business to the multinational corporation, a social ads campaign is an ongoing process. At The Bank, we closely monitor the performances of all our clients’ campaigns, ensuring they’re hitting the right platform/s, and giving our clients the returns they expect.
Reporting
It’s easy for your digital marketing team to tell you you’re reaching your campaign goals, but you want to see tangible results. That’s why as a client of The Bank, your dedicated account manager will provide regular, detailed reports and analyses, allowing you to see the ways in which your investment in us is paying off.
Creating Your Ads
For the small- to mid-sized business, creating engaging paid social ad content is a difficult proposition. Businesses across many industries can benefit from paid social media advertising, but for those not in creative fields, it can seem a daunting prospect.
By retaining the marketing agency services of The Bank, you can leave the entire creative process up to us. Our in-house creative team and partner network have the skills and expertise to deliver sales materials that are developed with your brand identity and your ideal customer in mind.
Whether images or video, our experts have a proven track record of creating brand media that is highly targeted, and ready to be deployed to your business’ newest customer.
The Bank: For All Your Paid Social Services
Whether for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, or one of the myriad social media platforms we haven’t mentioned, The Bank is the social media advertising agency for you. We don’t just specialise in one channel – our experts work with them all!
We pride ourselves on being able to deliver results and marketing services like no other social media advertising agency. Our paid social experts offer the widest range of services, ensuring your business’ marketing campaigns are in the best shape possible.
We have had the tools, the experience, the knowledge, and the dedication to take your brand’s paid social campaigns to the next level.
Don’t hesitate! Call The Bank today to get your new ad campaign started!
